Kerry: Qaddafi’s death a victory for Obama

Posted By Josh Rogin Thursday, October 20, 2011 - 12:11 PM Share

The death of deposed Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi vindicates the Obama administration's multilateral military strategy in Libya, according to Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA).

"The United States demonstrated clear-eyed leadership, patience, and foresight by pushing the international community into action after Qaddafi promised a massacre," Kerry said in a statement. "Though the administration was criticized both for moving too quickly and for not moving quickly enough, it is undeniable that the NATO campaign prevented a massacre and contributed mightily to Qaddafi's undoing without deploying boots on the ground or suffering a single American fatality."

Some have argued that the Obama administration was pushed into military intervention in Libya by the international community, led by the French and the British. Regardless, Kerry emphasized that he was one of the voices that supported the intervention.

"This is a victory for multilateralism and successful coalition-building in defiance of those who derided NATO and predicted a very different outcome," he said.

Kerry's statement also referenced his Wall Street Journal op-ed published in March, in which he defended the NATO-led action and made clear that it never had the goal of forcing Qaddafi from power.

"The military intervention was not directly intended to force Qaddafi from power, but the international community will remain united in maintaining diplomatic and economic pressure on a thug who has lost any legitimacy he ever possessed," Kerry wrote at the time.

Kerry's counterpart, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), expressed hope that the new Libyan government's foreign policy would be more Western-leaning.

"If Qaddafi is confirmed dead and his loyalists defeated, it marks a critical moment for the Libyan people to turn their nation away from its grim past as a rogue state and toward a future of freedom marked by alliances with the United States, Israel, European democracies, and other responsible nations," she said in her own statement.

Both Kerry and Ros-Lehtinen urged the National Transitional Council government to adhere to standards of political inclusion, transparency, and move quickly toward establishing a democracy.

"The Libyan people must seize this opportunity to realize their democratic aspirations and not squander it through factional fighting over the political spoils," Ros-Lehtinen said. "The new leaders must demonstrate a commitment to working with the U.S., and to securing control over dangerous weapons and rooting out extremist groups."