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Pinning the Libyan War’s Flaws On the People Trying to End the War

The press corps is claiming that all this reflects “war weariness,” but the war in Libya will only drag on longer if Gadhafi and his bloody-minded sons have reason to believe that the Americans are divided. These resolutions will encourage our enemies to conclude that if they can only hold out for a few more […]

The press corps is claiming that all this reflects “war weariness,” but the war in Libya will only drag on longer if Gadhafi and his bloody-minded sons have reason to believe that the Americans are divided. These resolutions will encourage our enemies to conclude that if they can only hold out for a few more weeks or months, the U.S. and NATO will give up and sue for peace. The House is also undermining the morale of Libya’s rebels, not to mention domestic support for the intervention. ~The Wall Street Journal

Let’s review what has actually happened. Americans have been badly divided over this war from the beginning. That would still be true had the House never voted at all, and Gaddafi would hardly need Congress to tell him that the attack on Libya is one of the least popular recent military actions on record in the U.S. It was the administration’s failure from the beginning to rally political support for the intervention, its refusal to consult Congress properly, and its neglect of public opinion that have brought things to this pass. One of the reasons why a reasonable expectation of a national consensus in favor military action is so valuable is that it precludes exactly this sort of dissension after the war has started. The administration entered the Libyan war hastily and recklessly, and its policy is suffering the inevitable backlash that it could have avoided.

Domestic support for the Libyan war has been low from the start, and it started weakening long before anyone in the House voted on anything. One reason for this lack of support is that the war has nothing to do with American security, so Americans are understandably not excited about starting a third war when two others remain unfinished. Another is that the war has stretched on much longer than government officials and pro-war pundits led the public to expect. Yet another reason is that the administration has deliberately avoided oversight and accountability from Congress and, by extension, from the public as well.

For public support for the Libyan war to be undermined, it would have to have been strong at some earlier point. War opponents have not had to undermine anything. The administration’s own shoddy handling of the intervention has done far more than anything its critics ever could. Essentially, the administration short-circuited the appropriate process of debating the merits of the intervention, ignored obvious public dissatisfaction with the war, kept Congress largely out of the loop, and now they and the supporters of this war want to blame members of Congress for finally, belatedly starting to do their job.

Now that Libyan war supporters have helped commit the U.S. to a foolish, unnecessary war, it takes some gall for them to accuse opponents of being backstabbers. Opponents of the war did not have the chance to vote against the war before it began, and they still have not yet had a proper opportunity to vote to end the war. As things stand now, Gaddafi already has every reason to fight to the very last. How members of the House vote can hardly make the stakes any higher for him or increase the incentives he has to resist until the end. War supporters are attempting to lay blame for the effects of the flawed Libya policy they support on those who never wanted the U.S. to intervene there.

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