Obama's War

After 72 holes of golf during the week, some pick-up basketball games, and following the NCAA March Madness games on TV, Obama boarded Air Force One with his family for a nice vacation in Rio De Janeiro for Spring Break. And on the way, he had a press release issued saying that we were at war with Libya.  Make no mistake,  President Obama is proud of how he put together the Libyan operation. A model of international cooperation. All the necessary paperwork. Arab League backing. A Security Council resolution. Everything but a resolution from the Congress of the United States, a minor inconvenience for a citizen of the world. It's war as designed by an Ivy League professor and community activist.

So how is the war going?  The Arab League is already reversing itself, criticizing the use of force it had just authorized.  The secretary-general of the Arab League, is shocked to find that people are being killed by allied airstrikes.   Putin is already calling the Libya operation a medieval crusade. China is calling for a cease-fire, which would completely undermine the allied effort by leaving Gaddafi in power, his people at his mercy and the country is divided and condemned to an ongoing civil war.  Brazil joined China in that call for a cease-fire.  And how about NATO? Let's see. Britain wanted the operation to be led by NATO. France adamantly disagreed, citing Arab sensibilities. Germany wanted no part of anything, going so far as to pull four of its ships from NATO command in the Mediterranean. France and Germany walked out of a NATO meeting on Monday, while Norway had planes in ready to go but refused to let them fly until it had some idea of who is running the operation. And Turkey, whose prime minister four months ago proudly accepted the Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights, has been particularly resistant to the Libya operation from the beginning.

Yet Obama deems this process as a great diplomatic success that the League permitted others to fight and die to save fellow Arabs for whom 19 of 21 Arab states have yet to lift a finger.