Posted by
Mike on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 2:51:45 AM
http://www.westernperspective.blogspot.com/
Whoever thought they would live to see the day that McCain and Graham
would be thrown under the bus by neocons for supporting the president's
war effort against an Islamic dictator? Yet that is what seems to be
happening. We live in strange times.
Any leader of a civilized nation has a moral obligation to prevent a
brutal regime from mercilessly and indiscriminately killing its own
civilians if it has the capacity to somehow influence the outcome in a
positive way. This is essentially what got us involved in the Balkans
conflict during the Clinton years. It does no good, when addressing the
Libyan conflict, to bring up Rwanda and the Sudan. For one thing,
Obama wasn't president at that time and so has no reason to answer for
whatever negligence may or may not have been committed during these
prior incidents.
The fact of the matter is, our own news media were reporting that the
Khadafi regime was deliberately and indiscriminately strafing innocent
civilians with automatic weapons fire from aircraft overhead. This is
clearly illegal as a war crime under international law. It matters not
that worse crimes were committed in the past, such as the Jewish
holocaust or the Rwanda massacre, with no American military response.
Nor does it make any difference that no strategic US interest, other
than upholding traditional morality, is at stake in Libya. Obama did
this in Libya without getting America involved in another full scale
war. He should be applauded for this. In so doing, he is expediting
the withdrawal of troops involved in other conflicts, thereby reducing
the overall cost to the American taxpayer in these hard economic times.
Obama did the right thing in Libya because any nation that has the
capability to stop wanton attacks against innocent civilians has a moral
obligation to do so. Since it would be impossible for American forces
to prevent or stop all instances of killing innocent civilians
throughout the world, it is the president's job to decide when and where
to engage militarily for this purpose. Our allies have the same
obligations as we do. The president has no moral obligation to play a
leading role in subsequent military actions once the immediate threat to
civilians has been dissipated.