Another oddity, particularly given Obama’s high regard for the power of his own rhetoric, is that you’d think he’d be looking for ways to take credit for, and guide, the forces of reform in the region. ~Jonah Goldberg

It seems to me that this gets to the heart of what bothers so many people, especially conservatives, about Obama’s response to events in Libya. For them, American Presidents are supposed to want to exploit, appropriate, and control foreign political crises. Not doing this amounts to “dithering” or “failing to lead.” It may be that it really doesn’t occur to these critics that it is not the responsibility of the President of the United States to take credit for political forces that have nothing to do with him, much less to guide the political development of other countries.

One of the common refrains we keep hearing is that Obama has not been consistent in his responses. Consistency can be overrated, but it’s hard to miss that there has been a fairly consistent message. The administration has repeatedly said that these crises are internal to their respective countries, the U.S. is not favoring or dictating particular outcomes, and the political fortunes of each country will be determined by the nations involved. Egypt was a more complicated case, because the extent of our support for the Egyptian regime was such that professions of “not taking sides” meant less there than they did in Tunisia.

The differences between the situations in Libya and Egypt are obvious, so it’s puzzling to me why people keep demanding to know why Obama’s responses have been different. In Egypt Washington had leverage and had common interests with the Egyptian military in easing Mubarak out of power. It mattered to members of the Egyptian regime how the U.S. viewed their actions, so it made sense to exert more direct pressure on the figures in the regime on the assumption that they would be responsive to it. Angrily denouncing Gaddafi from the start wouldn’t have changed anything in Libya, but in addition to endangering U.S. embassy personnel it would have immediately inserted the U.S. into a conflict that has nothing to do with us.

As it did in Iran, the administration seems interested in making sure that an American response does not overshadow, step on, or get in the way of the opposition. Part of that involves not publicly identifying with the opposition. From what I can see, the administration doesn’t presume that it can or should directly facilitate the opposition’s success, but it isn’t going to complicate their task by burdening the opposition with U.S. backing that could undermine, splinter, or discredit the opposition. Egypt may be the exception to this pattern, because Washington found that Mubarak could be removed without dramatically changing the relationship with the Egyptian military.

Critics of this approach reject the idea that U.S. support can ever be a burden, but more than that they believe that the U.S. should be trying to promote puppet factions that will give Washington a degree of control over the shape of these future governments. In their view, the “color” revolutions weren’t horrible mistakes that backfired and harmed the countries affected by them. Instead, they see those largely failed revolutions as models for other countries. To the extent that there are connections between some of the Egyptian protest groups and instigators of earlier “color” revolutions (and their American funding), we should be cautious about endorsing the independence of these groups and skeptical about the degree to which the next Egyptian government will actually represent the Egyptian people.