Obama has emboldened Islamist imperialism

After Botching Libya, War On Terror Spreads To Mali

Terrorism: The U.S. is pushing for military intervention in Mali to hose out a new al-Qaida enclave. Undoubtedly it needs to be done. But so much for the White House's facile claim to having terrorists on the run.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Algeria Monday, pleading with its government to support a U.S.-France-led military mission to destroy al-Qaida's latest conquest in northern Mali, an impoverished African state along the Sahara.

Fine, but this was a preventable crisis that has a lot to do with White House hubris about ending the war on terror before it was actually done.

It springs from the ill-considered "leading from behind" U.S. involvement in Libya during the Arab Spring, which saw the overthrow of dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Weapons from Gadhafi's unsecured arsenals flowed first to the nomadic Tuaregs, and along with them came al-Qaida members.

The perfect storm formed when a coup in Mali last March left the government enfeebled enough for the newly armed Tuaregs and al-Qaida to seize control in Mali's north. The terrorists then turned on the Tuaregs and made northern Mali into a hellish Shariah state as well as an al-Qaida base with state power.

Now, there's no doubt that Clinton should be trying to use waning U.S. influence to persuade Algeria to help. A new terrorist nest in a failed state poses a massive security threat to every country in the region.

But the crisis could have been avoided.

During Libya's uprising, the U.S. had little knowledge of who we were helping and no plans for securing prisons and armories as Gadhafi's forces fled.

That's the root of the Mali situation now — a war extended by ill-considered decisions and an administration in denial about the scope of what we face.

What's more, when President Bush attempted similar terrorist clear-outs, he was opposed every step of the way by Democrats calling him a "warmonger."

The Mali front shows a crisis that is spreading with no signs of ending.

What's missing here is farsighted leadership that has yet to admit what kind of war we are in.