Libya: another uninspiring victory for no-drama Obama

Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham can’t help but enthuse about the fall of Tripoli. It’s increasingly dangerous to be an interventionist in the Republican Party. But, it’s less dangerous to be one when liberators are seen closing in on a tyrant.

They can stand with NATO and freedom fighters in Libya. But acknowledging Barack Obama’s un-dramatic staying power was too much to swallow:

“This achievement was made possible first and foremost by the struggle and sacrifice of countless Libyans, whose courage and perseverance we applaud. We also commend our British, French, and other allies, as well as our Arab partners, especially Qatar and the UAE, for their leadership in this conflict. Americans can be proud of the role our country has played in helping to defeat Qaddafi, but we regret that this success was so long in coming due to the failure of the United States to employ the full weight of our airpower.”

Click on: http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=ef07da62-0100-107e-d7ac-08531bd793e5

It’s that damnable balanced approach of Obama's again.

Instead of backing French and British leadership in an intervention they initiated, Obama should have invited them to stand aside after a couple of weeks and taken charge of a blatant over-reach of the mission’s UN mandate. Americans could have dropped all the bombs, taken all the risks, and been accused alone for hundreds of further civilian casualties. Instead of Kaddafi railing against “Christian” and NATO invaders he could have concentrated on “US imperialists.”

McCain and Graham should be relieved that the Libya campaign is coming to a successful conclusion. They were becoming increasingly isolated in a Party that is increasingly isolationist. (House Republicans had already voted to cut off funding and the grass roots had already started talking about impeaching Obama over abusing his executive authority.)

 An Obama failure on Libya would have been—as an Obama failure on the debt-ceiling showdown would have been—a dangerous setback for moderates in the Republican Party.

It’s mean-spirited to begrudge the President any place in the immanent success of the Libya operation—a success that will be achieved without extravagant sacrifice and with careful attention to America’s broader interests.

The debt-ceiling debate: a sweet spot for Anti-Americanism

There’s a sweet spot in every American crisis when prophets of America’s collapse weigh in.

Her detractors were freer to express their disdain before America became a great power. James M. McPherson’s July review in the New York Review of Books provides a timely reminder that in Europe’s exclusive parlours America’s political union has always been seen as an insolent experiment.  Referring to influential opinion in Great Britain during the darkest days of the American Civil War, he writes:

“On the whole, those most likely to express pro-Confederate or anti-American sentiments tended to be conservatives and members of the aristocracy or gentry. The Earl of Shrewsbury looked upon “the trial of Democracy and its failure” in America with pleasure. “I believe that the dissolution of the Union is inevitable, and that men before me will live to see an aristocracy established in America.”¹ The voice of the British establishment, The Times, considered the downfall of “the American colossus” a good “riddance of a nightmare…. Excepting a few gentlemen of republican tendencies, we all expect, we nearly all wish, success to the Confederate cause.”²

Click on: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jul/14/what-drove-terrible-war/

America, today, is seen by a new generation of European intellectuals as the world’s indispensible incompetent.

America’s most wealthy friends, whether evolving constitutional monarchies like Canada and Great Britain or serial republics like France and Germany, can’t imagine life without her. Yet, with little hope of making matters better, they level the sweeping, seemingly clinical diagnosis that America’s political system is “dysfunctional.”

Canada’s leading liberal daily The Toronto Star asks whether US politicians are “really prepared to burn down the house in a bitter ideological tussle over the role, size and cost of government?”

Click on: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jul/14/what-drove-terrible-war/

Political suicide in freedom-loving America is conceivable. And, of course, before every crisis is resolved there is a moment when both happier times and catastrophe can be anticipated. However, the question itself is cheap.

US democracy has been engaged in an ideological “tussle” over the role and size of its federal government since 1776. Running alongside that ongoing argument, Americans have done politics well enough to create the most successful transcontinental federation in the world and build a federal government strong enough to finance the West’s side in two world wars and the Cold War, and drive the emergence of the modern global economy that is now changing America as well as every other privileged economy in the world.

David Gordon Smith sums up German editorial opinion on the debt-ceiling crisis with the plaintive headline “The US Is Holding the Whole World Hostage.” Center-left Suddeutsche Zeitung tells Congress to “think carefully about what it’s doing.” The conservative Die Welt is less restrained: “Democrats and Republicans are so hopelessly embroiled in a religious war that compromise and pragmatism are just dreams from a far-off era of reason. . . .” The mass-circulation Bild tries to be condescending complaining that America is exhibiting the “worst kind of absurd theatrics.”

Running through the piece is the assumption that Americans can’t talk about ideas without becoming extreme, that religiosity and the Tea Party drive American politics.

Click on: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,774666,00.html

It’s tempting simply to say to Germany: If you’re finally sure enough of your democracy to deprecate America’s, then why not finally take on your own defence and carry your weight in the NATO alliance? Besides, would you rather have a German skinhead over an American Tea Partier as a neighbor?

Unfortunately, a constructive reply—including, steady economic growth—probably won’t dampen anti-American sentiment for long. The politics of the debt-ceiling crisis circles around the desperate desire of both of America’s great national parties to re-capture the confidence of pragmatic, mainstream opinion. Of course, that center of America is the very philistine, short-sighted, complacent America that her detractors love to hate.

Hard times and European solidarity

Has the European Union’s evolution as a federation reached its limits? Will nationalism increasingly limit power-sharing with Brussels? Can we assume on this side of the Atlantic that future political challenges will all be on the Pacific? Recent events suggest otherwise. Indeed, it looks like European federalism may be outsmarting us.

Canada was defeated for a temporary seat on the Security Council of the United Nations because individual members of the European Union decided it was in their interests to support one of their own, rather than a valued friend. The idea that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Zarkozy were out to teach Stephen Harper, an upstart Canadian conservative, a lesson in humility and political correctness is silly. Clearly, European leadership has decided that European political solidarity comes first. Protecting the Union—its common market and its common currency—trumps its individual external ambitions, including the credibility of the NATO alliance.

There are numerous other indications that the recession is not undoing existing arrangements, but rather leading to further cooperation in sensitive areas. Across Europe, social tensions are rising; the outsider, whether a Muslim or someone from somewhere else who is looking for a job, is feeling less welcome. However, the Schengen Agreement that now holds twenty-five countries—400 million Europeans—together in one borderless security zone is firmly intact. France and Britain are actively negotiating a defence agreement that could lead to pooling resources and cooperation on everything from procurement to sharing France’s nuclear-warhead-simulation-testing facilities. Last weekend, the European members of the G-20 were finally able to agree among themselves to reduce their over-representation on the board of the International Monetary Fund.

There is more muscle behind these concerted actions than bureaucratic inertia and a swelling feeling of being European. Germany and France and the other more affluent northern partners have an immense stake in maintaining the Euro currency and an open market of some 500 million people. When unity will be served, we shouldn’t be surprised if they undertake further restraints on their freedom to act as sovereign states. If we do nothing to alter the status quo on this continent, we’ll likely fall further behind as an integrated economic competitor.