The real Obama doctrine

Does the Libya war kinetic military action signal an actual "Obama Doctrine?" Is there any such thing as a coherent Obama Doctine to begin with - or even one that is not so coherent? Well, sort of.

Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said Mr. Obama's foreign-policy doctrine is at work in the president's insistence on seeking broad-based support for military action, as well as in his reliance on international institutions and his focus on humanitarian relief and "preventing mass atrocity."

We note that "seeking broad-based support for military action" does not include seeking the support of the US Congress.

This is not much of a doctrine, if doctrine it is supposed to be. White House staff said that the Libya war, uh, KMA, was motivated by the fear of a bloodbath if Qaddafi got the upper hand over the rebellion, as he was clearly doing.

That context was reflected in Mr. Obama's acceptance speech for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, after he authorized an escalation of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

"I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people," Mr. Obama said, outlining his rationale for using force. "For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world."

Except there was no threat to the American people from Libya. In the LA Times, Andrew Malcolm describes the Obama Doctrine thus:

The emerging Obama Doctrine can be roughly described as being caught off-guard by foreign events, issuing numerous rhetorical warnings that sound swell and waiting for somebody else to do something because the president's too busy calling on someone to do something about the quality of American education, which has polled better than foreign forays.

However, it is the NY Posts's Michael Godwin who lays out the Obama Doctrine at work in Libya:

It would be so surgical, the commander in chief could take his family on a trip to Brazil and points south while the military went into battle. We wouldn't need a single boot on the ground and could hand command to NATO or France or anybody who wanted it.

Meanwhile, after 42 years in power, a brutal and mad Moammar Khadafy would see our righteousness, lay down his weapons and quit his throne.

Presto. That's how a just war should end, and this time it would -- because of Obama.
That, I submit, is the real "Obama Doctrine."

That doctrine is not disturbed by the nagging war-gaming questions of "what if." As in, what if Khadafy refuses to quit? What if he does quit -- what is our plan for Libya? What if Islamists turn it into a safe haven?

But those are nitty gritty questions of national strategy, and therefore beneath the dignity of the one whom Godwin says believes himself to be "History's Great Man."