Obama’s Way
Lewis follows the president for six months—joining him for basketball pickup games, a trip on Air Force One, and inside a decision on how to handle Libya:
“Before big meetings the president is given a kind of road map, a list of who will be at the meeting and what they might be called on to contribute. The point of this particular meeting was for the people who knew something about Libya to describe what they thought Qaddafi might do, and then for the Pentagon to give the president his military options. ‘The intelligence was very abstract,’ says one witness. ‘Obama started asking questions about it. “What happens to the people in these cities when the cities fall? When you say Qaddafi takes a town, what happens?”‘ It didn’t take long to get the picture: if they did nothing they’d be looking at a horrific scenario, with tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered. (Qaddafi himself had given a speech on February 22, saying he planned to ‘cleanse Libya, house by house.’) The Pentagon then presented the president with two options: establish a no-fly zone or do nothing at all. The idea was that the people in the meeting would debate the merits of each, but Obama surprised the room by rejecting the premise of the meeting. ‘He instantly went off the road map,’ recalls one eyewitness. ‘He asked, “Would a no-fly zone do anything to stop the scenario we just heard?”‘ After it became clear that it would not, Obama said, ‘I want to hear from some of the other folks in the room.'”