Ben Smith (GOPolitico): The fall of Tripoli is a foreign policy triumph for which President Barack Obama won’t hold a ticker-tape parade: no flight suit, no chest-thumping, no “Mission Accomplished” banner.
But the low-profile, inexpensive ouster of Col. Muammar Qadhafi marks an important milestone for the administration, foreign policy analysts say – perhaps the most concrete evidence that the more modest American foreign policy approach that has become Obama’s hallmark and perhaps his biggest area of contrast with his more interventionist predecessor might actually work.
….. the scenes of celebration in Tripoli make it difficult to argue with Obama’s methods. And at a moment of fiscal obsession, Qadhafi was deposed on the cheap … the equivalent of a few days of involvement in Afghanistan…
… it is vindication for an important set of ideas that Obama espoused as a candidate: that the United States can still lead while talking and walking more softly and letting allies, particularly the Europeans, take the starring role.
“We need to give the Obama administration credit for finding a way, taking the long view, resisting the pressure to do too much to soon, resisting the old approaches which would have had the U.S. far more involved than it could have or should have been and really blazing a trail for the future of U.S. foreign policy,” said David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration national security official.
… The White House was loath to claim victory however – both because the rolling Arab Spring has repeatedly demonstrated that a revolution is only the beginning and because the nature of Obama’s strategy is to avoid American claims of credit.
…. “I don’t think this is the time to say to the president, ‘You’re a genius,’ but it is a time for those Obama haters to admit the guy made the right call under a tough set of circumstances,” said Aaron David Miller, a former State Department official…
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But it’s still a right-wing rag 😉
