What’s Good for the Goose…

Posted by on . 6 comments.

…should be good for the international war criminal.

gadhafi.jpg

Muammar Gaddafi: The Saddam of his time.

Does anyone remember the 80s? No, not John Hughes movies and Van Halen albums, but Libya as The Rogue State and Gaddafi as The Evil Madman.

Libya has admitted responsibility for downing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland and has been proven to have supported terrorists all over the world.

Now Gaddafi is being lauded for agreeing to give up his weapons programs after 9 months of secret negotiations.

Secret negotiations. That sounds an awful lot like diplomacy. I don’t remember any of that pre-Iraq war. Why does Gaddafi rate secret negotiations? He’s killed more innocent Americans and Brits than Saddam, and Libya has been on the state-sponsors-of-terrorists list longer than anyone. Why is war the only option for Iraq, and saber-rattling the only option for North Korea and Iran, but Libya of all places gets to negotiate their way back into some kind of favored status?

Now I’m not advocating a cookie-cutter approach to foriegn policy. But we ignored the will of most of the world community and rushed to war when there was clearly time for negotiations.

What would a Republican opposition say to a Democratic President who negotiated with Gaddafi? I can only imagine.

What if a Democratic Senator said things like this about the current President?

Senator Richard Lugar:
“This is President Clinton‘s war, and when he falls flat on his face, that’s his problem.” [New York Times, 5/4/99]

It’s amazing what the Republicans have been able to get away with.

How about history lessons all around?

Comments

  1. Greedo says:
    December 23, 2003 at 6:41 am

    “We ignored the will of most of the world community…”

    What does that mean? We ignored Germany, France and Russia because they had billions of dollars locked up in oil interests? Tough shit, maybe they should have put their business interests aside and recognized a morally just action. Maybe they shouldn’t have been trading with an international dictator with terrorist connections.

    The coalition of the willing, let’s count (deep breath):
    Britain*
    Australia*
    Spain*
    Netherlands*
    Poland*
    Check Republic*
    Slovakia*
    Denmark*
    Albania*
    Romania*
    Bulgaria*
    Ukraine*
    Hungary
    Macedonia
    Portugal
    Italy
    Turkey
    Croatia
    Slovenia
    Iceland
    Japan
    South Korea
    Singapore
    Philippines
    Afghanistan
    Azerbaijan
    Uzbekistan
    Georgia
    Kuwait
    Eritrea
    Ethiopia
    Uganda
    Rwanda
    Angola
    El Salvador
    Colombia
    Nicaragua
    Costa Rica
    Dominican Republic
    Honduras
    Marshall Islands*
    Micronesia
    Solomon Islands
    Mongolia
    Palau*
    Tonga

    That’s 46 countries from all over the globe. I don’t know know you’re defining “international” or “unilateral,” but it seems a little EU-centric.

    (*states with personnel in Iraq as part of coalition)

  2. Greedo says:
    December 23, 2003 at 6:55 am

    The War in Iraq helped accomplish the diplomacy with Libya, as was expected. The Bush Administration’s intent was to show the world that the United States would not tolerate acts of terrorism, or evil dictatorships. Libya is the first diplomatic victory.

    Now about that history lesson:

    When you talk about policy reversals you HAVE to include the Dems. Who disagree with the Bush Administration’s current policies, but called for the same strong arm against Iraq in 1998, during Clinton’s Admin. Daschle and a host of Democrats recognized the evil of Saddam’s activities and wanted him out – but never followed through on it. They just lobbed some missiles at some factories and called it a night.

    Dems didn’t need any extra discussion time or diplomacy in 1998 for Operation Desert Fox. They certainly didn’t need a coalition, either. Bill Clinton warned that since the UN weapons inspector were gone from Iraq, Saddam would “rebuild its arsenal of weapons and delivery systems in months – I say again, in months – not years.”

    Clinton also argued regime change saying, “The hard fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of his region, the security of the world. The best way to end that threat once and for all is with the new Iraqi government, a government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a government that respects the rights of its people.”

    It’s amazing how easily Dems forget.

  3. matt says:
    December 23, 2003 at 8:09 am

    1)
    You’ve named some pretty impressive countries there. I’ll refrain from bashing our little buddies for now, except to say that some of them should have been invaded long ago, and if we cared about humanitarian crisis, we would have intervened in the mass killings in some of the others. The only countries that sent combat troops were England, Poland and Austrailia. The others were bribed.

    Even countries that came with us were dragged by their leaders. And the countries that didn’t come far outnumber the ones who did in both number and total population.

    Morally just? Surely you jest.

    Look, I was for the war because I assumed (incorrectly) that the administration wouldn’t think of making up or shading intel. Well, they did. Now there are as many reasons excuses for going to war as Dick Cheney has teeth.

    2)
    Has no Republican read Bob Woodward’s “Bush at War”? Is it because you all think the WaPo is some leftist commie rag?
    They used 9-11 to go to war with Iraq. They said it is plain English, and it is there in black and white. I’ll send you my copy if you don’t feel like paying for it.

    “Respect the rights of it’s people”? Our government doesn’t respect the rights of our people.

    War to stick to the party line. Did you know that the line “lobbed some missles” was focused-grouped before they dicided to go with it? It worked so well, they used it again with the Afgan training camp strikes.

    The dems aren’t blameless, but my point was that Republicans can get away with much more.

    Honestly, what if Clinton had negotiated with Libya?

  4. Greedo says:
    December 23, 2003 at 9:15 am

    I’m trying to imagine the situation of Clinton trying to work with Gaddafi and I come to the realization that there WOULD be a HUGE fuss from the Republicans and media. Why? Because Clinton had little credibility to his name. His ignorance on Rwanda, the debacle of Somalia and the reactionary (and heavily polled) bombings of Bosnia and Iraq didn’t really give Clinton a serious foreign policy.

    The reason Bush and the Republicans get away with so much is because they have the largest microphones. Clinton had the same advantages from 1992-1994 and even after the GOP won Congress in ’94 he had the best spin in the biz (remember the Gov shutdown in 1995? Who won that PR battle?).

    Washington hasn’t stepped away from diplomacy since Bush took office. It’s just used different tactics. With the help of Tony Blair, the US and Britain tried desperately to get the United Nations to sanction the much-needed liberation of Iraq. Both have kept pressure on Iran and North Korea without taking a focus group and bombing. Both have engaged diplomatically in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the use of force in Iraq and Afghanistan has made their diplomacy the most credible.

    Even the commie-lib rags (as you claim) like the NYT and WaPo gave some credit to the Bush leadership (along with LOTS of work from Blair’s Gov) that got us here.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/20/opinion/20SAT1.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17979-2003Dec20.html

    Add in the capture of Saddam and we may have reached a milestone in the war on terror.

    Hence the slow climb-down of the French, Germans and Russians over Iraqi debt. Hence Iran’s reluctant acceptance of nuke inspectors. Hence Gaddafi’s switcheroo.

    Here’s what it is, what Bush and Blair do is talk the talk but show strength when necessary – especially in the Arab region. Bush and Blair don’t have a crazed unilateralism agenda or a shoot-first diplomacy. It’s a pragmatic but determined combination – with the goal of keeping terror and WMDs in check.

    There’s a long, long way ahead and there’s no way to tell if we’ve turned a corner, but the tactics of the current administration are proving to work.

  5. matt says:
    December 23, 2003 at 9:37 am

    Comparing the microphone that Clinton had in 93-94 to Bush now is a joke. If we can’t agree on that, then all that is left is talking at eachother rather than to eachother. It’s a different world. Clinton had a give and take with the press that is sorely missing today. If I possesed verbal skills on par with the current president i might avoid the press as well, but the fact remains that he is not accountable.

    I never called the Times and the Post commies, i simply observed that that’s what the right says.

    I don’t understand why other countries should forgive debt because we went to war. That money is still owed, and if the roles were reversed (a hard mental excercise for most republicans, but i’ll bet you can pull it off) this administration would not leave companies like Bechtel and Haliburton holding the bag for billions of dollars. It’s just out of the realm of possibility.

    If Bush’s international policy works even in the medium term, I will be the first dem (maybe second after Zell Miller…) to say that it worked. But i am deeply skeptical that it will, when it is producing extremists faster than we can (as the president says) “rout them out”.

    Once again for those in the cheap seats: Saddam: a bad man, but not a terrorist. You have to be able to make distinctions like that especially in this space. I have no patience for people who insist on lumping people into categories to make their arguments easier. We aren’t any safer because a man who was living in a cellar is now in jail. In that respect (only) Howard Dean is right.

  6. a different matt says:
    December 23, 2003 at 3:30 pm

    When news reports about this Gaddafi deal come on the radio, the wife and I can’t help shouting “the Libyans!!” in our best Back to the Future Christopher Lloyd voice.