Parsing Obama on Libya

OK, I think I finally understand where the White House is on Libya. One could be forgiven for being — as many are — confused about what the aims of the Libyan intervention are. Do we aim to overthrow Qaddafi? Help the rebels directly? Fly our planes aimlessly? Believe it or not, the White House kind of knows what it’s doing — for now, at least.

The reason there’s so much confusion is because the White House has been reactive to the Libyan situation from the beginning. This was a useful approach in Tunisia and Egypt, when things were evolving rather peacefully. Libya soon degenerated into chaos, however, and the White House seemed to be placed their bets on a rebel victory against Qaddafi.

Three or four weeks ago, that didn’t look so crazy. The rebels had taken over significant parts of the country and were even heading to Tripoli. It was then that President Obama and Secretary Clinton were talking about how “Qaddafi must go.” At the time, it was a low-risk and high-gain position to take.

But then the tide turned and Qaddafi had the rebels backed up to their last big stronghold, Benghazi. At that point, the international community was presented with a different role to play if it wanted to help. It went from assisting Qaddafi’s overthrow to preventing a wholesale slaughter of the city of Benghazi. The changing circumstances and Obama’s insistence on having a broad international coalition meant that the end result was a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the protection of civilians, but not regime change.

Obama officials seem to realize they trapped themselves a little by saying Qaddafi’s time was up. Once things changed, people began to think that regime change was American policy. As best I can see, that’s not the case. That makes this quote seem like it’s representative of the administration’s policy:

“We still think that Gadhafi has lost his legitimacy and must go, but this military mission is not about regime change. I would not conflate the two,” an Obama administration official said. The U.S. mission could expand, officials said, if Col. Gadhafi uses unconventional weapons at home or terrorism abroad.

Indeed, having said that Qaddafi has lost his legitimacy, why would they take it back? He hasn’t done anything to win it back, to say the least. The administration is therefore stuck with what it wishes would happen, but is not likely to happen — namely, a peaceful transfer of power in Libya. There are still a legitimate number of questions about what our involvement should be and how it should be arranged, and the White House complicated matters by delaying its actions. However, let us be clear that regime change is not U.S. policy at this stage.