'Multilateral Retardation'

Stacy McCain writes, “The best way to defeat a hostile coalition, as Winston Churchill pointed out in The World Crisis, is to attack its weakest member:”

What slapped me upside the head in Obama’s press conference yesterday was his insistence that an “international consensus” justified the attacks on Libya, and that multilateralism was a “core principle” of his foreign policy. Nothing could be more harmful, more calculated to infringe U.S. sovereignty. This undermines the proper goal of foreign policy, namely the pursuit of our national interest.

If hostile foreign powers know that the U.S. cannot go to war without an “international consensus,” then they will seek to influence or intimidate potential allies. By denying America a “consensus,” they will thereby render the U.S. military impotent, so that our interests overseas (whatever those interests may be) are at the mercy of any aggressor.

The best way to defeat a hostile coalition, as Winston Churchill pointed out in The World Crisis, is to attack its weakest member. And this is exactly how America’s enemies operate when seeking to deprive us of the “international consensus” that liberals insist is necessary for the United States to take military action. Ace of Spades points this out:

My main problem with “multilateral efforts” is that what these are always all about is France. What’s the major difference between Bush’s Coalition and Obama’s? France. France was the big hold-out in the War in Iraq. They’re on board with this one.
So while the liberal media dances in joy over this terrific new coalition, they’re really just dancing that France is on board.
Further, they get the active agent and passive object reversed — Obama did not persuade France to join the coalition. France persuaded Obama.

Read the rest of that and think about it. If France wanted to attack Moammar Qaddafi, would we have objected? I think not. But instead of fighting the Franco-Libyan War of 2011, the French recruit the U.S. to bear the heaviest burden of the war — and Obama can’t even be bothered to ask permission of Congress!

Oh, and speaking of Churchill, it’s good thing we have a far-healthier president leading being pulled along by the coalition than that cigar-smoking, brandy and port tippling, red meat-eating fellow who helped win World War II — just ask MSNBC.