I am very happy for America that Obama believes that our Libyan campaign is making "important progress." The president has placed the prestige of the United States behind this attack (even though he naively believes that no one will blame us if the whole thing goes south) and seeing America get a black eye in the perception of the world would not be a good thing.
I only have one question for our president: What is it we are "making important progress" toward?
Washington Post:
"We're succeeding in our mission," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address one week after the first foreign bombs and missiles hit the air defenses of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi.With Gaddafi's troops on the defensive and a no-fly zone firmly in place, the United States is prepared to transfer responsibility for military operations to NATO under the agreement approved by alliance members late Thursday, Obama said.
"This is how the international community should work: more nations, not just the United States, bearing the responsibility and cost of upholding peace and security," he said.
The president's remarks came amid reports of new successes by the Libya opposition, as rebel fighters seized the strategic town of Ajdabiya, driving out loyalist forces that had been pounded in recent days by coalition airstrikes. A Libyan government minister confirmed the retreat but also claimed that foreign bombs and missiles had killed civilians.
If the "mission" is to try and make NATO responsible for what is clearly a US-led military operation then we are indeed, making good progress toward that goal. What good it will do us is an entirely different question because we won't get any credit if things turn out halfway decently and we will get all the blame if, as is probable, Libya degenerates into the mother of all humanitarian crisis.
More to the point, Obama is talking about the vague, contradictory, and confusing goals of the mission. This begs another question; how can you measure "progress" when the endgame isn't even known? As far as Obama knows, we might be light years from making enough "progress" to end the mission.
But don't tell him that; he's on a roll.
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