The Hawkish Chicken

President Obama, beware liberal, spandex-wearing senators bearing gifts of foreign policy advice.

Senator John F. Kerry has a lot of nerve backing a no-fly zone over Libya. President Obama should beware the calls from so-called allies like this to follow his advice. You have to know that if the going gets tough, the Kerry gets going. He'll stand on the floor of the Senate and baldy declare he was for the no-fly zone before he was against it, and that President Obama lied us into war in Libya. His qualified support in the article already provides him with the room to distance himself from a decision to impose a no-fly zone if you miss any of his check marks. "Oh, so sorry Mr. President, you didn't provide enough humanitarian aid first--and I did warn that it wouldn't work if it gets to full-scale civil war (and what the heck is it now?). Now where are those impeachment statutes?"

And Kerry's logic is amusing if it wasn't so frightening that it comes from one of only 100 senators--presumably our best and brightest legislators. He actually uses the example of the post-Desert Storm southern Iraq no-fly zone to bolster the case for doing the same over Libya. He does this even though he accurately notes that the Saddam government still managed to slaughter and defeat the Shia rebels under that no-fly zone in 1991.

Further, while Kerry wants the rebels to own their own revolution by keeping our ground forces out of Libya, he salutes our air efforts over Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s as supporting evidence. He conveniently ignores the large US ground presence in both Balkan regions that lasted years after the clean air campaigns were over. Does the man even read what is penned in his name?

The senator's views on Iraq over the following years are also instructive, going from voting against authorizing Desert Storm to post-facto saluting the no-fly zone over Iraq in 1991 to understanding the threat of Saddam in 2003 to claiming we were lied into war with Saddam's Iraq by the time he ran for president in 2004.

What a piece of work. President Obama, don't say you weren't warned.

UPDATE: Oh, how could Senator Kerry be asking for a no-fly zone when the Libya question clearly hasn't passed the global test?