Games, Leadership, and Libya

Jonah Goldberg is all upset because he is being criticized for writing

Lastly, what’s most infuriating is that if this ends “well” — say Qaddafi is killed by one of his own men in the next couple days or the rebels manage to assassinate him, or he flees to Venezuela, whatever — you know that Obama will take credit for leading this successful mission and he will be praised for his “leadership” by many of the same people who are now pretending they believe this fiction that NATO has taken over.

I have, I confess, no idea if this is, in fact, the basis for the criticism. I am not going read the whole dealio. Rather, let's consider Goldberg's claims as stand alones.

In terms of the "infuriating," Goldberg creates knowledge, "you know that," and then uses it to criticize a policy he agrees with. Odd, isn't, that the only form of authentic leadership Goldberg accepts is Bushlike ordering about. It's just barely possible, which is to say absolutely true, that tell your allies that you support what they are doing but aren't going to "lead" is leading.

Goldberg then argues

Drum and Sargent say I’m playing a “game” and that I’m simply laying down the groundwork against Obama. It’s fairly typical of the way Drum writes about conservatives from what I can tell. But all I can do is give my word that I’m not playing a game. Or laying any groundwork.  I actually care about the policy at hand, which Drum grudgingly concedes with his tendentious musing about conservatives’ “peculiar worldview.”

If you claim that in the future someone you don't like will engage in exactly the behavior you find most dislikeable, then yes you are playing a game.

He goes on:

Anyway Drum’s post is actually quite non-responsive. Does he deny that, should things go well in Libya, Obama will take credit for his leadership? And if that is the case, doesn’t that suggest that Obama is either lying now about not leading or will be lying in the future when/if he claims credit for his leadership? Also, Will Drum (and Sargent) not give Obama credit for his leadership should Nato, under Canada’s “command,” claim victory? I doubt that! And what about the White House saying today that responsibility for how this ends is “not on our shoulders”? Well if everything comes up roses, will those weasel words go down the memory hole or will they be still be valid? You see my point? Either America’s lack of leadership is true or it is a lie. It can’t be both, can it? I don’t think I’m the one playing a game.

Yes, again, if everything goes exactly the way a man who has been wrong about everything thinks it will, then sure he'll have been right. But of course, if it doesn't then he'll have been wrong. And he'll have been playing a game. The game, much like Gingrich's unreflexive constantly shifting statements against what ever it is Obama does even if it is what Gingrich supports, is to be against Obama.

Me? I continue to oppose the Libyan adventure because it is, I think, more likely than not to not work. Indeed, I suspect it will turn out like 99% of interventions/invasions/war with all manner of bad things that no one, meant none sarcastically, could have foreseen.

I have no idea why Obama chose to bomb Libya, but am increasingly enamored of the hypnotism thesis