John Yoo: Obama didn't kill Qaddafi enough
Torture advocate John Yoo gives Obama some credit for Qaddafi's downfall, but with a caveat : But Obama does not get full credit, I think, because he took so long to intervene. Recall that the U.S. intervened only after the U.N. Security Council approved intervention. Obama chose to wait until Qaddafi had driven the rebels into a last holdout in Benghazi. He chose to restrain our operations along the lines set out by the Security Council, which forbade ground troops. This prolonged the ouster of Qaddafi into a full-blown civil war and resulted in more disintegration of the nation’s institutions than was necessary. To the extent that it is harder to get a new government to stand up and to collect and control Libya’s arms, part of the blame must also go to Obama’s delay because of his undue sensitivity to foreign opinion and the U.N. Yoo doesn't really offer a basis for American intervention into Libya's foreign affairs that would demand unilateral American action, though. I