Foreign Policys Tom Ricks og Washington Posts Bob Woodward snakket om Libya og President Obama på NBCs «Meet the Press» i går.
Ricks trakk opp noen historiske linjer:
«Last week the White House was talking about Srebrenica, the slaughter in former Yugoslavia. … As Hillary Clinton said…, if they’d just let that happen, this would’ve been an enormous blot on the presidency, worse than Srebrenica because the president would’ve been seen as partly encouraging it. The U.S. military is very unhappy with this. A lot of people in the military read my blog, and almost every single comment posted on the blog from military people has been questioning this. They really hate it. They’re scared by it. Especially when they hear terms like ‘limited war.’ That evokes Lyndon Johnson going into Vietnam. On the other hand, I would say this is very much in the American military tradition. What the American military has done through most of its history is this sort of gunboat action. This is really just Obama going back to an Eisenhower-like approach of not trying to get stuck in something, but try to affect it.»
Woodward vurderte Libyaaksjonen ut ifra Obamas kommende gjenvalgskampanje, og mener omveltningene i nord-Afrika kan komme til å bli like definerende for Obama som 11. september var for President George W. Bush:
«Libya ‘s a hard case. It’s one of these 51- 49 cases. So he’s sitting here thinking, ‘What do I have to worry about?’ And he’s thinking about next year when he’s running for re-election. He can’t get that out of his mind, of course. And I don’t think this is the reason he did it, but it’s in his mind. And he needs to be two things to run against a Republican. He needs to make sure the country ‘s safe, as safe as it’s been, no more attacks, he needs to be tough. And so he has essentially adopted the tough line for the moment. … Let’s go right to it, this is Obama ‘s 9/11. Not Libya, but the whole thing. The uprising, the upheaval, the revolution. If he manages it well, keeps the country safe, and is tough and determined and focused, this is a big win for him next year.»
Klokka 01:30 i natt norsk tid taler President Obama til nasjonen (og verden for øvrig) om situasjonen i Libya, og USAs deltakelse i den FN-sanksjonerte aksjonen. Du kan lese om talen og reaksjonene her på amerikanskpolitikk.no i morgen.
