Should Bush get credit for Libya
Abe Greenwald gives the Bush administration credit for disarming Gaddafi:
In other words, he saw that WMD, radical Islam, and Middle East autocracy were on a collision course, and that the American promotion of democracy abroad was the best chance at averting disaster. With new reports that Qaddafi has fled the capital, while his military jets fire on Libyan protestors, and that extremists from all over the region are looking to exploit new power vacuums, itâ??s worth considering what role Libyan WMD might have played in these events. Thankfully, that is now a question of speculation rather than observation.
And he's right, kind of. While there is some debate about how much weight should be accorded the Iraq war in spurring Gaddafi to dump his WMD (and whether that remotely justifies the war), getting him to do so was a clear policy success of the Bush administration. But it's worth thinking this through because President Bush's success with Libya had nothing to do with democracy promotion. Just the opposite: the bargain the Bush administration made to get Gaddafi to drop his nukes was to solidify his grip on the country, ease international sanctions and legitimize his regime. In other words, Bush pursued a "realist" course with Libya.
