John Bolton: Obama's quagmire

John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN, is author of "Surrender Is Not an Option."

Opponents of the Vietnam War -- that seemingly endless, inconclusive, increasingly unpopular and ever-more-deadly and costly conflict -- called it a "quagmire." They said it was unwinnable and should never have been fought -- and that America must avoid similar future wars. Today, our real risk of "quagmire" is Libya.

Our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president has gotten things badly wrong. By demanding Moammar Khadafy's ouster while restricting US military force to the more limited objective of protecting innocent civilians, President Obama has set himself up for massive strategic failure.

Yet America is now committed. Khadafy won't care that he's being bombed for "humanitarian" rather than "regime change" reasons; it is absolutely certain that, once able, he'll retaliate against those doing his forces mortal harm. If he keeps power over any significant part of Libya, he'll likely return to international terrorism, as he has already threatened. He may also resume his quest for nuclear weapons -- and this time we'll have no hope of negotiating him out of it as we did in 2003-04.

Obama is hypersensitive to the Vietnam analogy -- arguing, for example, as he authorized a US "surge" in Afghanistan in 2009 that it is not another Vietnam.

Of course, Vietnam became a "quagmire" because of US unwillingness to persevere to reach our legitimate objectives...