Why Libya And Not Syria?

25 Apr, 2011 by John Hawkins

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Don’t get me wrong; my position on Syria is the same position I had and still have on Libya: We wish you luck in getting rid of your tyrant and maybe we can help a little on the edges. That being said, in neither case should American troops be involved.

Yet, in Libya, we’ve put American troops in harm’s way — and why? It has absolutely nothing to do with our national interest. In fact, from a national security standpoint, getting rid of Bashar al-Assad should be a much higher priority than getting rid of Gaddafi.

We were told we HAD TO bomb Libya because Gaddafi was going to kill civilians. Why, we couldn’t let that happen! However, in Syria…

More than 300 people have been killed — including more than 120 on Friday and Saturday — since an uprising against Assad’s regime began five weeks ago.

In other words, if the Obama Administration believes its own publicly stated reasoning for bombing Libya, we’d be bombing Syria, too.

Why aren’t we? Because Libya was an ill-thought-out adventure. Because Barack Obama has no idea what he’s doing and since he doesn’t know much about history, he thought it would be quick, easy, and painless — and he could, so why not? Well, here’s the why not; It’s turning out not to be so quick, easy, or painless. We’re also allied with the shady, poorly organized losing side of a civil war and some of our “allies” are also allied with Al-Qaeda.

There’s nothing in Libya worth a single American life. There’s nothing in Libya worth the investment in money and prestige we’ve already contributed. The only legitimate reason to stay there at this point is because America’s reputation would be negatively impacted if we just left and quite frankly, if anyone at the White House could find their own asses with both hands, we would have never bombed Libya and we wouldn’t be in this predicament.