Lessons (Yet Un)Learned
March 25th, 2011 - 8:07 am
Eugene Robinson has a question:
So what the hell are we doing? I realize that President Obama and his advisers have answered this question many times, but I feel it’s necessary to keep asking until the answers begin to make sense.
Charles Krauthammer has an answer:
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.
Starting to understand now, Eugene? We’ve been trying to tell you this stuff for three years now.
As Krauthammer has explained it, I suspect Eugene can now rest easy.
Teddy Roosevelt answered this question (and many others) more than 100 years ago:
“The question must not be merely, Is there to be peace or war? The question must be, Is the right to prevail?”
“War is a dreadful thing, and unjust war is a crime against humanity. But it is such a crime because it is unjust, not because it is war.”
“[T]he man who says that he does not care to be a citizen of any one country, because he is a citizen of the world, is in very fact usually an exceedingly undesirable citizen of whatever corner of the world he happens at the moment to be in.”
As usual, Barry is asking all the wrong questions, checking all the wrong boxes on the “Should We Go to War?” checklist, and behaving as a citizen of the world, not the president of the United States of America.
…and couldn’t care less how it turns out.
One
Big-
Ass
Mistake,
America