COLUMN: A letter to Pres. Obama

    Dear President Obama,

    I did not support you in the last election. I feared that by “change” you simply meant to accelerate the growth of government intrusion in our live, that you would further increase the independence individual Americans have on the government and work to undermine our liberty. With few exceptions, these fears have been justified.

    I did have hope when you were elected, however, that you would redirect American foreign policy. President Bush did little to improve our image in the world or increase peaceful international cooperation. You are a provocative speaker and as a senator were a strong opponent of Bush-style foreign policy. I hoped that as president you would reverse the frightening trend of increased intervention. You would show the world that America  is a willing member of a peaceful international community.

    Your announcement Friday that the United States would be part of a military effort against the Libyan government, particularly Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, has shown that I was wrong even in my small hope.

    I remember the speech you gave before the United States entered Iraq, and you were but a state senator in Illinois. You did not deny that Saddam Hussein was a problem.

    You said, “He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power … He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.” Despite this, you opposed an American military expedition in Iraq. Let me recall the reason for you.

    You followed, “But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history … I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”

    I wanted to hope, so I carefully looked at your rationale for military action in Libya. Perhaps it would be a smart war. On Friday, you said, “Left unchecked, we have every reason to believe that Gadhafi would commit atrocities against his people.  Many thousands could die. A humanitarian crisis would ensue. The entire region could be destabilized, endangering many of our allies and partners.  The calls of the Libyan people for help would go unanswered.  The democratic values that we stand for would be overrun.”

    Mr. President, I am honestly confused. What am I to make of your statements? Gadhafi is certainly brutal, ruthless, and “a bad guy” – just as you described Saddam Hussein. However, the concerns you have for what Gadhafi might do, if left unchecked, is a situation that Saddam Hussein had already proven he was more than willing to cause.         

    After Hussein’s death, the New York Times said he “murdered as many as a million of his people, many with poison gas. He tortured, maimed and imprisoned countless more. His unprovoked invasion of Iran is estimated to have left another million people dead. His seizure of Kuwait threw the Middle East into crisis. More insidious, arguably, was the psychological damage he inflicted on his own land.”

    How did you oppose using military force against such a man, when you now favor force against one in whom you only see the potential for such things? As our elected Commander-in-Chief, you have the duty to justify yourself. I do not think that changing one’s mind is spineless flip-flopping. There can be very good reasons to do so. I call on you to tell us why you have so severely changed your mind. Why, when the American people elected you to be a significant change from President Bush, we got only a repackaged version with nicer speech patterns.

    American military intervention is Libya constitutes a “dumb war.” There are no circumstances under which American forces now belong in Libya. We cannot afford another war. Congress has been trying to figure out ways to reduce our budget so that we are not overwhelmed with debt. They have been bickering over whether to cut funding to NPR. To fully cut such funding would save the federal government $5 million a year. On Saturday alone, tomahawk missiles launched by the United States and United Kingdom cost over $56 million.

    Whether or not it is a war to be fought, it is not our war. Europe has the resources and the interests. Ten percent of European oil comes from Libya. Europe is every bit as interested in having a free, prosperous and secure Libya as the United States. And they are in a position to see it happen.

    Libya is not our war. To spend American resources to put more of our forces at risk is dumb.

Sincerely,

Charles Major, a graduate student studying business who can be reached at charlesrmajor@gmail.com.