Ours is an age that would have sent Greeks to their Oracles!
Witness American waver in a land embraced by a leader whose very identity is nominally informed from Arabia. Given His place within the pantheon of American leadership after the scourging that became Iraq, He identified alone with the impatience and false rectitude that supplies contemporary liberalism its bile. He could not envision chance giving him a political dilemma whereby he would identity and vindicate the political winds that animated his predecessor.
The reversal and tutorial in foreign affairs that now encompasses the Obama Administration will not abate! Absent a distinct Doctrine informed from Truman or Bush, the Americans may get lucky and vanquish its Libyan foe absent the required political machinations that dominated the domestic political life of his predecessor.
His task is not enviable for we are grappling with an intractable foe whose very political aims are amiss from the passionate revolt that dominates the Arab Street. How else to put it: we simply cannot shape events on the ground without presence. We must safeguard our core interests in the Middle East without betraying either our prestige or core values. The danger is dealing with successive crises on an ad hoc basis. This clearly has been the functioning mandate since the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia. The first tutorial was in accepting difficult and unwanted crisis’ that only an American President can thwart. Given the absolute failure of the entire human rights regime, one must ask, can the United Nations or any other libertarian regime maintain credible status absent American leadership?
The irony of reversal that unwittingly dominates Obama is the absolute need to seek regime change among our enemies while encouraging reform among friendly authoritarian regimes. The late great Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick gave Reagan her tutorial on similar political ground that informed the Reagan Doctrine throughout Central America. The sad truth to behold is simple: Obama has no stomach to measure or shape the events now unfolding throughout North Africa or the greater Middle East.
Everyday that goes by we witness the vindication of a vilified former President! If team Obama cannot find its moral or political compass from which to discern a distinct policy our venture in Libya will fail!
Our ultra-libertarian President can regain the ground lost by seeking to affirm the political ground that dominated our Republic since its founding: our deep suspicion at the very concept of ‘balance of power’ politics.
William Holland
William Holland 