Obama Waited Too Long on Libya- Opposition Down to 1K Fighters Now

Via memeorandum I came across this story- In the Arena: Libyan opposition has less than 1,000 fighters:

During "In the Arena," Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer for The New Yorker reporting from Benghazi, Libya, tells Eliot Spitzer that the number of opposition fighters on the front lines are fewer than anyone would think and that they are poorly armed and badly trained. Anderson says, "Effective number of fighting men, well under 1,000. Actual soldiers, who are now in the fight, possibly in the very low hundreds on the opposition side."

If Obama is correct and the situation in Libya is a humanitarian crisis which demands that the United States act, then the United States needed to act while it was still possible to act, or else resign itself to the humanitarian crisis which would result. But Obama did not act while it was still possible to act, and the reason for the delay was his own incompetence and ignorance, for which he, and he alone, is to blame.

Obama is ignorant that it takes real people to fight wars and real hardware to engage in a revolution- and his delay in acting meant that Qaddafi was able to kill many fighters and retake many weapons- Obama has no experience in the military and has shown little familiarity with military subjects and is ignorant that battles are fought with people and hardware and are not simply chess pieces to move around a board. Obama is incompetent in that he does not recognize his own ignorance on this issue and instead of acting on advice from those smarter than him he instead worried about his NCAA bracket or jetted down to Brazil or hosted fancy dinners and events with celebrities.

Early on in the conflict (February 27) I wrote this:

(Obama's) failures resulted in a longer, more drawn out, less sure conflict, one in which the moderates saw the President of the United States doing nothing and so decided to support the established powers, one in which the revolutionaries saw their morale drop due to lack of support, one in which the established powers in Libya believed that is was okay to use deadly force and hire international mercenaries to keep control.

Several weeks later I had become disgusted with Obama's handling of the crisis in Libya and wrote this:

...I have no problem blaming Obama for the ensuing humanitarian crisis that is going to unfold in Libya. It was okay to wait a bit, because the US shouldn't just jump willy-nilly into every conflict, but the minute the rebels stalled, the math was pretty simple- either jump in now in support and knock Muammar Qaddafi out while building goodwill with the rebels who would then march to power and restore order, or stay out of it and watch Qaddafi retake his nation and punish the rebels and build goodwill with him and his son...

...But President Paintywaist instead anguished about the decision and tried to hide and ran around yelling 'present' on the issue while issuing empty rhetoric and throwing pixie dust at the situation. I don't care how hard he tries to re-write history on this one- he sat around, watched the rebels get pushed back, watched them lose their best fighters and leaders and most dedicated freedom fighters, watched Qaddafi take back cities and kill and rape everyone who was against him in those areas, watched both Qaddafi and the rebels get weaker, and then when the French and British said 'screw you, we're doing something' he fled to Brazil and let Hillary make the call....

Let me be clear- President Obama waited too long to commit the United States to this conflict, and his waiting let Qaddafi forces kill too many revolutionary fighters and recapture too many revolutionary resources, and now the outcome of the situation in Libya is more uncertain. His address this week did little to explain why this critical and increasingly important delay happened, in spite of his efforts to retell the story, and he should be held to blame for the now greater cost that it will take to avert a humanitarian crisis in Libya.

Genocides piss me off and I hate it when people die when they shouldn't, and the blame for this situation should be put squarely and fully on Democratic President Barack Obama.

UPDATE: This does not cause me to become less angry- according to the Jawa Report, there are now less opposition fighters left in Libya than there are members of the 501st Legion, a group of Star Wars fans who dress up like stormtroopers and other characters from the movies, prompting him to ask the important question "Are There More Actual Stormtroopers Than Libyan Rebel Fighters?"

UPDATE II: RedState's Caleb Howe has produced an awesome graphic comparing Obama's war in Libya with Bush's war in Iraq. Check it out, via Doug Ross.