Should Bush get credit for Libya?
Paul Pillar argues against those, like columnist Charles Krauthammer, who credit the invasion of Iraq for scaring Gaddafi into giving up his nuclear program:
The particular mistake among Krauthammer's assertions I feel especially moved to correctâ??because I was personally involved in the relevant diplomacyâ??is that â??Qadhafi was so terrified by what we did to Saddam & Sons that he plea-bargained away his weapons of mass destruction.â? In fact, the Libyan ruler's dramatic turnabout, in which he gave up his involvement in international terrorism and instead became a counterterrorist partner of the West, as well as giving up his unconventional weapons programs, had begun years earlier. Qadhafi was responding to the pressure and ostracism of multilateral sanctions and to the prospect of an improved international standing if he came clean about the bombing of Pan Am 103 and was willing to deal seriously with the United States on the issues of most concern to the United States. The secret negotiations that confirmed and codified all this were begun in 1999, under the Clinton Administration. It was the willingness of the United States to engage Qadhafi's regime that made this all possible, not some prospect that military force would be used to remove himâ??let alone, as with the ouster of Saddam, that force would be used to oust him no matter how he tried to adjust his policies.
In the interest of not being churlish, I still think the Bush administration deserves credit for taking "yes" for an answer when it came to Libya. They could have spurned this engagement, as they spurned feelers from Iran, and left Libya considerably worse off than it is today.
