- A lot of this fuss is politics… I said there would be no troops on the ground. I said we would not be carrying the lion’s share of the operation, but as members of NATO we would be supportive of it because it’s in our national security interest and it’s the right thing to do. We have done exactly what I said we would do.
- President Obama • Defending his military intervention in Libya, and dismissing complaints from Congress. In the process of doing so, Obama struck a more confrontational tone towards his critics than is common for his administration. There’s a definite argument that one can make for the warfare going on in Libya, on fairly simply moral grounds — nobody really doubts what would have happened in Benghazi had nobody moved to stop it. Making that sort of argument would, we think, go a lot further to appeal to American sensibilities than judicial wrangling over defining “hostilities” would. source
