QUAGMIRE IN LIBYA? – AT 10:25 A.M. ET:  John Bolton, whose mind is sharper on a bad day than Obama's is on his best day, warns about an American quagmire in Libya, with disastrous consequences.  Again, as in Vietnam, the issue is our national will, not our ability.  From the New York Post:

Opponents of the Vietnam War -- that seemingly endless, inconclusive, increasingly unpopular and ever-more-deadly and costly conflict -- called it a "quagmire." They said it was unwinnable and should never have been fought -- and that America must avoid similar future wars. Today, our real risk of "quagmire" is Libya.

Our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president has gotten things badly wrong. By demanding Moammar Khadafy's ouster while restricting US military force to the more limited objective of protecting innocent civilians, President Obama has set himself up for massive strategic failure.

And...

Of course, Vietnam became a "quagmire" because of US unwillingness to persevere to reach our legitimate objectives. Obama entirely ignored the critical point that Gen. Creighton Abrams' strategy had placed us on the path to victory in Vietnam, and that it was a failure of American will, not battlefield defeat, that humbled us there.

Bolton feels that two things are needed to prevent Libya from becoming Obama's Vietnam:

First, we must reverse course immediately and declare regime change to be our military objective, followed by substantial airstrikes against Khadafy's military forces, whether or not they are imminently threatening civilians...

...Second, because Libya's opposition leadership is still inchoate at best, we must identify anti-Khadafy figures who are pro-Western and find ways, overt or covert, to strengthen their hands. This will help both in opposing Khadafy today, and in any post-Khadafy government. Without confidence in the soundness of the opposition leaders, there is no justification for NATO supplying even light weapons, whose ultimate destination we can only guess. Failing to identify reliable leaders now will make any post-Khadafy regime, already problematic, potentially even more dangerous.

And...

Our president's most muscular recent action was to co-author an opinion article with Britain's David Cameron and France's Nicholas Sarkozy. This plainly reflects Obama's view that writings and speeches are all that a president is really required to do. Sadly, of course, articles and speeches are simply the articulation of policy, not policy in action. Nor do op-eds constitute leadership.

Finally, and most devastating:

Woodrow Wilson once wrote about himself: "I am a vague, conjectural personality, more made up of opinions and academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpuscles." Dreamer that he was, Wilson could have been describing his ideological descendant, Barack Obama. What we need right now is exactly the opposite of Wilson's presidential persona, or we shall surely see a true quagmire in Libya.

COMMENT:  Remember that last paragraph.  Obama is a mix of Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter, a mix that's a recipe for one disaster after another.  Increasingly, Obama is not taken seriously in other countries.  At least Bush led, at least he was decisive. 

And yet Obama may well be reelected.  With no political constraints on him in a second term, you can only imagine what his foreign policy will be.

April 20, 2011