Western hypocrisy gives tyrants free rein (interesting article)

[horses4courses]

John Waters of "The Irish Times" speaks his mind on the current situation in Libya, and the lack of action from Western powers.
While I don't subscribe to the theory of Obama being a puppet for the "liberal elite", there are some valid questions raised here.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/0318/1224292506317.html

[PaceAdvantage]

Some powerful stuff:

Al-Qaeda was briefly proved wrong, back in 2003, when Bush and Blair embarked on a mission to reassert the right of the West to police the world according to its own much-vaunted principles: freedom, democracy, justice and truth.

The invasion of Iraq was only in part about taking out the tyrant Saddam; it was also about sending a signal to the world that the West was awake and watching.

We know what happened. Both leaders were pursued by the elites of their societies, led by mischievous and cynical media forces, and eventually subjected to cultural impeachment and banished in disgrace. So far, there have been five major British-government investigations into Blair’s decision as prime minister to support the US-led invasion of Iraq; thus far, four of these have found that he acted legally and in good faith.

But still, he is compared to murderous tyrants like Radovan Karadzic and Saddam Hussein by people who have never been called upon to stand up for a principle in the whole of their lives.

Employing a spurious calculus of carnage that factored out the million Iraqis killed by Saddam, the ageing counterculturalists of the West have conducted an eight-year trial of the only western leaders who have been prepared to face down tyrants on the basis of moral principle and human empathy.

The unmentioned legacy of all this is a cultural paralysis that promises any tyrant anywhere a free rein to torture and obliterate his own people.Barack Obama is the embodiment of this culture of hypocrisy and childishness: a black president who is president because he is black, a walking advertisement for left-liberal vanity, a man who can match, word for word, the verbal flatulence of an era characterised by delusion, cowardice and empty talk. A fortnight ago, when Gadafy was still vulnerable, Obama loudly declared that the Libyan leaders “must go”, but since then he has done precisely nothing to enable such an outcome.

Obama is the elected representation of the postwar generations who never understood that politics is about choosing the lesser of evils. Even had he the personal courage and determination to act against Gadafy, Obama could not do so, because the commitment to do nothing in such situations is central to the unwritten contract he has made with those who delivered him to what was once the most powerful political position in the world.

Gadafy knew exactly what he was doing when he warned the West that an intervention could cause “another Vietnam”. This phrase is the hypnotist’s code word, calculated to invoke the trance of a generation of opinion formers who remain in a repetitive loop of retro-sentiment defined by the counter-cultural mantras of youths lived out in a completely different world.The legacy of our liberal elite’s castigation of Bush and Blair is a self-imposed spinelessness.

[bigmack]

Well written piece by yet another articulate Irishman.
:ThmbUp: http://www.johnwaters.ie/

[PhantomOnTour]

Seems like those chiming in to comment on the link are taking Waters to task for the article.

[JustRalph]

Seems like those chiming in to comment on the link are taking Waters to task for the article.

Yes, and most of them ignore the basic principals surrounding being the biggest dog in the kennel. You can sell these guys arms for ten years and then decide they are no longer acting in your best interest and turn against them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. You are the big dog in the kennel and you decide who gets to eat. No matter the menu.

Our countries interests change and so do our goals. You cannot look back over a short span of history and use changing times and political interests to shape your view of today. Today is just that.........today. Current interests, whether they be long or short term goals trump anything you have done in the past.

The argument that is consistently used by Liberals to degrade or denigrate those who see things for what they are today, and not yesterday, is that we enabled so many of these despots. And we did. When it was in our best interest. It is no longer in our interest to support these idiots when they start killing their own people.

Suppressing them is not killing them and this is a lot different than bombing them. When the people of these countries rise up and attempt to overthrow their government they are acting in a manner that is fundamentally American in nature. If you don't mind harking back to when our country was anew.

We should be supportive and seize the opportunity to improve our own connections with them. It is a much more complicated issue than that, but in the simplest terms you would think we could end up with a better government in these countries and at least embrace the opportunity to forge ahead with a better than the status quo arrangement that we have now. The wholesale killing out in the open and the public display makes a very big difference. We all know these guys kill many many people over time. But declaring war on your own people is a game changer. Publicly daring anyone to do anything about it is also a sign that something has to be done. This "doing something" requires a commitment to values that this President doesn't have. It also requires a talented team in place to not only pull off the military portion of whatever you do, but the diplomatic skill to get it done. I have very little confidence in Hillary Clinton to get that done.

Following the Liberal criticism and the logic involved would mean that every person who has ever acted in their own self interest would then always have to act in the same vein in every decision they make, the rest of their lives. The alternative would be to never take any action and never act in any way that may further your own success or goals. But then again, that would describe their leader Barry H. and their revered statesman Jimmy " I was attacked by a rabbit" Carter.