Obama and Libya – and the big question: Why?

On Monday night President Obama will address his nation for the first time since the military action against Libya began.

We are told by a senior administration official that the President will “discuss how our efforts in Libya have advanced our interests and averted a catastrophe.”

All that American citizens want to know from him is Why? Why is the US taking action in Libya?

Why should not be the hardest question when engaging in military operations.

Who will be in charge has been fought over as the US is desperate to hand over operational responsibility as soon as it can.

When? The administration makes the case that it intervened just in time to save possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians in Benghazi. But it cannot answer the question of when this will be over.

Asked: “Will the mission be over by the end of the year?” Defence Secretary Robert Gates says only: “I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that.”

How? The President is facing accusations in America that he went about this the wrong way. The administration was delighted that it got such a strong UN resolution supporting a no-fly zone. But it didn’t go to the US Congress to ask permission and that’s got many on the Left and on the Right furious.

What? We don’t even know what this action is. The US says what it is doing in Libya is not “an act of war”. But it doesn’t say what it is.

But the really big question it still struggles to answer is: “Why?”

An unprecedented double act of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defence Secretary Robert Gates have given numerous TV interviews in the last few days but have failed to answer that crucial question “Why?”

At first they say it was necessary to act quickly to avert a humanitarian crisis. They endlessly repeat Gaddafi’s quote that he intended to “show no mercy” to rebels in Benghazi.

But if this is a humanitarian mission that just raises further questions about why. Why Libya? Why not Cote d’Ivoire, or Sudan – Where far more innocent civilians are dying?

Will they do the same thing in Syria if civilians are being threatened? What about in countries where the repressive unelected leaders are friends of the US not foes?

Will they take the same action in Bahrain? Yemen? Saudi Arabia? No one in the administration seems to be able to answer these questions because there does not seem to be any kind of cohesive, consistent policy toward this “Arab Spring“.

Asked if the US has any vital national interests in Libya that forced an American intervention, the Cabinet Secretaries are forced to admit that there are not. But they quickly insist that there are vital European interests in Libya.

Hillary Clinton’s latest justification for taking action is that they were asked to do so by the UK and France – and that given how we helped America invade Afghanistan after 9-11 that they basically owed us one.

It’s not clear whether the same reasoning would see the Americans take action elsewhere in the Middle East if we ask them really nicely. Or whether the Afghan favour has now been repaid. We may still have a favour left over from the 2003 invasion of Iraq – she didn’t say.

Obama will have to take all of these questions and weave them into a coherent story to tell the American people. He will need to tell then just how far America is prepared to go to fight for freedom and democracy in the Middle East. Where he is prepared to intervene, when and why.

A really good speech has helped Obama out of a hole before now and maybe he can do it again. Assuming he has developed some kind of coherent strategy for dealing with these Arab revolutions by now.

So this speech is important. But in the end it will be the outcome that matters more to Obama than the reasons for going in.

If Libya blossoms into a flowering democracy, then early intervention will be seen as one of Obama’s greatest achievements. If the coalition gets dragged into a lengthy civil war and Gaddafi remains in power then this intervention may be seen as disastrous blunder. No matter why it was undertaken.