Saddam Hussein wasn’t a dictator?
(SFGate) — With lawmakers of both major parties increasingly critical of President Obama over his move to involve the U.S. military in Libya, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Barbara Boxer stood behind the president Wednesday, saying his decision was necessary to prevent a humanitarian crisis.
The statements from Pelosi and Boxer, who strongly back Obama’s support of the U.N.-supported no-fly zone in Libya, underscore a growing split among liberal Democrats from California — some of whom have said Obama should not have made the move without congressional approval.
Boxer, at a San Francisco news conference Wednesday, said Democrats were not holding Obama to a different standard for military involvement than they did for former President George W. Bush.
In 2007, as talk swelled regarding possible U.S. air strikes in Iran, Obama, then an Illinois senator and possible presidential candidate, and then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said Bush could take no military action without the approval of Congress.
“This is different,” Boxer said Wednesday. Today, “you’re facing a dictator who vowed” widespread slaughter in his own country, she said, adding that Obama “did the right thing.”
“This isn’t America versus Libya,” Boxer said. “This is an extraordinary achievement by the president and our secretary of state to get the world to come together” in a humanitarian crisis.
“Anyone who says (Obama) should have waited,” she said, “doesn’t feel the sense of urgency that many of us feel — that this man was about to destroy his own people.”