No doubt you've heard that the US and assorted allies attacked Libya's command and control infrastructure on Friday night. The US and Britain launched 114 Tomahawk missiles and the US bombed Libya's air force bases with stealth bombers out of Missouri. The putative purpose is to protect the rebels from being slaughtered by Qaddafi, but curiously not to depose or kill Qaddafi himself. Why not?
By leaving Qaddafi in power with his ground army intact, we essentially have an open-ended mission. Everybody knows he has mustard gas and could deploy it by other means as a substitute for bombing the rebels from the air. Are we really, as Obama promised, not going to put troops into Libya to protect the rebels in Benghazi? Will the Brits, Canadians, or French put soldiers there to fight the Libyan forces loyal to Qaddafi? How will we just walk away now that our job is basically done, when Britain and France do not have the technology to direct several nations' attacks?
Obama bowed to international peer pressure without really thinking this through and tried to triangulate his position by pleasing the international community on one hand, while attempting to please his base by promising not to send in troops on the other. Maybe it'll work, maybe not, but we cannot afford another expensive, middle-east misadventure like the other two in which we are already hopelessly entangled.
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