Politico's Ben Smith on Libya: How 'leading from behind' can work

[flpoljunkie]

Libya revolution: How 'leading from behind' can work


On Monday Obama described the U.S. as a 'friend and a partner' to the Libyan rebels.
Reuters

By BEN SMITH | 8/22/11 3:44 PM EDT

The fall of Tripoli is a foreign policy triumph for which President Barack Obama won’t hold a ticker-tape parade: no flight suit, no chest-thumping, no “Mission Accomplished” banner.

But the low-profile, inexpensive ouster of Col. Muammar Qadhafi marks an important milestone for the administration, foreign policy analysts say — perhaps the most concrete evidence that the more modest American foreign policy approach that has become Obama’s hallmark and perhaps his biggest area of contrast with his more interventionist predecessor might actually work.

One anonymous Obama adviser labeled the Libya strategy “leading from behind” in an interview with the New Yorker earlier this year, a slogan that has turned into a bludgeon for Republican critics to use to assail Obama’s leadership or lack thereof. But the scenes of celebration in Tripoli make it difficult — if not impossible, as supportive statements by Sens.John McCain and Lindsey Graham demonstrated Monday — to argue with Obama’s methods. And at a moment of fiscal obsession, Qadhafi was deposed on the cheap: the most recent figures, from earlier this summer, showed just $1.1 billion in American outlays on the mission, a virtual rounding error at the Pentagon and the equivalent of a few days of involvement in Afghanistan. U.S. warplanes flew just 16 percent of the aerial sorties over the country, according to figures compiled by the Atlantic Council of the United States.

more...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61849.html

[Ikonoklast]

1. Now we should help the new Libyan government if they ask for it.

Whatever type of government the Libyan people choose for themselves, we should be there to help them in any way they ask.

Or, if they tell us to get lost, do that, too.

[flpoljunkie]

2. Alright! A photo of Libyan women celebrating Qadhafi's reign of terror coming to an end.

From Politico