Of France, he said, “Sarkozy wanted to trumpet the flights he was taking in the air campaign, despite the fact that we had wiped out all the air defenses and essentially set up the entire infrastructure” for the intervention. This sort of bragging was fine, Obama said, because it allowed the U.S. to “purchase France’s involvement in a way that made it less expensive for us and less risky for us.” In other words, giving France extra credit in exchange for less risk and cost to the United States was a useful trade-off—except that “from the perspective of a lot of the folks in the foreign-policy establishment, well, that was terrible. If we’re going to do something, obviously we’ve got to be up front, and nobody else is sharing in the spotlight.”
No, that won't do as an explanation. You have to flesh out how David got distracted, what does that mean? if you are going to throw that out as an explanation and this on Sarkozy is contradictory.Libya is not a shit show--That is what Obama is explaining here, how Libya became a shit show.-- because Sarkozy took credit, you don't take credit for shit, nor because the "foreign policy establishment" said "Don't let Sarkozy take credit, America must lead in getting splashed with shit.", the operation went according to plan. You set it up to be multilateral and you acted multilaterally; you spread risk and glory, it didn't work out, you all got splashed with shit. The lesson is, Don't Do Stupid Shit even if it's multilateral.
Obama also blamed internal Libyan dynamics. “The degree of tribal division in Libya was greater than our analysts had expected. And our ability to have any kind of structure there that we could interact with and start training and start providing resources broke down very quickly.”
Libya proved to him that the Middle East was best avoided.
Obama also blamed internal Libyan dynamics. “The degree of tribal division in Libya was greater than our analysts had expected. And our ability to have any kind of structure there that we could interact with and start training and start providing resources broke down very quickly.”
Libya proved to him that the Middle East was best avoided.
Really? The whole Middle East. Okay. That was Bush43's initial view of the Palestinian-Israeli shit puddle but things got worse and Bush reengaged.
“There is no way we should commit to governing the Middle East and North Africa,” he recently told a former colleague from the Senate. “That would be a basic, fundamental mistake.”
Serious? Who in America is committed to governing the Middle East and North Africa?
