Obama gets drawn into Libyan quagmire.
The president made a powerful, well-reasoned case Monday night for Americaâ??s intervention in Libya, marshaling the best humanitarian, strategic and political arguments as to why the United States could not have stood by and done nothing while Gaddafiâ??s forces massacred Libyan rebels. Besides, Americaâ??s closest allies were pleading for our help. But Obama did little to address the central strategic gap in his policy on Libya between its expansive goals â?? chiefly the ouster of Gaddafi â?? and its tightly defined military means. There are only two ways to close the gap â?? escalate the means or scale back your goals. - Fareed Zakaria
If the past history of American foreign policy is any precedent, there is always a bias toward activism, which means those urging to escalate the means will win out. We are already on the ground in Libya assessing the capabilities of the rebels and most likely paving the way for an increase in U.S. involvement in - and coordination of - their civil war. This is the logical consequence of President Obama's declaration that U.S. policy is to see Gaddafi ousted.
You can see the sequence clearly: American and Western aid tips the scales and helps the rebels oust Gaddafi. Gaddafi loyalists resort to an insurgency against whatever fragile government steps in to fill the void. There are urgent calls from the international community to stabilize the new regime which was, after all, too weak to capture Libya on its own and thus too weak to govern and provide security for the country. Then what does President Obama do? The threat to civilian lives in Libya will be no less severe in a condition of post-war anarchy. If the U.S. had a "responsibility to protect" Libyan civilians before it played any role in their endangerment, that responsibility will only increase having played an active hand in subsequent events.
