Now ruling America is a black man from our continent, an African from Arab descent, from Muslim descent, and this is something we never imagined – that from Reagan we would get to Barakeh Obama. [...] He is someone I consider a friend. He knows he is a son of Africa. Regardless of his African belonging, he is of Arab Sudanese descent or of Muslim descent. He is a man whose policy should be supported, and he should be assisted in implementing it in any way possible, since he is now leaning towards peace. – Muammar Gaddafi on President Barack Obama in an April 2010 interview

Muammar Gaddafi, 1942-2011.

If there is one aspect of candidate Barack Obama’s resume over which even his supporters might have expressed concern, it would have been the fear that he might be too soft on foreign policy. Yet with the death of Gaddafi, President Obama’s foreign policy has, within a span of 6 months, completed a hat trick coup de grace on three of the world’s most dangerous terrorists: Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, and Muammar Gaddafi. Even those who would criticize Obama must admit that what everyone thought would be his Achilles heel has turned out to be his greatest strength. His success is a testament to what our country can achieve when it has a smart, hard-working leader.

That alone is a powerful commentary about why Mitt Romney is probably the only Republican candidate qualified to hold the Office of the President, and Romney was the only prominent Republican figure to give Obama credit for the death of Gaddafi. Otherwise, Obama’s success has been met on the Right with an ideological disapproval that borders on absurdity and draws on familiar racial refrains.  One of the earliest criticisms of Obama’s Libya policy drew on supposed connections between his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and Muammar Gaddafi (via a purported alliance with Nation of Islam preacher Louis Farrakhan). Gaddafi’s “son of Africa” comment only further fueled right-wing conspiracy theories that Obama was in fact a closeted Muslim bent on the destruction of America, and his brief handshake with Gaddafi at a G8 summit in Italy during 2009 was all the Right needed to complete it’s racially charged narrative. This theory had been pieced together by right-wing journalist Aaron Klein and has appeared on Fox News, The Weekly Standard and World Net Daily.

If this means Obama is a secret Muslim, I don't even want to know what Bush is.

But just like the far-Right’s birth certificate claim, the “Obama is a secret Muslim” conspiracy has run into irrefutable proof to the contrary: three dead Islamist terrorists in 6 months. While the death of Gaddafi is a clear positive development in Libya, the Right continues to criticize Obama’s successful policy at all costs. The most outlandish statement last week came from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who remarked:

Today’s not a day to point fingers. I’m glad it’s all working out. Ultimately this is about the freedom and liberty of the Libyan people. But let’s give credit where credit is due: it’s the French and the British that led in this fight, and probably even led on the strike that led to Gadhafi’s capture, and, or, you know, to his death. So, that’s the first thing. The second thing is, you know, I criticize the president, for, he did the right things, he just took too long to do it and didn’t do enough of it.

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham also issued a joint statement in which they thanked the UK, France and the United Arab Emirates (yes, the UAE) for their leadership, before noting that Americans could “be proud of the role our country has played.”  But the idea that the U.S. cannot be a leader when a black man is President, sounds to me a whole lot like sitting in the back of the bus.

From a more wonkish angle, former UN Ambassador John Bolton detracted from the success by diverting to a discussion of terrorism, stating, “Our main interest at the moment is making sure the terrorists don’t take root in Libya and use it as a base for operation. And I think that question is up in the air as we speak.”

That statement brings us full circle, because as I stated earlier in this post, Gaddafi was a terrorist. Notably, his government was behind multiple outrageous terrorist plots, including the Lockerbie bombing (the third deadliest airplane terror attack in history) and the Entebbe hostage crisis. Beyond this, he has unleashed unspeakable atrocities on the people of Africa by employing radical Islamists as paramilitaries (many of which merged into the Janjaweed in Sudan). Gaddafi was also an inveterate racist (pro-Arab), which explains his musings as to Obama’s heritage and his support for Obama’s presidency. So while the U.S. certainly should use international diplomacy to ensure that Libya forms a viable state, it is hard to conceive of a radical Islamist and terrorist much worse than Gaddafi.

In reality, the accomplishments of Obama’s foreign policy extend far beyond the death of Gaddafi. The type of limited international engagement Obama employed successfully in Libya is a totally new kind of international military force which combines international policing with domestic populism. This policy shows tremendous promise for both deposing of brutal dictators while promoting democracy–a combination the U.S. has struggled with for decades in the Middle East. Equally important, it is comparatively cheap. The intervention in Libya has cost only $1 billion, compared to $1 trillion in Iraq, and without the loss of American lives. No wonder then that Obama has a new swagger when he wags his finger at Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is no doubt next on the list of dictators seeing the writing on the wall.

Looks like the “son of Africa” is a man whose policy should be supported after all. Lucky for us he is our man.