The world is rightly focusing on events in Libya and maybe in a few days, and more dissident deaths later, we’ll even start caring about the possibility of Syria’s tyrannical masters employing mass murder in order to stay in power. But whatever the outcome of the Arab Spring turns out to be, another conflict is looming just over the horizon: the next confrontation between the Obama administration and Israel.

Last week’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem and the increase in missile attacks on southern Israel from Gaza barely registered as U.S. forces took part in the Libya intervention. But whether or not this leads eventually to another war with Hamas or that other troublemaking Iranian ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, the real question hanging over the region is what the United States will do in the coming months. Read More

In a recent story in the New York Times, we read this:

Mr. Obama’s administration, however, has clearly tried to avoid the debate over a strategy beyond that by shifting the burden of enforcing the United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing force on to France, Britain and other allies, including Arab nations like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which on Thursday said that it would contribute warplanes to the effort. In other words, the American exit strategy is not necessarily the coalition’s exit strategy.

“We didn’t want to get sucked into an operation with uncertainty at the end,” the senior administration official said. “In some ways, how it turns out is not on our shoulders.”

This is a cast of mind that is almost alien to America’s conception of itself. It also happens to border on being criminally negligent.

No nation, but especially the United States, should enter a war and immediately abdicate responsibility for its outcome to others. If that is the mindset of the president and his administration, then it is better never to have engaged in the conflict in the first place. Whether the Obama administration wants to accept responsibility or not, how Libya turns out does rest on our shoulders. Not alone and not completely; but we certainly share the burden and the responsibility for the outcome of events.

Just as a man can’t get a woman “sort of” pregnant, the United States can’t engage in a “sort of” war in which we duck responsibility for its denouement.

One might argue that a senior administration official who holds such a view as the one expressed to the Times should be fired. The layers of ineptness that we’re seeing from the Obama administration on Libya (and not just Libya) is striking. But that ineptness is being matched by a staggering moral indifference and dereliction of duty.

Someone else always wants the mantle of leadership disavowed by the self-effacing great power. In the case of the intervention in Libya, the NATO ally now showing the greatest energy in that regard is Turkey. The Recep Tayyip Erdogan government spent most of March opposing foreign intervention in Libya. On Thursday, however, the Turkish assembly voted in a closed-door session to join the NATO effort there, and Erdogan has now jumped in with both feet.

Most NATO participants are sending one or two warships to enforce the naval embargo of Libya; Turkey is sending four frigates, a supply ship, and a submarine. Turkey has reversed course on the use of its airfields to support NATO operations in Libya, offering the major base at Izmir as a command center for the air forces. (A base in Italy would make more sense, so I’m skeptical about this offer being accepted.) Read More

Here is an excerpt from Herman Cain, who was asked if he would be comfortable appointing a Muslim either in his cabinet or as a federal judge. His answer:

No, I would not. And here’s why. There is this creeping attempt, there is this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government. It does not belong in our government. This is what happened in Europe. And little by little, to try and be politically correct, they made this little change, they made this little change. And now they’ve got a social problem that they don’t know what to do with hardly.

This is an ugly and undiluted form of bigotry. Read More

There are certain patterns emerging from President Obama’s response to the Arab uprisings that may form the foundation of a broader foreign policy doctrine. His speech tonight on Libya will give us some more clues, but here are some of his positions so far:

National security interests and philosophical values alone do not legitimize U.S. military action. Approval from multilateral institutions is key, and the U.S. can’t justly go to war without it. The intervention in Libya was a prime example – President Obama bypassed the Congressional authorization process and instead devoted his energy to amassing support from the UN Security Council and the Arab League. Whether this was due to time constraints or Obama’s unwillingness to defend the moral or strategic necessity of the war to Congress, it indicates that approval from the international community is a non-negotiable prerequisite for going to war. Read More

In an editorial for the Weekly Standard, I recapitulate the gruesome human rights record of Muammar Qaddafi and conclude it this way:

The United States, having gone to war against the Libyan regime, now has to decide whether or not to allow Qaddafi to stay in power. Acquiescing to Qaddafi’s continued rule in Tripoli not only would be a disgrace, but a moral and strategic error of enormous consequence. The only decent outcome that can emerge from Operation Odyssey Dawn is to see Qaddafi gone. A person of unusual cruelty, the Libyan tyrant has built a grotesque and soul-destroying regime. Four decades-plus in power have been more than enough. It is time for the Butcher of Tripoli to leave the stage.

Whether that exit is accomplished by means of exile or cruise missile or hangman’s noose is irrelevant. In this instance justice may be delayed. But it need not be denied.

You can read the whole thing here.

Every so often the ugly secret at the heart of modern-day environmentalism–a profound misanthropy–peeks out for all to see. In yesterday’s New York Times, for instance there was an article on wildflowers that used to bloom in New York City but are now extirpated there. None of them are extinct, just no longer found in one of the most densely populated cities in the world (17,300  per square mile). What a surprise. The article notes that while one-eighth of the city is reserved for forests, marshes and meadows, which strikes me as a very generous proportion indeed, only 778 of the 1357 native plant species once recorded there remain.

When you stand in the middle of Times Square, it is easy  to forget that the colonists settled in New York City because of its bounty of  natural resources. Before there were skyscrapers and restaurants, the city’s  wealth was measured in flora and fauna. Early Dutch sailors were disoriented  by the scent of wildflowers wafting out to sea from Manhattan. Read More

The New York Times’s Paul Krugman has won a Nobel Prize for Economics but anyone reading his column today, which alleges that liberals are being persecuted on American college campuses, must think that his next award will be for science fiction. Krugman writes about William Cronon, a liberal professor at the University of Wisconsin who is getting some heat from people who didn’t care for his using his academic perch as a launching point for partisan invective at his state’s Republican governor. Some think that Cronon, a state employee, ought to be called to account for possibly conducting partisan political activity while being paid by the state, a violation of law in Wisconsin as well as most other places. Republicans are using the state’s Open Records Law to try and find out whether he used his university email to send out an op-ed published by the Times last week.

Are the Republicans nit-picking about Cronon’s use of his e-mail account? Sure. But none of us should be in any doubt as to whether the left would give the same treatment to a right-winger who attacked Democrats in the same manner as Cronon did. Liberals who have used freedom of information laws whenever it served their interests should not be crying foul over the Republicans doing so. Read More

Just two days after controversial anti-Israel journalist Nir Rosen announced he was starting a fellowship at the London School of Economics, a spokesperson for the school says that he has resigned: ”Nir Rosen today resigned his temporary visiting fellowship at LSE – which was an unpaid position. LSE had already made clear it condemned the offensive comments he made about Lara Logan and others.”

After the awful press LSE has been getting for allowing its professors to basically act as PR reps for the Qaddafi regime, it’s a surprise that it would even make this contentious hire in the first place – especially since it’s barely been a month since Rosen was booted from NYU for his comments about CBS reporter Lara Logan. Considering Rosen’s praise of Hezbollah, it wouldn’t be overly shocking if a school like University of Johannesburg hired him, but what was LSE thinking?

Nadia Schadlow has a fine essay at Foreign Policy which points out that many of the NGOs on which the U.S. and its allies are relying to contribute to the “Build” phase of the counterinsurgency strategy proclaim that they refuse to take sides in the conflict. It’s not just the Red Cross that believes it is “essential to provide neutral and impartial assistance to all populations.” Most of the others follow suit. Many NGOs go beyond simply providing aid to all civilians, and – in the words of the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office – argue that NGOs have “nothing to gain and much to lose” by interacting with ISAF, which in their view only wants to “[leverage] advantage from [NGO] activities.” This is not the neutralism of helping the poor, no matter who they be: it is political neutrality.

Schadlow does an excellent job of skewering the contradictions inherent in this attitude. The U.S. itself accepts the NGOs’ self-defined role, but simultaneously relies on developing relations with the local population. It does not want to create a neutral environment in which everyone can function: it wants to squeeze the Taliban out. They, in turn, benefit from the creation of so-called neutral spaces, where they can divert resources provided by NGOs to advance their own cause as they intimidate the population. That is why, as Schadlow points out, insurgents target ISAF-built schools but not NGO-built ones. The supposed neutrality of the NGOs thus has a profoundly un-neutral outcome. With the U.S. relying ever more on building Afghan capacity, our reliance on NGOs who refuse to take sides makes less and less sense. Our military has rebuilt its counter-insurgency capacity: it’s too bad, Schadlow concludes, that our NGOs have not undertaken a similar reassessment. Read More

Rudy Giuliani’s potential 2012 campaign may be doomed before it begins. In the New Hampshire Union Leader, the state’s former GOP chairman Fergus Cullen gives a harsh review of Rudy Giuliani’s performance there in 2008:

Giuliani’s was the Potemkin village of presidential campaigns: What looked like a campaign was just a facade for the cameras and national media. It was artifice, disrespectful of the process and the voters. Perhaps this is what campaigns in New York City are, where everything plays out on TV and in the tabloids, where no grassroots grow in the concrete jungle.

According to Cullen, the former New York City mayor arrived late to his only town hall meeting in the state, and then “took just four questions. Seeking softballs, he called on a child and a high schooler, filibustering to avoid questions from actual voters. It was awful.”

The ill will may be personal, though. Cullen recalls how the former mayor never remembered his name when he met him at campaign events. “I must have met Rudy Giuliani a half-dozen times…[but] he gave no indication of recognizing me,” he wrote. Of course, as a presidential candidate, having an amiable relationship with the New Hampshire party is pretty important, and this is a sign that there were probably other dysfunctions within the Giuliani campaign.

Cullen ends his column bluntly: “You had your chance, and much as we respect your resume, we’re just not interested in going out again.”

But despite the criticism, Giuliani has recently been reaching out to GOP leaders in New Hampshire, possibly in preparation for another run. The former mayor was in New Hampshire last week to give a speech, where he conceded that he should have been more focused on the state, and suggested that things would be different if he decides to run again.

On ABC’s “This Week,” host Jake Tapper asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in the context of the Libya operation, “Why not go to Congress?”

“Well, we would welcome congressional support,” Clinton said, “but I don’t think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama was speaking of several years ago.”

Secretary Clinton’s implication, of course, is that Iraq was a “unilateral action,” as opposed to what President Obama is doing in Libya.

This assertion is false on multiple levels. Let’s start by citing Josh Rogin in Foreign Policy, who referenced a chart listing all the countries that contributed at least some military assets to the five major military operations in which the United States participated in a coalition during the last 20 years: the 1991 Gulf War (32 countries participating), the 1995 Bosnia mission (24 countries), the 1999 Kosovo mission (19 countries), the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan (48 countries), and the 2003 invasion of Iraq (40 countries), at the height of the size of each coalition. “As of today,” Rogin writes, “only 15 countries, including the United States, have committed to providing a military contribution to the Libya war.” Read More

Turks have long complained that their prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is intolerant of criticism. Almost 70 Turkish journalists languish in prison; Turkey now ranks near the bottom of the world in media freedom, hovering right around Russia and below even Venezuela whose leader’s tactic of confiscating opposition media Erdogan now copies.

Last week, freedom in Turkey took another hit when Turkish police staged a raid on both a newspaper office and publisher to confiscate and destroy a book manuscript which was reputed both to be critical of Prime Minister Erdogan’s government and provide evidence that the Turkish police force had been infiltrated by Islamist cult leader Fethullah Gulen. The raid was illegal under Turkish law, but Erdogan sees himself as above the law. Turks have no recourse: With the Islamist takeover of Turkey’s courts, they have nowhere to turn. A bold Turkish columnist writes:

While democracy is advancing in Turkey, 68 journalists – at least for now – are imprisoned with hundreds more being prosecuted due to their journalistic activities. This country, which wishes to join the European Union one day in the future, ranks 138th in the Reporters Sans Frontiers index of countries in terms of free media.

While democracy is advancing in Turkey, alongside these journalists, hundreds of people from academia, civil society and the business world have been kept in prisons for years without any conviction. All are counted as members of a never officially recognized terror organization called Ergenekon and have already lost for their hopes of a fair prosecution. The court, with the unique approach of “all persons are guilty under proven innocent,” does not hesitate to reject appeals for their releases on the conditions of trial without arrest.

Meanwhile, Cengiz Candar, a Turkish columnist firmly in Erdogan’s pocket, has taken umbrage at my Contentions post from earlier this month. Reflecting the Turkish mindset which has transformed Turkey from a democracy to a dictatorship, Candar suggested that my criticism was evidence that I am a coup plotter, and that I belong in prison. Well, Mr. Candar, we have never met and so I do not know you. But I stand by my convictions. If I am invited to a conference in Turkey, I am more than happy to speak publicly about Turkish-American relations, or about the ruling party’s evisceration of Turkey’s democracy. I do not fear you or your prime minister’s fevered imagination, and dare you to arrest me for my analysis. In December, I called Iraqi Kurdish dictator Masud Barzani’s bluff to arrest me and, despite a Kurdish intelligence officer sitting in the front row, found out that Barzani was all bluster, no bite. It is time to stand up to Erdogan’s bullying and if Erdogan wants to create an international incident by arresting a foreign analyst, let’s see him do it.

As the entire world watches the Arab Spring with a mixture of hope and fear, it is sobering to take note of the struggles that emerging democracies must endure. I have just come from one such place: the Kyrgyz Republic.

This tiny Central Asian state, with a population of fewer than six million people, attained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Its first president was Askar Akayev, a Soviet scientist who praised Adam Smith and was seen as a liberal.  But as the years progressed Akayev developed a taste for power and an aptitude for rigging elections. In 2005 Akayev was brought down in massive demonstrations as part of what became known as the Tulip Revolution. Hopes were raised that at least genuine democracy was taking root—and then just as quickly dashed. Read More

The U.S. has ceded control of the Libyan protection mission to NATO, which allows President Obama to address the American people while avoiding all of that nasty, rah-rah, pro-war rhetoric of his predecessor. After all, it wouldn’t look right for the Peace Prize-winning, anti-war movement darling to give one of his characteristic soaring speeches while the U.S. was leading missiles attacks on Libya.

So now America’s leadership of the mission is over – maybe.

It’s still not completely clear how the U.S. role in Libya will change with NATO  in charge. And there’s no doubt that we will still have deep involvement. As Ace of Spades notes, whoever is appointed to command the mission “will be working under the military head of NATO who happens to be…an American admiral.”

U.S. planes also account for over half of the aircraft involved in the mission. Hillary Clinton has said that there will be a significant reduction in U.S. planes, but will NATO allies really be able to pony up enough replacements?

There are benefits to NATO taking over, even if it’s just for appearances. And it certainly has to be a relief for Obama politically. But it also gives us another glimpse of the president’s discomfort with any show of American military power abroad.