Obama, Libya and the GOP

How Republicans can behave like a constructive opposition.

President Obama made a substantial case for his Libya intervention for the first time Monday evening, and however overdue and self-referential ("I refused to let that happen"), we welcome the effort. Perhaps it will give Republicans a reason to emerge as constructive, rather than partisan, foreign-policy critics as well.

We say "perhaps" because the instinctive temptation for some Republicans has been to oppose the Libyan mission led by a Democratic Commander in Chief. Some object to the operation's cost amid record deficits, others gripe about Mr. Obama's reflexive bow to the "international community," while still others are responding to a part of the GOP cable-TV and Internet base that wants fewer foreign interventions after Iraq and Afghanistan.

A few prominent Republicans are already throwing out that last pitch. "What are we doing in Libya?" asked Mississippi Governor and possible Presidential candidate Haley Barbour last week in Iowa. "I mean, we have to be careful in my mind about getting into nation-building exercises, whether it's in Libya or somewhere else. We've been in Afghanistan 10 years."

Yes, America has, and for national security reasons that the last two Presidents have found persuasive. As for "nation-building" in Libya, we have yet to notice a U.S. official who has advocated the deployment of American ground troops, much less a long-term mission rebuilding a Libyan state.

Mr. Barbour's glib resort to this trope of the isolationist left suggests he hasn't thought very hard about foreign policy. It is the kind of politics Americans have come to expect from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid—"this war is lost"—not Republicans who have since Reagan been the party of robust nationalism.

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U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about US and NATO involvement in military action against Libya during a speech at the National Defense University.

This is not to say that Mr. Obama's policy is above criticism, which he invites by so overtly disavowing American global leadership. Republicans instinctively recoil when they hear a President put greater moral stock in the Arab League and U.N. than in Congress before using military force.

House Speaker John Boehner's questions to Mr. Obama last week concerning the Libyan mission's goals are certainly appropriate, and it was clear from Monday night's speech that they have influenced the Administration's argument. Mr. Obama was at pains to portray the Libyan effort as the product of U.S. leadership, though the French, Arabs and Libyan rebels all had to plead the U.S. to act.

This is what we mean by constructive criticism by a loyal opposition whose goal is to help the U.S. succeed in its mission—as the American military is well on its way to doing, by the way. Despite the diplomatic confusion of last week, the expansion of a no-fly zone to target Moammar Gadhafi's forces is already paying benefits on the ground. The rebels have retaken several cities and yesterday were moving on the Gadhafi hometown of Sirte. Gadhafi's loyalists must be recalculating the cost of their allegiance.

Republicans ought to prod Mr. Obama to push for a faster resolution that ends with the toppling of Gadhafi and his sons from power. Any result short of that guarantees a divided Libya that may well require international peacekeepers to separate the warring factions. If there's any leader whose terrorist nature the American people understand, it is Gadhafi. Rather than predict doom for the Libyan exercise, Republicans should insist that Gadhafi must go for it to be successful.

Republicans also have a chance—and for GOP Presidential candidates the obligation—to put Libya in the context of the larger changes in the Middle East. One reason to intervene in Libya is to show the Assads and Ahmadinejads that the West is willing and able to act against tyrants who slaughter their own people and foment terrorism. Hillary Clinton's weekend howler that Syria's Bashar Assad is different from Gadhafi because he is a "reformer" is the kind of thinking that deserves rebuttal, if not ridicule.

The credibility of U.S. power is essential to maintaining our influence in a Middle East that is erupting in popular revolt against decades of injustice. The U.S. should be working actively to influence events so that the Middle East that emerges is freer and less hostile to American purposes. Yet our sense is that President Obama has been needlessly, and perhaps dangerously, passive in the face of this major strategic upheaval. Republicans should challenge Mr. Obama on the subject of U.S. leadership, especially in the Middle East.

We understand the instinctive mistrust of this most political of Presidents, a man whose every decision now is rooted in his desire for re-election. This is not a President who leads from the front—on the budget, or on Libya. But that doesn't mean that Republicans should wash their hands of American global leadership. Their opportunity is to make the case for what American leadership should look like.