Americans on both left and right are now criticizing President Obama’s cooperation with the French and the British in bombing military targets in Libya even though some of these critics, most notably Newt Gingrich, were earlier criticizing Obama for not attacking.
The right has taken to comparing Obama’s commitment of US forces to Libya with Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Oh please. Obama merely OK’d US tactical support of the rebels rather than mounting an invasion. What Obama didn’t do is get aides to spend months burrowing through all our intelligence reports in search of any material they could find that would support an attack on Gaddafi. Nor did Obama publicize intelligence reports, some of which were later revealed to have been based on forged materials, of Gaddafi’s possessing Weapons of Mass Destruction.
So the fact that Bush got congressional approval for his invasion of Iraq is not so much a credit for Bush as it is a demerit for Congress for allowing itself to be deceived.
The point of comparison i find most interesting between the two military actions is that it took thousands of American lives, trillions of wasted dollars, and several years for the American people to grasp the folly of Bush’s invasion of Iraq; whereas it’s taken zero American lives so far, a relatively tiny amount of money, and only a few days for us to agree that our participation in the air raids over Libya was a bad decision.
A vast improvement.