Obama puts foot in mouth over Libya, will try and remove it in speech.

Obama is going to address the nation on Libya where he will try and talk his way out of all the problems and confusion he has caused by once again doing the only thing he seems to knows how to do -- talk -- without considering the consequences of his words.


When the Libyan protests turned violent, people wanted to know what action the U.S. was going to take. Obama didnt really know, so he did what he has always thought was adequate in situations where action was called for. He talked. Obama said that Gadhafi had to go but in typical Obama fashion, he never said what he was going to do to make that a reality. Now people are pressing him for what action he is going to take to get rid of Gadhfi since neither the UN resolution, the Arab League declaration nor the NATO defined mission has anything to do with getting rid of Gadhafi. Obama is finding out that this isn't the presidential campaign where he was able to say anything, not mean a word of it and not get challenged. He is getting criticism from all sides for his handling of the American role in Libya and now people are asking what exactly did he mean by "Gadhafi has to go" and what he intends to do about it. His problem is he never intended to do anything about it when he said it. It  was just talk.

This isn't the first time Obama has put his foot in his mouth over foreign policy especially in the middle east.
While running for president in 2008 he told an audience of 7000 American Jews in Miami that he "supported a unified Jerusalem as the capital of Israel".

He received the politically desired standing ovation but when the Palestinians heard about his position they went predictably ballistic. The day after, Obama immediately reversed his position and claimed he was misunderstood, that he never meant that all of Jerusalem, east and west, should be the Israeli capital. He said that what he meant by a unified Jerusalem was a Jerusalem without barbed wire. The problem with that explanation was there hadn't been barbed wire in Jerusalem since 1967. His reversal to pacify the Palestinians predictably angered the Israelis and ecer since Obama has had no leverage in middle east peace talks since neither side trusts him.Which is one reason why they've gone nowhere.

On Monday night Obama will make a totally unnecessary oval office speech to the nation, something that could be done in a press conference instead of commanding national television time, to try and explain what he meant by "Gadhafi has to go" and what the U.S. role in Libya will be. He has already made his usual inconsistent and contradictory statement in his Saturday address, mumbling something about how the United States needed to intervene in Libya because of a repressive government killing its own people. Obviously Mr. Conviction and Principle however didn't think that Ahmadinejad killing his own people during the Iranian election protests fell into that category. In fact while Iranians were being shot in the street, Obama famously said, he " didn't want to meddle" in Iranian affairs. There was no "Ahmadinejad has to go".

Now Obama is going to do what he's always tried to do to get himself out of hot water after putting his foot in his mouth. He is going to open it again and try and talk his way out of it.We'll see if he succeeds.