A Rock and a Hard Place

Like so many Americans, I am anxious to hear how President Obama is going to discuss our role in Libya in his address to the nation tonight. I applaud the step he took to prevent a slaughter of innocent people there. But, it’s not clear in my mind why Libya and not Syria, for example, or other countries in the region whose leaders will not hesitate to kill their own citizens to hold on to power.

What happens if the unrest in the Middle East spreads and citizens of Saudi Arabia rise up against their rulers? Do we intervene? And, if not, how do we decide? What is our policy? Is it based on strategic national interests, such as access to oil or the critical location of U.S. military bases in those countries? I think the President has to start addressing the situation from a broader perspective.

His task is made doubly difficult by the fact that we Americans are conflicted in own minds on how we should regard our role in the world. Are we the “go anywhere, pay any price” country described by President Kennedy or a more pragmatic country willing to venture forth only when we can afford it and it’s strictly in our national interest?

However stirring the call of JFK in 1961, we saw where that and President George W. Bush’s crusade for democracy in Iraq four decades later got us. Yet, our hearts are still tugged in that direction because this country has always stood as a beacon of freedom around the world and has gone to war time and time again to rid the world of dictators who would have stripped people of those freedoms.

And, because of that, we got ourselves in an untenable situation. In the aftermath of the Cold War where America emerged as the world’s only superpower, we stepped up and assumed that role. Meanwhile, other countries were more than willing to defer to America as “the world’s cop” who would come to their rescue if their liberty and freedoms were threatened and we built a military machine that enabled us to carry out that role. To the point that today America’s spending on military is greater than the next 14 countries combined.

Can we afford to continue that role while ignoring our nation’s vital future strength by reducing spending on education and research and ignoring decades-old repairs and replacements of our nation’s critical infrastructure, to cite just a few obvious examples? The current course is unsustainable, to use the favorite word in today’s political lexicon. That’s why I was heartened to see the President say to our partners in the U.N. that America was not going to take the lead in establishing a no-fly zone over Libya. While some saw it as dithering and indecisive, I saw it as pragmatic and far-sighted.

The President is caught between a rock and a hard place, but this is an opportunity for him to clarify our role in the world in the light of our obvious fiscal limitations and other competing national and international priorities. The partisan politics of this are daunting but I dearly hope he steps up and is willing to spend the political capital to sell such a policy and take the majority of Americans along with him.

Stay tuned.


Gerald E. Lavey