President Obama took a moment to herald the death of longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi and mark a turning point for the Libyan people, their relentless pursuit of freedom and their country’s democratic future.
Speaking in a live address from the White House Rose Garden Thursday afternoon, Obama welcomed the lifting of “the dark shadow of tyranny” from Libya.
Hours after reports about the death of the ousted Libyan leader, the President proclaimed that “today we can definitively say the Qaddafi regime has come to an end.”
“One of the world’s longest-serving dictators is no more,” he continued.
The relatively brief, five-minute remarks also gave Obama the opportunity to revel in the successful outcome of his much-maligned Libya policy.
Throughout the beginning of the Arab spring and the first weeks and months of the uprising in Libya, Obama was attacked from both the left and the right. Republicans blasted him for waiting to gather international support before taking unilateral military action to help the rebels fighting Qaddafi, arguing that each day without U.S. support gave Qaddafi a greater chance to reconstitute and kill more rebels.
When Obama finally authorized initial U.S. airstrikes after gaining NATO support, Democrats criticized him for getting involved in yet another expensive military battle when our forces were already stretched too thin in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle spent months earlier this year angrily denouncing Obama’s decision to authorize military action without Congressional approval.
In the end, Obama said, his policies produced the desired results — both for the Libyan people and the U.S., which has tangled with the eccentric, mercurial dictactor for decades.
“Without a single U.S. service member on the ground, we achieved our objective,” Obama said, and soon the NATO mission would “come to an end.”
Qaddafi’s death also reminds Americans, Obama said, of his role in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people.
“We recall their bright smiles, their extraordinary lives,” Obama said.
The President also pledged to continue to support the fledging democracy as it transitioned towards “its first free elections.” He said establishing a democracy would be “the ultimate rebuke” to Qaddafi.
Obama also sounded a note of warning for other intransigent Arab despots such as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, both of whom are presiding over brutal crackdowns on “Arab Spring” crowds.
“The rule of an iron fist inevitably comes to an end,” Obama warned. “Those leaders who try to deny [their peoples] their dignity will not succeed.”
At the end of his remarks, a reporter yelled out a question about whether he his foreign policy doctrine was to “lead from behind.” If Obama heard it, he didn’t react as he walked away from the lectern and strode towards the Oval Office.
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