Libya: moral blackmail trumps political debate

This article was published in Spiked Online 30 March 2011

In his address to the nation, Obama cynically elevated the moral imperative over 'nasty' political criticisms.

President Barack Obama’s address to the American nation on the intervention in Libya was lengthy, but it didn’t put to rest the many questions that have been raised about the bombing campaign. We are still not clear about the mission and the endgame, why Congress was not allowed to vote on it, and so on.

Yet if you strip away the doubts that linger over the Libya venture, there is a core issue that Obama sought to close the deal on during his address: the humanitarian need to stop a slaughter. The crux of his argument was contained in this passage: ‘We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi – a city nearly the size of Charlotte – could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world. It was not in our national interest to let that happen. I refused to let that happen.’