The United States plunged into its third Middle East conflict Saturday, launching missile strikes against Muammar Qaddafi's armed forces in Libya even as our leaders denied that we were going to war. With the approval of the Arab League and the U.N. Security Council in hand, the U.S. took its first active step in what it surely hopes — despite the official denials — will be the end of the 42-year reign of Africa's most erratic leader.
Halfway around the world in Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide came home to an enthusiastic welcome from his followers and cold silence from his enemies. The former Haitian president, who had spent the last seven years in South Africa, landed in Port-Au-Prince Friday after President Obama personally failed to convince South African President Jacob Zuma to delay Aristide's return until after the second round of Haitian elections that began Sunday.
Aristide could tell Qaddafi about the perils of having the U.S. fall out of "like" with you. Both men were once viewed as American allies, but now both are cast as enemies of democracy by Washington. They symbolize the hypocrisy in our foreign policy — and one reason it is so difficult for the Obama administration, and previous U.S. administrations, to convince people around the world that America's intentions are as pure and simple as we would like them to believe.
In 1994 President Bill Clinton used our military might to restore Aristide to power, three years after the winner of what was arguably the most democratic election in Haiti's history had been ousted in a military coup. In 2004, during his second term in office, Aristide again boarded a plane provided by the U.S., this time for a hurried exit as a rebel force of murky origins advanced toward Port-au-Prince.
He now says he was kidnapped and forced into exile by the Bush administration. His return on Friday, and the outpouring of support from thousands of supporters, showed that despite his years in South Africa, Aristide remains a potent and polarizing force in Haitian politics.
Until a few weeks ago, Qaddafi was a close ally in the war on terror, reportedly helping Western nations attack and destroy Islamic terror networks in Africa and Europe. This relationship was fairly new, the aftermath of Qaddafi's remarkable public abandonment of his sponsorship of insurgent groups and terrorist acts, such as the Pan Am 103 plane crash.
Qaddafi had decided to go straight, it seemed, paying reparations to the Lockerbie victims and abandoning plans to acquire weapons of mass destruction. For several years now, American officials have praised the unpredictable Libyan leader as an important partner in the war on terror.
But that budding relationship was upset by the wave of democracy sweeping the Arab world. The yearning for real participation in governance put all of our friendly dictators in an uncomfortable light. While the ouster of Tunisia's president was not significant to American interests, Hosni Mubarak's fall in strategically important Egypt exposed American double-talk about democracy against the backdrop of our obsession with al-Qaida.
American leaders may have preached democracy's importance, but our reluctance to abandon a close ally in Egypt and our waffling on the challenges to authoritarian governments in Yemen and Bahrain have left our foreign policy contradictions — and our support for dictators — fully exposed and fully exploitable by al-Qaida and other enemies of the United States.
We did not suddenly discover that Qaddafi was a ruthless leader, willing to use brute force against his own citizens to retain power and appealing to other Arabs to join him in fighting the "crusaders." For four decades he used raw power and a cult of personality to retain control of Libya.
In addition to funding Islamic terrorists, he instigated and funded some of the bloodiest conflicts in Africa while casting himself as an African leader. In the New York Times last week, Michael Scheuer, a former CIA official, defended America's dealings with people like Qaddafi. "Foreign policy and intelligence doesn't have anything to do with values," he explained. "It has to do with material interests and security. We would be blind in most of the world if we only dealt with Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm."
It was an unusually frank admission of what superpowers are willing to do to look after their own interests. Now that having Qaddafi as a friend is embarrassing, we've taken a step away from him, if not from Libyan oil. No doubt, part of Obama's calculation is not to end up on the side opposite those who control the spigot in Libya, whether or not they are democrats.
Washington's breakup with Aristide came seven years ago, after it appeared that he had lost a substantial portion of his disillusioned base — and hardened the opposition of the powerful elite. But he still had two years left to serve in a term to which he had been democratically elected, and a lot of Haitians hoped that America would back the democratic process, even if it didn't like the democrat.
Massive demonstrations (funded by his enemies, his supporters argued) pressed for his departure; he and his entourage were increasingly linked to corruption and murders of critics, journalists and potential competitors. When a small band of armed men began a slow march from the northern part of Haiti toward the capital, U.S. and French officials reportedly warned Aristide that they could not protect him.
Ten years after Bill Clinton had praised him as Haiti's best hope for democracy, Aristide was suddenly a pariah, flown secretly out of the country and dumped in central Africa without finishing his term of office. Eventually Thabo Mbeki, then president of South Africa, offered him exile.
On his return last week, Aristide criticized the exclusion of his Fanmi Lavalas party from the electoral process that the U.S. had endorsed, saying it represented the "exclusion of the majority." He has refrained from directly criticizing Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat, the two presidential candidates in the runoff. No doubt, his presence has already undermined the legitimacy of the result. But after seven years abroad, at least Aristide is back home.
For Qaddafi, hunkered down in his bunker and hoping that the bombs aren't smart enough to find him, the divorce from the U.S. could prove a lot more costly. Unlike Haiti, which at best is a foreign policy annoyance to the U.S. (no boat people washing up on the Florida beaches, please), Libya is far more strategic. It borders Egypt and is a significant supplier of oil. The U.S. may argue that its U.N. mandate does not include killing or removing Qaddafi, but hey, bad things can happen when you break up.
Joel Dreyfuss is The Root's managing editor.