The Obama Doctrine: Is Ivory Coast next?
The headline on Drudge earlier today read “Is Ivory Coast next” and I have to think that is a great question. With the recent news that 1,000 massacred bodies were found in Ivory Coast this weekend Hillary Clinton declared the “U.S. is deeply concerned” about the situation over there. The current leader of Ivory Coast lost his re-election bid and refuses to step down to let the winner of that election to take his rightful seat. Hillary Clinton has called on Gbagbo to step down immediately and stop attacking civilians.
Does this sound a little bit familiar? At one point the Obama regime ordered Ghadaffi to step down and stop attacking his own people. The Obama regime’s official stance on Libya became muddled over the period of time leading up to the Libyan war with some members calling for Ghadaffi’s resignation while others stating that regime change was not the goal of our attack on Libya.
Eventually Barack Obama addressed the nation and (sort of) clarified our goal and reason for invading Libya. While nobody still understands the true goal of the mission and while nobody still knows who we are supporting or if the ultimate goal is regime change, one aspect of his speech provided us with what I think we can call the Obama Doctrine.
Here is the Obama Doctrine:
Qaddafi declared he would show ‘no mercy’ to his own people,” said President Obama. “He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment. In the past, we have seen him hang civilians in the streets, and kill over a thousand people in a single day.
“Now we saw regime forces on the outskirts of the city,” Obama said. “We knew that if we waited, if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”
“But when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act,” said Obama. “That’s what happened in Libya over the course of these last six weeks
When our VALUES are at stake we have a responsibility to act; when a massacre is about to occur we have to attempt to prevent is to help protect the “conscience of the world.” The Obama Doctrine is twofold; it is humanitarian and it is nation building. The Obama Doctrine became a nation building document as soon as he used the word values in his speech. By going on the offensive when America’s values are at stake and not only when America’s interests are at stake we are attempting to impose our values on other countries and to me that reeks of nation building.
The Obama Doctrine is obviously a humanitarian one as well. We must prevent evil dictators from committing atrocities against their own people, even if that means interfering in another country’s civil war. The Obama Doctrine states that we have a “responsibility to act” to ensure that these atrocities do not occur.
I know how contradictory the Obama Doctrine seems when compared to the positions that candidate Obama held while running for office, but that is not the topic of this post so I will let it go at that as I have already covered this topic in the past.
So, the Obama Doctrine basically states that we have a moral obligation to act when we see a nation’s leader committing atrocities against his people and we have just learned that 1,000 bodies were discovered in Ivory Coast. According to the linked article this is being called the “single biggest atrocity in the long battle for control of Ivory Coast.”
Does this mean that Ivory Coast will be the latest target of the Obama Doctrine. After all, the criteria is all there; our values are as much at stake here as they were in Libya and we have atrocities already committed in the violent civil war. So what is Barack Obama’s official position on Ivory Coast? After releasing the Obama Doctrine can he possibly ignore the fighting in Ivory Coast? If he does wouldn’t it be a stain on the “the conscience of the world?”
It would seem to me–looking at Barack Obama’s own (latest, they could change at any time) words–that the United States has the “responsibility to act” on the issue of Ivory Coast and I don’t see how Barack Obama could justify ignoring the horrors of Ivory Coast in light of the United States’ intervening in Libya.
If Barack Obama ignores Ivory Coast and allows the slaughter to continue it will only lead to more questions, the most pertinent being; Why Libya in the first place?
America's Watchtower 
I doubt that Obami realizes that he has a “doctrine”. However, your point is a good one. Why not then the Ivory Coast, or Zimbobwe, Bahrain, or Syria, or North Korea or a dozen other places around the world. I’m convinced he doesn’tt know why he our military to Libya. He is waiting for someone to tell him why he did it. The man is pathetic!
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I agree that Obama doesn’t even realize he has a doctrine, but he needs to remember that words have meanings and when he made his speech he created his doctrine whether he knows it or not. He cannot possibly ignore any of the countries you mentioned now that he has stated his doctrine or else he will be seen as a hypocrite. I think you are right, he was told to bomb Libya and so he did and he has no clue why we did it.
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Not even his fellow Democrats knows what he’s doing. He may not know either. This could be groups like al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood taking advantage of his inexperience.
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This regime is walking around clueless on this issue and it is all because we were pulled along by the nose by the UN.
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President Barack Obama may be the smartest man in the room at most White House meetings back off Hillary I said man but he can t make the right decision to save his life or his presidency. He s starting to make Dumb and Dumber look like boy geniuses..His latest self-inflicted wound comes from an attempt to throw his weight around in the West African quagmire of the Ivory Coast s two-president standoff..Instead of coming off like the hero who saves the day Obama ends up as the inept bumbler who can t even get a small-time tinpot dictator to take his phone call. And second phone call Duh-mmmer..I ve written previously about the sad and dangerous situation in the Ivory Coast and about my increasingly profound disappointment in the lost-promise of Obama s presidency.
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