State Senator Obama Believes Libyan War Is Dumb and Rash

In 2002 then Illinois State Senator Obama claimed that using force to remove a brutal dictator was a “dumb war.” Obama was of course speaking of Bush’s plan to remove Saddam Hussein which was being debated back in 2002. Obama said the following:

Now, let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him….

I don’t oppose all wars.  … What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

The speech is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it’s clear that Obama didn’t start speaking in a condescending way when he ran for President. He’s been talking like that his whole life. ‘Now let me be clear’ is one of Obama’s trademark condescending terms.  But beyond that then State Senator Obama makes several arguments against President Obama’s actions in Libya. Libya is a rash war, it isn’t well thought out. It doesn’t have clear goals or purpose. Rather than Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz playing weekend warrior (which is insulting and untrue in the extreme) we have Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power stamping their feet for war. Not to mention George Soros.

Libya is a grossly rash war. Al Qaeda has swooped into Libya and is now infiltrating the rebels. The very rebels the administration debates arming. The fact that al Qaeda is heading to Libya to fight against Gaddafi should come as no surprise to anyone with a little knowledge about the history of Gaddafi. In 2003 Gaddafi made peace with the United States by providing the Bush administration with information about al Qaeda. That information has turned out to be very useful. Gaddafi hates al Qaeda and they certainly hate him. So it should be no surprise that al Qaeda is fighting with the rebels against Gaddafi.

The fact that al Qaeda is willing to fight Gaddafi calls into question why we’re aiding the rebels. Do we really want a nation such as Libya to fall into the hands of terrorists like al Qaeda? I understand that Gaddafi is a brutal dictator and himself a terrorist. But if Obama thinks he’s such a bad guy, why did he become the first American President to meet with him in 2009? Gaddafi didn’t suddenly become a bad guy since 2009.

Libya is a rash war with no real American purpose. It is not our duty to save every nation from brutal dictators. If it is, Libya surely should not be the only nation we bomb. We ought to start bombing North Korea, Sudan, Cuba, Venezuela and maybe we should go bomb China as well. The argument that it is our duty or the world’s duty to fight brutal dictators is absurd and impossible. Especially so when we likely cannot even agree on who the brutal dictators are in the world.

The Obama administration is supporting Libyan rebels, some of which have al Qaeda ties. Others have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization that the Obama administration has supported in Egypt and elsewhere. All of the revolutions taking place in the middle east, largely supported by the administration except oddly in Iran, are aiding al Qaeda. We already know they’re aiding the terrorists who want to destroy Israel in the Muslim Brotherhood.

As Americans we have to ask ourselves why Obama is supporting these people? Why is he making conditions for Muslim terrorists easier? Is this the sort of foreign policy we want our nation to have? We’re talking about people who believe it is ok to murder women who have been raped. We’re talking about people who believe in murdering people who leave the Muslim faith. We’re talking about people who believe in oppressing women and who rejoice when their children die as human suicide bombs. Are these the people we want to support in the middle east? Because that’s who Obama appears to be supporting. The President has bragged about passing off leadership in the Libyan war to NATO, yet in Turkey, a NATO member, the Photo of the Year was of a bloodied Israeli soldier. Do we really want NATO running our wars?

The war in Libya was not well thought out. President Obama rushed to war at the behest of Samantha Power who believes in a Soros doctrine that demands the world protect everyone from dictators he doesn’t like and Hillary Clinton who was tired of being badgered by the British and French. The President hasn’t clearly laid out for us who we’re actually supporting. I dare say if the American people knew we might start arming al Qaeda support for the war and this President would drop substantially.