Let’s Be Honest About American Power
The etiquette of U.S. presidential candidacy requires that both candidates react to the latest violence in the Middle East by pretending there’s more they could do about it.
Mitt Romney contends that, if he’d been president, it never would have happened. How would he have avoided it? Stronger leadership. You can fill in for yourself what that’s supposed to mean.
Barack Obama pretends he can somehow bring those guilty of the murders in Libya to justice. True, he has the power to send more drones over the desert to target suspected enemies, but the president has been prosecuting the drone war with considerable enthusiasm through much of his first term, and it did nothing to prevent the violence in Benghazi.
The reality is that having the biggest arsenal in the world, the biggest military budget and the most advanced weaponry doesn’t buy the U.S. protection from a crazed mob in some distant country. It doesn’t even purchase Washington the ability to channel events in Libya, even though it helped rid the country of Muammar Gaddafi. All it brings is the right to watch from afar, exert what limited pressure it has, and hope for the best.
Mr. Obama probably knows the limits of U.S. power better than Mr. Romney, because he’s had to deal with it for the past four years. He understands that countries are eager for U.S. financial aid, and keen on military assistance as long as suits their needs, but aren’t about to take orders from Washington just because they accepted its money and weapons. At the moment Mr. Obama can’t even get the prime minister of Israel to quit criticizing him on U.S. television, even though the U.S. commitment to Israel is about as clear cut as you can get. He’s a hardly going to have the inside track with a mob that’s lost its head because of some amateurish film by some twit in California.