NATO definitely has its problems, but Obama has succeeded in using them to further American policy at minimum risk to both US interests and his own domestic political position. We get to make things very rough on Khadaffy, the Europeans take the blame if anything goes wrong, we get credit if it works, US servicemen are not being killed, shot down or taken prisoner, and it just costs us a little money, much of which we get to write off as training anyway. Brilliant.

Face it, Libya is Europe's problem, not ours, they have to deal with it, we don't. But we had to get involved, if only because NATO is reluctantly with us in Iraq and Afghanistan where they feel they have no pressing interests. So we had to provide them something or risk losing that middle eastern support. Quid pro yadda yadda. Those who so self-righteously condemn Obama's Libya policy should remind themselves of this. These allies are dying for us, we owe them.

If Khadaffy had indeed carried out a massacre in Benghazi, the Republicans would never had let Obama forget it. Now they are bouncing off the walls trying to find some way of both defending their reflexive hawkish nature and still blame their Dem nemesis for anything he does, even if it was something they supported yesterday. I can't help the feeling the Chicago community organizer is leading them by the nose in foreign affairs, actually enlisting them to help carry out his foreign policy. Whether this will make up for Republican efforts to sabotage his domestic programs remains to be seen, but at least you have to admire the way he is finessing them.

The funny part is that now the Republicans, in their desperation to find SOMETHING they can accuse Obama of, are starting to drift towards isolationism, a policy I suspect Obama is really for (after all, remember his campaign promises?). The Reps are practically begging him to do what he wants to do anyway, pull the troops out of the middle east. I love it. The "Democrats can't handle national defense" meme is shattered.

The President, trying to follow a graduated, responsible policy, has resisted taking advantage of the bin Ladin takedown and revealed Pakistani treachery to just pull out of the middle east and southwest Asia altogether. After all, we do have legitimate interests there that will not be addressed if we just depart en masse.

This takes a certain amount of political integrity and restraint on his part. With Osama dead, Al-Quaeda crippled by his drone attacks and concentration on the Afghan (not Iraq) theater, and the Pakis disgraced and exposed as the lying cheats they are, American (and even Republican )opinion is primed for a full scale withdrawal from the Muslim world. But even though I suspect Obama is tempted to do exactly that, I also believe he knows it is not the right thing to do. The flak he has gotten from Left AND Right over his pace of withdrawal suggests he has engineered the perfect compromise.

I think this is really what is behind the sputtering fury from the Right these days. Maybe its not just their precious tax cut. Deep down inside, maybe even subconsciously, they know they are being...managed. The only way they can be sure of getting the White House back in 2012 is if they make sure the economy
is totally trashed by then. And as we can see, they are working as hard as they can on that.

Anyway, that's how I see it. What do you think?