Oh, No! Now we've done it

Now we've done it. To save the Libyan "populace", we have taken out Moammar Qaddafi's air defenses, and now our anti-war President Obama has gotten us into a third war in the Islamic world, and not to help any proven or trustworthy ally. We are involved, and, win or lose, we will take the blame for whatever outcome happens. If ever there were conflicts which called for dusting off traditions of neutrality, they are the internal conflicts of the Dar-ul Islam.

Among the towns controlled by the Libyan rebels is Darna, which some time back was identified as a favorite Qaeda recruiting ground. So, we are now investing young American lives in saving mothers whose self-professed greatest joy was to have their sons blow themselves up in order to kill Americans. Indeed, as far as Uncle Cephas can tell, both sides in the Libyan conflict are self-professed haters of America and all that the USA stands for.

Obama has been criticized for being a "do-nothing" president in international affairs and for surrendering the American lead. Even the Statist and Democratic Socialist-leaning Washington Post has printed columns accusing him of being a "muddled puddle" on the "looming humanitarian catastrophe" in Libya (Richard Cohen comes to mind). Yet, perhaps, this WAS a point where Obama may have been wiser; and one one which he sacrificed a possibly sound intuition (rather than inaction due to muddle-headedness about foreign affairs?) for the sake of a dubious image as a president who supposedly exemplifies decisiveness and toughness as well as compassion.

Unlike the younger Bush, who had to respond to the worst attack on the USA since Pearl Harbor, Obama can point to no important national interest in joining the fight to depose Qaddafi--who, clownish though he may have been, seemed capable of learning a lesson or two following Reagan's air attacks in retaliation for the 1983 airline bombings; and who scrapped the development of nuclear weapons following the younger Bush's toppling of Sadam Hussein. As for oil, whoever might have won the Libyan civil war prior to the engagement of France and its allies would have known that the only thing Libya can do with its oil is sell it. As for the tranquility of Mediterranean shipping lanes, Libya has not been a pirate haven for some time.

Do not count on the gratitude of the Libyan rebels should they win with American and other allied help. Both Bosniaks and Kosovars have exported their national pathologies. Both have contributed to making Malmo, Sweden in to the rape capital of Europe. The Somali immigrant community--planted in response to the failure of the Somali state after the death of Said Barry, have given headaches from refusing cab service to people with seeing-eye dogs to demands for employers to respect times of Islamic prayer to open witch-hunting for homosexuals. Bosnia-Herzegovina has also become a back-door conduit for Islamicist militancy in Europe.

The US had no dog in the Libyan fight. It now has chosen to back the champion rabid flea-breeder against the mangy, rabid cur.