Had Obama not acted, Benghazi would have been his Srebrenica

Everywhere Mr. Obama looked, he saw Iraq. We couldn’t rescue Tripoli and Benghazi because of what we had witnessed in Fallujah and Sadr City. Iraq was Mr. Obama’s entry into the foreign world, it was his opposition to that war that gave him a sense of worldliness and gravitas. He had made much of being “a student of history.” But history didn’t stretch far for him, and in a man who claimed affinity with distant peoples and places, there was a heavy dosage of parochialism. It was history’s odd timing: A great historical rupture in the Arab world, bearing within it the promise of remaking a flawed political tradition that knew no middle ground between despotism and nihilistic violence, happened on the watch of an American president proud of his deliberateness and his detachment from history’s passions.

The Obama administration was doubtless surprised by the unexpected decision of the Arab League to grant the green light to the imposition of the no-fly zone. Moral and political clarity had never been an attribute of the Arab League. That organization had never given sustenance to any dissident, never drew a line for the Arab despots. The head of the Arab League for a good number of years now, the Egyptian Amr Moussa, was a creature of the Arab order of power with all its pathologies. His stock-in-trade was that debilitating mix of anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism. He was beloved by that fabled Arab street because he indulged its ruinous passions and alibis. This was never a good jury to appeal to.

But we needed no warrant from the league of dictators. The warrant came from the Libyan people who pleaded for help and made a case for that help by their own bravery.