Gaddafi is a threat to the USA

Submitted by Rob Riley (United States), Mar 21, 2011 at 11:00

Of all the interventions the US has undertaken in recent decades, the current one in Libya is the most justified. The list of destabilizing terrorist attacks traceable to Gaddafi is long. The Lockerbie airliner bombing is only the most prominent. The murder of a US citizen which prompted Reagan's airstrike is another on the list. Gaddafi's connection to these crimes stronger than the Taliban's connections to 9/11, and certainly more so than Saddam's (nonexistent) connections. There's every reason to suppose that more assassinations and terrorist attacks await us if we leave Gaddafi unmolested. Like Geo. H.W. Bush (in the Kuwait crisis), President Obama first gathered a coalition including Arab partners and obtained UN authorization. Importantly, that authorization is sufficiently broad to support destruction of Libyan military targets of all kinds, and even the elimination of "command and control"- the dictator himself. I predict ultimate success for the mission. Will history see this as a triumph for Obama- along with democratization in Egypt (and, I believe eventually, Bahrain, Yemen, and other Arab states)? Or will it be seen as vindication for George W. Bush, who saw the invasion of Iraq as the first step in that democratization? As a liberal Democrat, I might see the former as more accurate. But as a dispassionate observer, I must allow for the latter possibility.

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