Target Khadaffy

If you were a young man in Arizona in the eighties, you know Dave Pratt. He is much in the mold of a Howard Stern but local and more musically oriented. Dave Pratt and his Sex Machine band were big mouthed trout in this smallish pond but they did have one break-out national hit, the comic masterpiece Drop it on Khadaffy. As radio’s ‘Wild One’ Pratt was a man of his times. The infectious licks and Middle Eastern hooks wedded to open, violent assertion of US interests was hugely popular. It is probably needless to say, if you think about it, that this song that encourages the airstrikes on Libya of 1986 was actually a RESPONSE to those actions. It is a safe bet that Dave Pratt, like most of his audience and demographic was as ignorant of Libya’s existence as they were of its troublesome habits until American jets kicked up a goodly amount of dust there.

At this time the nation and the planet were just beginning to experiment with full-throttle news delivery. CNN was earning Turner his fortune while turning the world into a news-obsessed hive and it seemed even then that an outsized proportion of the most appalling world news was coming out of the slurry of oil, blood and sand that we call the Middle East. The Marine barracks bombing was the largest event in the American mind at this point. The Multi-national Force, mostly us and the French, had lost three hundred fighting men murdered in their bunks in these two attacks while they were attempting to calm the Lebanese civil war. The response was a fairly hasty pullout because of the terrorists’ permanent advantage that you are never quite sure where to aim your return fire. Although Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy, was almost certainly at fault there was a serious and growing understanding in America that we were being beaten up abroad. There was a potent urge to hit back, precision be damned.

Let’s not lament the unfairness that brought retribution to Khaddafy’s door. He had earned retribution in his own right. Khaddafy openly supported the Red Brigades, the Red Army Faction, the IRA and any lesser, available anti-western group on the ground in Europe. Airport attacks in Rome and Vienna killed dozens and maimed hundreds. These quaint, commie killers from a gentler time must have lost their enthusiasm though, or simply lost their numbers, as the Libyans had to take a hands-on approach in the bombing of a Berlin discotheque favored by local American soldiers. As a military attack, this was a pathetic failure. Only three people were killed at the La Belle nightclub and only two were GIs. The operatives got away clean but they muffed the exfiltration as some doofus in Tripoli, maybe Khaddafy himself, sent a congratulatory telex to the bombers at their desks at the Libyan Consulate. This message was intercepted and found its way to another desk: that of Ronald Wilson Reagan.

But enough of the ancient history. Let’s address today’s serious and pressing question: how can all this help or hinder Barack Hussein Obama? Yes the stylishly uniformed Gaddafi of today, the gentleman recently on the warmer side of Obama’s push to warm up relations in the region, is one and the same of Drop it on Khaddafy fame and one has to wonder if he was always practicing an advanced form of tactical diversion with the infinite spellings of his name that anticipated our Google-fueled existence? At any rate, unlike Ahmadinejad and his youthful indiscretions with US hostages, Khaddafy does not deny his own history. On the contrary his chief claim to his seat  in autocratic charge of Libya is his aggressive pushback against the westerners. Now, it should be said that most of what Khaddafy had and has against the west is that they, we, were sometimes actually aiding anti-Khadaffy forces within Libya. The French were prominent here, to their credit. Even then though the prospect of “democracy” or simple chaos bringing in an islamist government that would be worse for EVERYONE (except themselves) was a real concern which covered more real and more cynical concerns that the oil should not, in any case, be interrupted.

For the numerous, recently ^[1]–minted ^[2]Reagan fans, of whom the President is one, this is truly a golden opportunity. If you want to reap Reagan-esque electoral bounties, it is possible that you just MIGHT have to engage in a tiny bit of Reagan-esque action. For this, friends, Khaddafy has meticulously teed himself up.

The first concern of the political animal is always a consideration of the downside, the foremost danger to the political animal is that his natural enemies will make hay with any controversial decision. But Reagan’s involvement in the history innocculates Obama from this prospect, does it not? Not only could he vaporize Khaddafy and claim the same justifications as Reagan, he could claim to have succeeded at what Reagan made only a ham-handed attempt! What Republican would dare speak against that? Now, it is possible that the opposition, Boehner and the boys or some opportunistic anti-empirialist in the Ron Paul mode might claim that the personalization of the issue is wrongheaded but again Reagan rides to the rescue. Operation El Dorado Canyon actually DID target Khaddafy personally. Only due to a warning from the treacherous Maltans did he escape to live nomadically in tents in fear of a rerun ever after.

Of course the President might also fear a targetting failure as Reagan suffered and perhaps think he could not brazen through it, as Reagan did. This is rational but also let’s not forget that Reagan had fairly primitive tools at his command. Stealth fighter/bombers existed but were super secret. The Cold Warrior Reagan was not going to expose them for so piddling an errand. The bombing was a quiet affair, as these things go, and Khaddafy was targetted the old fashioned way; by a spy. We still use spys, of course, where we can. The Obama Administration has no less enthusiasm for this than did Reagan or Bush but we also now have the celebrated new technology that even during Desert Storm was dropping bombs on individual heads. Mr Obama has wisely demonstrated an especial fondness for the Predator drone strike which would be ideally suited for this enterprise. What if, yesterday, when Khaddafy was delivering his exhortations on traitors and hallucinogens from that castle parrapet, he had just vanished in a ball of fire on live TV?

First off would come the laughter, naturally. But once the world had dried her tears of joy there might well come some recriminations even from those who were happy to see the fellow off. We speak not of the Republicans and their sanguinary hordes but of Democrats, newsies, pacifists, a faction of islam…. more or less The Left; the folks Obama justly thinks of as his own. The press may take a bit of umbrage, one would think. What, they would ask themselves in public, is the ethical implication of directing a missile through a live news feed? This might seem a bit precious but let’s not forget that the moral question also has serious business ramifications for the news industry. What were the numbers like for Larry King’s Khadaffy interviews anyhow? Pretty good, I think. This is nothing to sneeze at but the press isn’t going to restrict their love for Obama on the issue. Not soon.

The pacifically inclined are not so easily handled not least because Senator Obama contrived himself a leader of this caucus. Bush’s cowboyism, so-called (which was nothing but a charmless aping of the fool Reagan, yesterday), was the chief plank in the Democrats’ soapbox before they were actually in charge. But much of this would-be “betrayal” of sophisticated pacifist sentiment has already happened. The Patriot Act renewal was a fulsome pie-in-the-face for this crowd although it passed nearly unremarked out in the real world. A voluble fraction of this faction HAS publicly rebuked Obama for his endorsement of Bush’s foremost depravity, some to the point of saying they will not vote to re-elect him. But this means they either will not vote or will vote Nader. Or LaRouche. Maybe Kucinich, if he is out there. As you might imagine, this outcome holds little terror for me, although it may for Obama but even he knows the pacifists are a tiny group, not least because he left them himself upon inauguration.

A more serious element that might tut-tut at Khaddafy’s rapid, American assisted exit is the greybearded dandies in the foreign policy world. Here again is an opportunity for Obama to genuinely channel his new role model. The 1986 attack was roundly denounced and resisted. Neither Spain, nor France nor Germany would allow use of the local US bases to launch the bombers. Indeed, all three refused to allow them overflight! A quick glance at the map reveals how serious an obstacle this was. It turned the operation into a naval mission, more or less, as the planes flew over international waters, through the Straits of Gibraltar with multiple in-flight refuelings. Even Reagan’s own devilish foreign policy staff balked at such an in-yer-face rebuke to most of NATO so you can imagine what Democrat-types now counseling Obama will say. These are the ladies and gentleman who fear most of all that leaders of other nations will get it into their heads that the US might just kill any old tyrant with American blood on his hands who sticks his head out. Obama could really bust a Reagan here, by publicly regretting that such an obvious truism might need to be taught! 

Could you imagine that? Bush’s much envied “Bullhorn Moment” would recede in comparison. “Tear down this wall” would be eclipsed by the forthright ACTION, over words just demonstrated. The accusations (or perhaps simple observations) of “dithering” that have rung at Obama from both poles would be immediately scuttled. His voicelessness would not be simply forgotten but converted in a flash into inspired statesmanship. He is suddenly Teddy Roosevelt, speaking softly but dealing crushing blows. He will be Truman, the quiet man of strength and purpose. The growing susserations of cartercartercarter that haunt his dreams will explode along with Khaddafy never to return. And the last possibly difficult faction, the Democrats, the REAL Professional Left in elected office will be passionately relieved to have ANYTHING drive their bad news off the screens no matter what their other concerns. And all this does not yet address the opportunity present in the more recent crime and humiliation of Lockerbie or Muamar’s ongoing domestic savagery.

Of course none of this sort of calculation can be found in historical Reaganism. I can find precious little in historical Bushism. But we do find it out and proud in Carterism, Clintonism and Obamaism so let us reach across the aisle, as the saying goes, and say, you don’t have to do this because it is the right thing, although you know it is. You can do it because it is a good move for your own career; a bit of figuring that would have been as alien to Reagan as decency is to Khaddafy, but we work with what we are given.