Israel Matzav

Ripping Obama on Libya

FAST FORWARD to Obama, whose actions with regards to dictators and wholesale human slaughter taking place on his watch, the Libyan massacres in particular, have been utterly baffling. I have already written of my grave disappointment in Obama warmly greeting dictators like Hugo Chavez or rolling out the red carpet for President Hu Jintao of China while his fellow Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Lu Xiaobo, rots in jail.

There is also Obama’s gross disrespect of the Dalai Lama – sending him out the back entrance of the White House, past huge piles of garbage in February 2010, in order not to offend the bullies in China.

But Obama’s failure to champion human rights in Libya defies all comprehension. First there was his utter silence for days as Muammar Gaddafi opened fire on his own people with jets, helicopter gunships, large-caliber weapons and RPGs.

Then, almost a week into the killing, Obama issued his famous denunciation of Gaddafi’s mass murder as “outrageous and unacceptable” – words perhaps more relevant to the threat of a baseball strike.

He further threatened Gaddafi with the possibility of economic sanctions – a subject which is not exactly on the mind of a brutal dictator fighting for his life. Finally, on February 26, the press reported that Obama, in a phone call to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said Gaddafi had “lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now.”

Come again? Was our president suggesting that a dictator who had slaughtered and tortured political opponents for four decades, funding international terrorism and blowing up discotheques and airliners somehow had had legitimacy in the first place?! And what is the meaning of saying this in private to the German chancellor? Is Obama too timid to call a press conference and announce in unequivocal terms that Gaddafi is a tyrant who, if he survives, will be tried for crimes against humanity? Obama’s inexplicable silence in the face of the murder of peaceful political protesters – recall that his voice was absent for days even as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad mowed down his own people after stealing the election in June 2009 – is in sharp contrast to the fearless oratory of Martin Luther King when he spoke of Bull Connor’s dogs and hoses on the last night of his life, April 3, 1968.

“I remember in Birmingham, Alabama... and Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth... but we just went before the dogs singing, ‘Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.’ Bull Connor next would say, ‘Turn the fire hoses on.’... And we went before the fire hoses... That couldn’t stop us... We would just go in the paddy wagon singing ‘We Shall Overcome.’” Just imagine what it would be like if we had a president who rose to such oratorical heights when he witnessed innocent citizens being picked off by snipers in Tripoli.

Labels: Barack Obama, Libyan regime change, Muammar Gaddafi

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:07 AM