Starbuck's Foreign Policy

I listened to a series of clips of the President's speech on Libya last night and I honestly have no idea what he is talking about. It reminded me of something that came out of an overly-caffeinated session at Starbuck's by a bunch of poli sci undergrads.There were lots of whirls and flourishes, but still I don't know what our mission is, who is running it, and how we know when it is accomplished. Perhaps some questions are in order.

Is a vital national interest involved? Maybe. I know that it's  hopelessly archaic to consider oil as something vital to the U.S. but think about what our country would look like if half of our oil disappeared. It shouldn't take long to figure out that it would be disastrous to our economy, which is already barely limping along. The U.S. gets about 45% of its oil from the Middle East and Africa, almost half our total usage. lugar.senate.gov/energy/graphs/oilimport.html Obviously not all of it comes from Libya. In fact, not a lot does but it goes to Western Europe and other major customers and to the extent that the supply is stopped, it will cause a ripple effect through the world supply system that is not good.

How does Libya fit into the political storm sweeping across the Arab countries and what does this portend for Western oil supplies? For example, if the Muslim Brotherhood or al Qaeda takes over the countries producing nearly half our oil, might we reasonably expect some problems? Have you checked how much oil we are currently getting from Iran?

What is our goal? Does Gaddafi go or not? The President says "yes" and others in his Administration say "no."  I hate to break it to Mr. Obama, but what you say has meaning as the President of the United States. Before you say Gaddafi has to go, you had darn well better have a plan in place to make sure it happens. The surest way to get into big time trouble is to not say what we mean and mean what we say. Think Korea. The President has probably already broken the eggs and now has no choice but to make the omelet.

Whose side are we on? Is there a player(s) we can work with? I have not a clue and I'm pretty sure the President doesn't either. He seems to think that young people yearning for freedom (YPYF) are the pony to bet on. Last Friday the New York Times reported that in Egypt it is now the military and the Muslim Brotherhood running the show, not the YPYFs that we saw in all the news clips. We already know that one of the significant factions involved in the fighting is a local al Qaeda franchisee who fought against the U.S. in Afghanistan. Since this will be like fighting a turf war with the Capone mob for control of Chicago, is there anyone besides earnest YPYFs to go the mattresses against al Qaeda once Gaddafi is out?

Do we have the military capability? Yeah. Our military is sorely used and abused, but it continues to perform magnificently when asked. Already the Libyan skies are controlled by the West. I am absolutely against boots on the ground, though, unless the mission becomes a lot clearer than it is right now. Even then, we would need to carefully assess our Army/Marine capabilities in light of current commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan. As near as I can tell, we are about 4 Army divisions and 1-2 Marine MEUs short of what we need to meet our commitments without burning our military out. 

These are some of the questions that need to be answered but weren't last night by the President. We should never openly commit American power unless the mission is well defined, we have the capability and the will to use that capability, and we are willing to see it through to the end. If we are not, then stay the heck out of Dodge - too many brave Americans get killed for nothing.