As we watch in wonder (and with cheering) at the latest downfall of a tyrant in the Arab world, we need to stop a moment and have a little appreciation for the delicate minuet the United States - and specifically the President - has again played in the process. Conducting diplomacy in a fluid situation is never easy, and adding the confluence of conflicting realpolitick and idealistic interests (a conflict perhaps unique to American diplomacy) makes that task even harder. Many have sniped at the Administration during the Libyan revolution, from both sides. Yhe Republican sniping is, of course predictable - if the President made a speech praising the sunrise, the Republicans would note that he spoke kindly about an event in the East - you know, where Mecca is (hint hint). But those on the Left who made equally predictable predictions about mission creep and coming morasses also need to bite their tongues a little bit today. The President beat 'em all.
The superficial comparisons between Libya (and our involvement there) and Iraq/Affhanistan/Vietnam started almost as soon as Western intervention did. We're on the slippery slope, many said, and we're going to end up in another no-end-in-sight disaster like Afghanistan or iraq.
The examples on this site alone are many. I love the Tom Tomorrow cartoons, for example, but the April 25 and June 27 cartoons were, I think we can all now concede, wildly off the mark (hoeever gut wrenchingly funny and clever they may have been).
There are ways to forward our national interests, even in a violent sphere of the world and in a turbulent time, that don't rise to the level of us fighting a war. Obama has delicately maneuvered through that needle's eye, not once, but three times now, and he's doing pretty well so far on a fourth (Syria). Intervention in the Middle Eastern revolution countries has been carefully calibrated, subtle, and collective, in a manner that avoids the appearance (or the fact) of American imposition of wil,l without either abandoning our root support of human freedom or setting an example that might too greatly frighten other despotic regimes, in this area and elsewhere, that we might be coming after them, too. Instead, it's their own people coming after them, with America standing on the sidelines advocating for democracy, urging reforms (on those it damn well knows will never reform, thus making that failure something we can later decry), and refusing to countenance mass murder of protesters without leaping too far into the pool to prevent things (and thus become some sort of super-police). The mere length of that description gives some idea of how tough and multifaceted the balancing act is, and Obama (and Secretary Clinton) deserve major props for so admirably carrying it off thus far.
Contrast this to how we unfortunately wedded ourselves to the Shah of Iran until it was far, far too late - and the consequences of that identification with him on our foreign policy ever since. Certainly Iran's revolution had major differences from the current Arab uprisings - it was fed by a religious zealotry that virtually guaranteed the replacement of one form of tyranny with another. But we shot ourselves in the, er, foot there by appearing to be in man-love with the Shah, and made ourselves the most convenient Great Satan imaginable for the ayatollahs to blame everything on thereafter. I think Jimmy Carter has been underrated as a President, but he blew this one big time.
All of this, of course, is conditional praise. the whole carefully contrived operation could miss a cue and collapse at any moment, dependent as it is on such a constantly changing vortex of local dynamics, overarching world events, perceptions among the people of the various countries, and the reactions of the challenged regimes (not to mention their still inchoate successors). But the success so far as been pretty impressive - a type of success that's unfortunately characteristic of much of Obama's accomplishments. His Administration gets the basic governance stuff right in countless small ways, so that things that don't go wrong are many of his best achievements. The much derided stimulus (which indeed turned out to be too small by half) kept things from disintegrating, the bailout of GM and Chrysler prevented a massive loss of jobs, the careful disengagement from iraq and Afghanistan has (largely, thus far) avoided any major reversals in the new regimes' fortunes (and note the subtle but constant pressure Obama is keeping on the Karzai regime to clean its house. If if looks familiar, see its dealings with the rest of the Arab revolution). These are successes that need to be trumpeted, loudly and often. They run quite counter to the conventional media narrative that's developing of a weak and ineffective president. And they have the distinct advantage of being true, and verifiably so.
PS - it's late, and I type really poorly. Sorry for any typos.