Yesterday Ben Armbruster flagged this comment from Republican 2012 hopeful Tim Pawlenty arguing that the solution to U.S. problems in Libya is to just kill Moammar Ghadafi the way Osama bin Laden was killed.
Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is exploring a run for president, said he would have used U.S. forces to remove Moammar Gadhafi rather than just bomb Libya as President Obama has done.
“I would tell Gadhafi he’s got X number of days to get his affairs in order and go or we’re going to go get him,” Pawlenty said in an interview with the Tribune-Review on Friday.
Though I think ordering the Abbottabad raid was the right thing to do given the circumstances, it’s really troublesome to think that the lesson learned by this might be that it’s really easy to just go around offing people and the U.S. should just be doing more of that. Bin Laden’s death came at a very dear cost, both financially and in terms of human life, it wasn’t “easy.” While the administration is almost certainly targeting Ghadafi already, the conclusion drawn from the successful raid in Abbottabad shouldn’t be that American foreign policy problems can be solved through a few well-planned targeted killings.
