Obama’s Libya Speech Answers Some Questions Raises Others
President Obama’s speech on Libya last week set forth the Obama doctrine for humanitarian military intervention. The United States will not stand by and watch military jets and helicopters unleashed on thousands who have no means to defend themselves. There is one crucial proviso however: The intervention must be cheap — at least in terms of the cost of American lives. No US ground troops will be deployed.
That formulation put Obama on the right side of the “Auschwitz test.” Under the Obama doctrine the United States would have evacuated desperate Jews attempting to escape Hitler on empty military transports returning to America and bombed the train tracks to Auschwitz.
The crucial proviso also answered the question of numerous critics: What distinguished Libya from Iraq? Obama first rose to prominence as a fierce critic of the Iraq War. Yet Saddam Hussein ruthlessly murdered more Iraqis than Muammar Gaddafi ever dreamed of — by some estimates up to 400000. Between 60000 and 70000 Iraqi children died of starvation annually while Saddam siphoned off Oil-for-Food money for his security apparatus and presidential palaces.
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