Baraka_Guru

I don't find comparisons of the Iraq War to the no-fly zone in Libya very useful.

The Saddam Hussein regime was viewed as a potential threat to American interests. The lead-up to the Iraq war consisted of fabrications and propaganda. Invading Iraq was arguably a unilateral decision. The purpose for invasion was regime change.

The Libya situation is not a unilateral invasion built on propaganda for the purpose of regime change in response to a potential threat to those outside of the country: it's a U.N.-sanctioned, multi-state, military intervention based on actual circumstances; namely, the state-sanctioned attack upon civilian populations in civilian areas within Libya. The purpose for military intervention in Libya is to stop a massacre.

So yeah, I don't find the comparison of what Bush did with Iraq very useful when looking to Obama regarding Libya. I don't even know why anyone would want to go there. Obama is more justified in his decision to comply with the U.N. resolution than is Bush in his decision to...do what he said or he thought or we implied he was aiming to do in Iraq. It's a ludicrous comparison.

The only thing I can see as being a comparison worth noting is the angle with regard to Congress and whether they needed to go to a vote to comply with the Security Council resolution. Is a vote necessary in this case?

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot