LITTLE ROCK — THE SAME, disappoining pattern continues when it comes to statements out of the White House about the turmoil in the Middle East, aka The Arab Revolt of 2011. This week what the president of the United States had to say about fast-moving events in Libya was a good deal less important than what he didn’t. He deplored the violence and terror there, but he failed to say Moammar Gadhafi, its long-time and now increasingly weak strongman, should step down. The president’s silence spoke much louder than his weasely words.
This is the same familiar lack of direction, resolve and leadership our still new and maybe always naive president showed when it was Egypt that was tottering in slow motion. That’s when Hosni Mubarak was clinging desperately to the remains of his power in Egypt, and the demonstrators in Tahrir Square could have used all the support from Washington they could get. By the time they got it, they’d already emerged triumphant, no thanks to our slow-moving, slow-thinking State Department and the rest of this ever equivocating administration. Now the same failure of American policy, and nerve, is being repeated where Libya is concerned.
It is time, dangerously past time, for the president of the United States to take his stand foursquare for freedom (and the future) in the Arab world. As in the proudest moments of American history.
That freedom tide George W. Bush used to talk about still rolls, and gains more momentum than ever. How does Barack Obama expect this country to influence the course of the revolution in Libya and beyond, and the evolution of both liberty and order throughout the Islamic world, if he just temporizes, going with the latest wind? There are times when playing it safe can be the most dangerous thing an American president can do. For events have a way of catching up with those who only react to them rather than try to shape them.
For a man said to be a quick study, Barack Obama is learning only slowly, if at all.
Editorial, Pages 16 on 02/25/2011