Obama's "Backdoor War" Nears Success

The news came as a surprise, and as a welcomed relief: Rebel forces had made their way into Tripoli, the capital of Libya, and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s 42-year grip on power appeared to be dissolving with astonishing speed.

Indeed, after six months of war in which rebels, who began as peaceful protesters, took up arms against one of the world's most tyrannical leaders, it was with a certain amount of trepidation that the news reached us. One never knows what the man who President Ronald Reagan called a "mad dog" will do. Even as rebels claim to control 95 percent of Tripoli and two of Quaddafi's sons are reported to be in rebel custody, there remains a realistic fear that Quaddafi and his supporters could begin attacking civilians.

As of Monday morning, tank battalions and snipers loyal to Quaddafi were taking a last stand against rebel forces near Quaddafi’s fortified compound, according to International news reports. Quaddafi, who had been urging civilians to take up arms against the rebel “rats,” was nowhere to be found. He did broadcast a statement saying he was in the city and would be “with you until the end.”

The rebels and those civilians seemed to feel that that end was near. "Gadhafi is finished. Now we are free," one rebel, named Abdullah, told a Reuters reporter over the sound of gunfire and shelling, as his group consolidated its position to the west of the city center.

The 69-year-old Quaddafi has been a cancer on the world for more than four decades, sponsoring terrorism at home and abroad. After the Arab Spring led to the ouster of leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, the resistance mounted in Libya was a welcome sign. Yet, unlike Tunisia and Egypt, the protests for freedom and human dignity in Libya turned bloody with Quaddafi slaughtering his own people to maintain control.

The uprising, led by dissidents in the east of Libya, was indeed wrought with problems. More important, though, it was peopled by those who had the most to gain -- and loose -- from Quaddafi's ouster.

"This is a dream come true, something we have all been waiting for," a 19-year-old Libyan woman told CNN Sunday night. "I can talk on the phone without being scared someone is coming to get me."

Indeed fear permeated Libya, where finding the truth was difficult to say the least. Libya is a country that lacks the national institutions that can grow without a cult figure. Now, its people, like those in other Arab and North African nations in this year of change, must learn to depend on themselves and not some seemingly omnipotent leader.

According to The New York Times, the rebel leadership group, the National Transitional Council, issued a mass text message saying: “We congratulate the Libyan people for the fall of Muammar Qaddafi and call on the Libyan people to go into the street to protect the public property. Long live free Libya.”

As is customary with him, President Barack Obama, said in a controlled statement Sunday night that Qaddafi and his inner circle had “to recognize that their rule has come to an end.” He also called on Qaddafi “to relinquish power once and for all,” and he urged the National Transitional Council to avoid civilian casualties and protect state institutions as it took control of the country.

“Tonight, the momentum against the Qaddafi regime has reached a tipping point,” the President said. “Tripoli is slipping from the grasp of a tyrant. The Qaddafi regime is showing signs of collapsing. The people of Libya are showing that the universal pursuit of dignity and freedom is far stronger than the iron fist of a dictator.”

Now that the people of Libya have shown their mettle, the United States must now show its support so that it can help the rebels win the peace. Lest we forget, it was Obama who pushed NATO to oversee bombing raids in support of the rebels, a move that led Republicans to attack the President for his "backdoor war."

The people of Libya feel that they have gained "the freedom that we all deserve," one young woman told CNN Sunday night. "I think we have proved that we are smarter than him (Quaddafi) at the end of the day."

"We are now different people," the young woman added. "And it's not even the end yet."

That's why America and NATO have to take the next step and help Libya become the nation that it can be.

The Pandemic of Foot-in-Mouth Disease

Politicians have always been susceptible to foot-in-mouth disease, but we appear to have reached a pandemic since Barack Obama became President. Nearly every day, some Republican, or one of the party’s erstwhile supporters, comes down with the disease. Instead of seeking treatment for the affliction, each compounds it by claiming that the illness was misdiagnosed by others.

For example, Mark Halperin was infected on national television, making a scatological reference to the President. He later offered an unctuous apology. In Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the disease manifested itself when he proclaimed:

“Everybody goes to clinics, to hospitals, to doctors, and so on. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.”

When told that only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s work involves abortions, Kyl proclaimed that his statement was not meant to be taken as fact.

Halperin and Kyl are not the only ones. There have been countless other instances in which Republicans have either used racially charged language only to claim it wasn’t meant to be racial, or have made blatantly false statements only to claim the statements were not meant to be taken as facts. The most recent example of this is Rep. Doug Lamborn, a conservative Colorado Republican. Last Friday, Lamborn went on the radio and proclaimed that working with President Obama would be “like touching tar baby.”

“I don’t even want to have to be associated with him,” Lamborn said in an interview on the Caplis and Silverman radio show on KHOW 630 AM in Denver. “It’s like touching a tar baby, and you get it – you know, you’re stuck, and you’re part of the problem now, and you can’t get away. I don’t want that to happen to us, but if it does, or not, he’ll still get – properly so – the blame, because his policies, for four years, will have failed the American people.”

The “us” Lamborn is talking about are Republicans. The person who will be blamed for the problems is of course Obama.

Lamborn’s comment raised the ire of numerous people, including the heads of the local NAACP, the Urban League of the Pikes Peak Region, and the El Paso County Democratic Party. Each decried his comments as racist because the phrase "tar baby" has been used to denigrate black people.

“The world already views (El Paso County) as ultra conservative, ultra-right-wing, Tea-Party-loving, gay bashing, an epicenter of hate,” Rosemary Harris Lytle, president of the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP told The Gazette newspaper. “With two vitriolic words, our own Congressman again sealed our fate.”

Lamborn’s people denied his comments were racial in nature. Instead, they said the reference was made because working with Obama created a sticky situation, a quagmire. The dictionary does indeed define tar baby as “a situation, problem, or the like, that is almost impossible to solve or to break away from.” But if Lamborn only meant to suggests a sticky situation, then why use a term that could so easily be seen as racially derogatory? Why not just say quagmire? Why liken the President, instead of the situation, to tar baby as was the case when the fallout from the Iran-Contra affair was dubbed George H.W. Bush's tar baby?

The reason, I believe, is simple: He knew what he was saying (“and you get it”), and he knew that he could cite the folktale “Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby” for cover. Lamborn also may have made a Freudian slip, giving away more about how he and the Republican Party view the President.

Allow me to elaborate in a conspiratorial way: Brer Fox (the GOP) hates Brer Rabbit (Obama), so Brer Fox creates a tar baby (the debt ceiling crisis) in order to trap Brer Rabbit and destroy him. Why? The answer may be as simple as Brer Rabbit is to sassy, to uppity for Brer Fox. Brer Rabbit eventually was able to trick Brer Fox, who threw Brer Rabbit into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit, sullied by the tar baby (debt ceiling debate), was able to escape.

With the debt ceiling debate over for now we have irrefutable proof that the role of the GOP (Brer Fox) is to destroy Obama (Brer Rabbit) by any means necessary. Now Obama has to figure out how he will deal with the GOP from this day forward. No longer can he look to them to make compromises that are good for the country. He has to understand that from now on, he must seek the support of his party faithful and any moderates on the other side of the aisle.

While many Republicans, especially those buoyed by the Tea Party, see their roles as burning down the house that is the federal government, polls show that many supporters of the Tea Party (57 percent in some polls) seek compromise. They supported the Tea Party not because they wanted to destroy the government or Obama, but rather because they wanted a government that would work, that would no longer follow the status quo.

Instead, those people helped to create more dysfunction than ever. And now it is up to Obama to remind them of that mistake so it can be corrected in 2012.