BG writes in with a handy tip for scrapbooking on a budget:

Dread and Awful Czar –

Here’s something, maybe.

For the last couple of weeks, everyone’s been fuming about President Obama’s lack of action on the Libya front. He says it’s time for Khaddafi to go, but backed up his words with – well, nothing, actually. He said the U.S. wasn’t going to go into Libya alone, that the U.N. needed to lead.

Khaddafi seems to have read that as a signal to go ahead and wipe out his rebels, with the assurance that if the U.S. wasn’t going to do anything, the U.N. wouldn’t, either, beyond writing a harsh letter to the editor or something.

So Khaddafi starts mowing down civilians, promising a bloodbath. Lo and behold, the U.N. decides maybe it should do something, and orders up the no-fly zone.

I’m thinking that this may have been Obama’s way of telling the world, “We’re sick and tired of getting stuck with the bill whenever someone decides to start slaughtering people. We’ll join with everyone else in trying to stop Khaddafi, but if you won’t do anything, don’t complain to us when the bodies start piling up.” The French and the Brits and the rest of our so-called allies, shocked that we might actually let it happen, suddenly decided that Khaddafi is indeed an evil man and that we must all stop him.

If that’s what Obama had in mind from the start, then kudos to him. What think ye?

In reality, we will not know for some time—possibly years—what the hell actually happened here. With the little information we have, we can only speculate.

And purely speculating, the Czar believes part of your scenario is exactly correct: that the UN, realizing the United States really was going to do nothing, decided that maybe they would have to tackle this one themselves.

However, it is perhaps too soon to award the Sly Fox award to the President. There are some reasons for our thinking on this.

First, this is out of character. In previous foreign affairs crises, including Iran, Egypt, North Korea, and so on—his policy consisted of doing nothing at all. This was not done out of slyness, but from a total lack of interest. To the international community, Libya looked like another present-not-voting response, and based on his history, they were right.

Second, he missed out on a political opportunity to do little yet get credit for something positive. He could have (and would have) said to the Press “I committed myself to helping Iraq and Afghanistan, with a loss of international partners, and at great cost to us. I could not bring myself to spending this amount of time, life, and money when we are already stretched so thin. I am sure my Republican colleagues would agree.” And wow, think of the response: the President doesn’t want to risk life and limb, nor does he want to spend us further into the hole. It is about time Europe start looking to their responsibilities, and so on and so forth. The President is good at taking credit for things that make him look smart; that he did not do so is telling.

Third, he has shown incredible reluctance to get involved. Even now, after the fact, he indicated this was a situation we did not want. What a whiner! He basically makes it look as if someone in our Department of State misread some memo and got us committed against his orders. Look, if you didn’t think the US should get involved, we’ll back your play, Mr. President. But don’t make it sound like someone else got us involved and now we’re stuck with the job. Who the hell is in charge anyway?

All right, so what did happen? The story is so weird that it is hard to parse out. It may be a simple case of misunderstanding. The President thought that getting involved is something Europe would not want us to do; however, Europe depends on Libyan oil, and the Libyan refugees are coming onto European soil. They had to do something: and when the European voting (except for Germany, most notably) went in favor of interdiction, he realized that he better go along with it to make Europe happy. In some respects, this has all been about what Europe wants, or rather, what he thinks Europe would want.

Or perhaps someone did go against his wishes, such as the Secretary of State herself. Perhaps she realized her boss is not going to do a thing to help, and she over-committed our assistance. She made an executive decision, and while he is unhappy about that, he is going along with it. There could be some major backroom arguing on as we speak. It is after all no secret that Secretary Clinton thinks the President is lost at sea on foreign policy: she said so many times when campaigning for President herself. Now that 2012 nears, whether or not she intends to run against him, she is doing what she thinks needs to be done.

It is a strange story— and the intense silence as to what went down is not so much kudos for the President, but a screaming indictment that something went wrong. Look for something to sneak out this weekend: the White House never lets bad news go out on a weekday, but usually late Saturday or early Sunday. It may not be much: but it may be telling enough to figure this out.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.