Governor Mitt Romney has released a critique of Obama’s hash-up in Libya:
The Corner (National Review):
Mission Muddle in Libya (4/21/11)
By Mitt RomneyIn a nationally-televised speech on March 28, President Obama defined the American military mission in Libya as humanitarian: We would enforce a no-fly zone to prevent Libyan forces from bombing civilians. I support that specific, limited mission. Last week, the president wrote in an op-ed with his British and French counterparts that “to succeed, Qaddafi must go and go for good.”
It is apparent that our military is engaged in much more than enforcing a no-fly zone. What we are watching in real time is another example of mission creep and mission muddle. In an op-ed in today’s Boston Herald, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton rightly notes that Obama has set himself up for “massive strategic failure” by demanding Qaddafi’s ouster “while restricting military force to the limited objective of protecting civilians.”
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Full statement here
Ambassador Bolton’s op-ed:
Opponents of the Vietnam War — that seemingly endless, inconclusive, increasingly unpopular and ever-more-deadly and costly conflict — called it a “quagmire.” They said it was unwinnable and should never have been fought, and that America must avoid similar future wars. Today, our real risk of “quagmire” is Libya.
Our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president has gotten things badly wrong. By demanding Moammar Gadhafi’s ouster while restricting U.S. military force to the more limited objective of protecting civilians, Barack Obama has set himself up for massive strategic failure.
Yet America is now committed. Gadhafi won’t care that he’s being bombed for “humanitarian” rather than “regime change” reasons; once able, he’ll likely return to international terrorism, as he has already threatened. He may also resume his quest for nuclear weapons, and this time we’ll have no hope of negotiating him out of it as we did in 2003-04.
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Read more here.
► Jayde Wyatt
