Obama wants Qaddafi out of Libya, but what is he ready to do

 

 

President Obama says he wants Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi out.

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  Graphic: Map of Libya
  (Rich Clabaugh/Staff)

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But he’s also made it clear he’s not about to launch anything like George W. Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom, which rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein, or even like Ronald Reagan’s bombardment of Tripoli in 1982 – no matter how many senators and neoconservatives urge him toward more forceful action.

Mr. Obama, who is waiting for a list of options he ordered up (from the Pentagon in particular) last week, said Monday that there continues to be "unacceptable" violence in Libya, and that NATO allies are discussing a wide range of options, including potential military measures. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will join NATO defense ministers Thursday in Brussels to discuss international options in the crisis, including the possibility of imposing a no-fly zone.

RELATED: Can the US military help Libyan rebels? Four options.

But in the meantime, the president has given enough pointers to suggest how any eventual US intervention would be oriented: It would be international in scope – no go-it-alone action – and it is likely to be devised so that Africans and Muslims, and preferably Libyans themselves, were at the vanguard of any steps aimed at Qaddafi.

“If you had to sum up in a few words Obama’s vision of international intervention, it would be ‘multilateral if we can, unilateral only if we must, and the military should not be the first option,’ ” says Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington and a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration.

“He’s also distinguishing between a vital national interest, and what is nice to have, and it is hard to see how … we have a vital national interest in Libya,” Mr. Korb says.

Obama critics including John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations under President Bush, fault the president for at best offering some rhetoric on the situation – Obama’s statement Thursday, for example, that Qaddafi has lost legitimacy and must relinquish power – and for ceding leadership of the international effort against Qaddafi to the British, French, and even (gasp!) UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Wary of Al Qaeda narrative

Obama and administration officials have made it clear that one of the most positive aspects they see in the successful antiregime movements in the region – in Tunisia and Egypt – is that the populations in those countries made the changes happen themselves and in that sense “owned” them (Obama mentioned this publicly in his comments Thursday).

Another concern for the administration is that any international military intervention in Libya might be construed by the regional population as another Western (or worse, American) takeover of an oil-producing Muslim country – a view that would fit nicely into the Al Qaeda narrative.

A number of US senators, including John McCain (R) of Arizona, Joe Lieberman (I) of Connecticut, and John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts, continued to call over the weekend for either a no-fly zone or other direct action against Qaddafi. Senator Kerry has suggested the US could bomb Qaddafi-controlled airstrips and render them useless.