Acting like Gadhafi, you win

As rebel fighters flee under fire from a key town in eastern Libya, it’s
now apparent that the Obama administration will not forcefully remove
Gadhafi from power. Whew. Guess who’s resting easy in Tripoli! Sure, the
Obama administration wants the tyrant tossed. Why else would U.S.
warplanes be pounding his military? But dropping a hint and showing him
the door are two different things. While allied forces convening in
London today insist Gadhafi must go, they are clueless as to how they
can achieve this end goal.

Hello out there?

It is clear that President Obama has begun an illegal war — and if not illegal, then an unwise and unauthorized one. War on the cheap is not new, and has predictable outcomes. I’m intrigued by how some reporters have actually said counterfactual things like, “Allied air power prevented a bloodbath.” It isn’t possible to know what allied air power prevented, we can only observe what it did; how many civilians have died from our trying to protect them? Air power’s utility shrinks when the fighting goes urban, and none of us can possibly know what’s going on there. The airstrikes have been limited to the eastern part of Libya, shielding and creating a rebel redoubt without imperiling Gadhafi’s power base in western Libya.

Further, I’m baffled why this president is still hung up on “humanitarian” relief and that being part of the reason behind the mission. Did someone from the Nobel Committee phone the Oval Office in recent weeks and remind the president there is a return policy on his Peace Prize if he gets too far out there? Come on. The American people know what’s going on here. Gadhafi is running roughshod over the rebels, the United States needed to help. That meant killing as many pro-Gadhafi forces as we could find. To do anything else would send a message to other parts of the world that if you act like Mubarak in Egypt, you lose. If you act like Gadhafi, torturing and killing your own, you win.

Armstrong Williams is on Sirius/XM Power 169, 7-8 p.m. and 4-5 a.m., Monday through Friday. Become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/arightside, and follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/arightside.