Not to mention there were only a small handful of people there. (as opposed to the thousands that were marching and protesting in places like Libya, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, etc..)
Fair enough - we won't know for a while. But at this point in the policy execution, everything has gone to absolute perfection. Everything you could want at this point along the path is exactly how you'd want it. Agreed - but we were driving policy there. We instigated the overthrow of a government there. Here, we supported a local movement. That's one of the mistakes that has been fixed here. Again, key differences were that there was an "invading" force in their country at the time. We were running the new government. There was no long-term planning, from what we can tell. We disbanded the army, leaving a bunch of angry, unemployed military people to organize a resistance. None of those things are the case here. Absolutely - all those things could happen, and that's true of any intervention. But the conditions are set up to make those things as unlikely as possible, and that's all you can ask. Iraq, as our counter-example, was exactly the opposite. Ultimately, if Libya collapses, we're basically back to where we were - but this time, at no cost in lives or $$, and with no long term entanglement or responsibilities. Egypt is another example, still in process, of the more targetted Obama intervention model. There, there was no war, so the process is different. But we again supported a domestic movement and didn't try to interfere with defining how the country would take its next steps. We pushed for diplomatic support of surrounding countries and used our influence only to push the movement's goals - removal of Mubarak - rather than our own (installing our own choice of leadership, etc). Many months later, we haven't seen any signs of civil war, or collapse of society or government, etc.
And all those brave Predators will have flown, some crashed even, in vain! what a disaster that will be!
Keep in mind - I'm not judging the policy by the end result here. Revolutions are tricky things, and we don't have the ability to dictate whether they will be successful - so that seems like a bad metric to base a judgment on. I'm judging the policy by whether it creates the conditions it was meant to create, at what cost, and the upside/downside potential if things don't go as planned. The execution thus far has helped create ideal conditions for Libya to be able to take the next step to building their own country. The cost here is basically zero. The upside is easy - a new ally in Africa. The downside is an unfriendly Libya, which is basically where we were 6 months ago.
Many in this forum can have good conversations without being a prick (Major for example) but you just can't help yourself.
Lighten up Franchise...the fact of the matter is that the cost-benefit analysis is incredibly different here and the fact that a few of you don't seem to be able to figure that out and keep drawing shaky Iraq parallels is something that i have accepted as a fact of life....maybe you'll even be "right" and can lord it over me someday..hello upside!
I'm not sure why you are calling me franchise, but I'm also not the one who started the comparison to Iraq. When people trumpet this as a success vs the clustermess that Iraq was, that was them drawing the parallels. I personally don't see how the situations are at all similar because unlike Egypt where you had a military institution that existed before Mubarak and would exist after him, and unlike Libya where you had a populace that was in a state of uprising, Iraq was a situation where the dictator had effectively crushed any dissidence. The idea of supporting a natural revolution wouldn't work in Iraq so I don't see why they are being compared to begin with. As for being right, I've already said I'm optimistic about Libya and gave Obama credit for it. So I guess if it blows up I won't be able to tell you I told you so, though that it is more along the lines of what you would do, not me.
the main difference between obama and bush is that obama sees every situation as its own unique situation. it kills me when people on the right and left criticize obama for not being clear enough on certain things. like what is his foreign policy. in the cold war era foreign policy was very clear even though each country was different. i'm not saying that was the correct way to approach foreign policy, communism bad, us good, but it was simpler or it was easy to say that's the main issue, even though of course there is always other situations to deal with. bush tried to apply this tatic to terrorism. not that simple or more accurately, its not black and white. we live in a fast changing world, the people leading the arab spring uprisings are young and much different from their parents. with the advent of the internet we truly in a global society, and the people on the other side of the planet for better or worse know us a lot better than they did just ten years ago and therefore the way the approach america's dominance in the world is much different. we're not some empire afar. we're all connected. just look at this web site when yao ming became a rocket. we're communicating on a daily basis with a society that was very closed just 15-20 years ago. that's not a long time in the grand scheme of things, one generation. i know i'm going to sound like a fan boy but obama was truly the president for this moment of the presidential candidates he contended with, mainly mccain and clinton. the old might makes right logic doesn't apply anymore.
Ditto what a lot of others have already said. The jury is still out on his success, and although he's had successes (OBL being the most obvious) many of his foreign policy decisions havent panned out the way we would have liked (Afghanistan is still far from stabilizing and is looking more and more like a lost cause). Here's an article outlining the opposite side of the first article:
