Reply #57: Freedom for Libya and from boots on the ground

[pinboy3niner]

Freedom for Libya and from boots on the ground


Donna Brazile


Sunday, April 3, 2011 12:00 am



It is surprising how often the obvious has to be explained," a Cairo citizen tweeted last week. President

Barack Obama must have had a similar thought listening to his critics dissect his Tuesday speech to the

nation on Libya.


Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush's secretary of defense, appeared on CBS Wednesday morning saying,

"The continued ambiguity by the president ... about whether or not Gadhafi will ultimately be gone is

harmful."


On March 3, Obama told the Associated Press, "We will continue to send a clear message ... Moammar

Gadhafi has lost the legitimacy to lead and he must leave."


That sentence is clear to me. Gadhafi found it clear. Yet Obama's critics have seized upon the "how."

"How will we cause Gadhafi to leave?"


"How" we will "get" Gadhafi is also clear. We will not use military might to get Gadhafi. We will use

diplomacy.


President Obama cobbled together, in record time, the U.N. military response to Gadhafi's threat to the more than 700,000 citizens of Benghazi - a remarkable diplomatic feat we haven't seen from a U.S. president in decades.

...


Therefore, for the future of Libya, the Libyans must own their revolution. Our troops on the ground would be unwise and counterproductive there. Employing diplomacy to remove Gadhafi will require patience, something Americans are in short supply of right now. But this president, I have no doubt, will see that he goes.


A colleague shared these tweets from a Libyan to him: "Someday the 'Libyan Fellini' will remember this

madness in great films watched the world over ... Happy ending (equals) great Libyan filmmakers,

writers, philanthropists, teachers, nurses, doctors, all free everyone!"


And it will have come about without a single American's "boots on the ground."



Donna Brazile is a political commentator on CNN, ABC and NPR, and a contributing columnist to Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.


http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/burlington_county_times/news_columnists/freedom-for-libya-

and-from-boots-on-the-ground/article_6e52e442-128c-5013-baf9-38977bd8e358.html