Soccer Dad

Which is it?

Charles Krauthammer argued persuasively that Libya's apparent turnaround on WMD is a result of decisive action by the United States.

Yeah, sure. After 18 years of American sanctions, Moammar Gaddafi randomly picks Dec. 19, 2003, as the day for his surrender. By amazing coincidence, Gaddafi's first message to Britain -- principal U.S. war ally and conduit to White House war councils -- occurs just days before the invasion of Iraq. And his final capitulation to U.S.-British terms occurs just five days after Saddam Hussein is fished out of a rathole.
As Jay Leno would say, what are the odds? The nine months of negotiations with Libya perfectly frame the war on Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein. How is it possible to ignore the most blindingly obvious collateral benefits?

Apparently that's not good enough for the Washington Post. In their Live Online series the paper gave a platform to Middle East "expert" Shibley Telhami:

While I am sure that Gaddafi was nervous about American power, in the past this alone has not been enough to change his behavior. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration conducted military attacks against Libyan targets including Gaddafi's own residence in which his adopted daughter was killed. But that did not change his behavior. Moreover, while many regimes in the Middle East must be nervous about American power today, many have been more comfortable in the past few months because they have come to believe that the U.S. is now stuck in Iraq with the war costing more than $60 billion a year and stretching the American military capabilities in a way that would preclude the U.S. in engaging in another campaign. In fact, here one has to wonder whether the White House's inclination to offer incentives to Libya was in part due to their own conclusion that they are not about to mount another credible military threat because of the difficulty in Iraq.

So there has to be some sort of incentive that the U.S. offered Libya. The credible threat of force wasn't sufficient. I'm waiting to find what that incentive was.

Posted by SoccerDad at December 30, 2003 11:11 PM