A confession: I rather like Hillary Clinton. She’s always seemed a shrewd, talented and ambitious individual, morally no better or worse than most public figures. I think she’s done, on balance, a creditable job as President Obama’s secretary of state. But last week Clinton said something truly disturbing:
The inference is clear and repellent: that those who oppose the administration’s Libyan policy support Gaddafi.
This is, of course, simply false as a matter of logic. It is possible to oppose our intervention on any number of grounds that having nothing whatsoever to do with being on “Gaddafi’s side.” One can argue that the costs to the United States – in terms, say, of strategic over-reach – outweigh the benefits, however substantial, to the Libyan people. One can even argue that – by prolonging a civil war – we are actually increasing casualties among the civilians we purport to defend. These arguments may be good or bad. But they surely do not put their promoters into Gaddafi’s camp.
The spuriousness of Secretary Clinton’s reasoning becomes even clearer if we go back in time and ask a few questions. Was President Truman on the side of the communists when he refused to use nuclear weapons against China during the Korean War? Was President Reagan on the side of terrorists when he withdrew U.S. Marines from Lebanon in 1984? Or, to move even closer to home, is the Obama administration itself on the side of Gaddafi? After all, Presdient Obama has declared, repeatedly, that the United States will not deploy ground troops in Libya. Yet such troops would almost certainly hasten the downfall of Gaddafi’s regime.
But Clinton’s statement is more than logically incoherent. It is cheap. By smearing those opposed to the Libyan intervention as being “on Gaddafi’s side,” the Obama administration is clearly seeking to shut down debate. We have been down this path before. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, hawks pilloried those opposed to war as “objectively pro-Saddam.” Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan were particularly enthusiastic in maligning doves. Sullivan, to his credit, later recanted, though not until the damage was done. Hitchens – who famously called the Dixie Chicks “fat slags” for opposing the war – remains unrepentant.
It’s clear that the Obama administration is now feeling some buyer’s remorse about the Libyan intervention. It was betting on a quick and decisive conclusion that hasn’t materialized. Even if Gaddafi were to resign tomorrow, we might still be dragged into peace-keeping or nation-building operations of unknown scale and duration. One way or the other, we will be paying a price for our lack of an exit strategy. The public has turned against the Libyan intervention. So has much of the Congress, including the progressive wing of the President’s own party. The president’s justification for not seeking a congressional vote under the War Powers Act – that our intervention in Libya does not rise to the level of “hostilities” – didn’t even pass muster with his own departments of defense and justice.
But smearing opponents is no way for the Obama administration to get out of the corner into which it has painted itself.
Joe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.