And Libya goes on...

[Cole]

So I'll add...

I realize that the intentions here are all good, but I suspect that the outcomes will not be.

But at least one outcome will be virtually no Libyan aircraft or air defenses and far fewer armored vehicles for WHOEVER takes over to use elsewhere or on their own people.

Appointing ourselves to referee other people's fights and appointing ourselves to facilitate changes in other people's governments is not going to win us friends and admirers, anywhere. It is not going to be perceived as support for a populace, no matter what our intentions are. It's going to be perceived as gratuitous self-interested meddling. That doesn't disempower our enemies, it empowers them. Any time we meddle in the Middle East it gets spun as self interested pursuit of oil. Whether that's true or not is irrelevant, it is believed.

If they are going to believe that anyway...in addition to their belief that we support Israel and therefore we are bad...we are screwed anyway you look at it. After all, we helped Islamic people in Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. What did it get us a few years later?

So even if some Libyan rebels are jihadists, doesn't this give them a different pursuit outside Iraq and Afghanistan? Methinks it is better to have insurgents fighting their own government than fighting the U.S. and Afghani/Iraqi Soldiers.

Unless we are specifically asked to referee or facilitate by people with a credible claim to represent a populace, we need to stay out. The solution to problems created by bad meddling is not good meddling, it's less meddling. I'm not sure there is such a thing as good meddling: meddling may on very rare occasions be necessary, but it's never good or desirable.

Seem to recall the Arab League and UN did ask us? I'm staying out of this second-guessing because it is a tricky situation and anyone claiming to know the answer is probably deluding themselves.

But you gotta admit it makes a great argument for serial rather than parallel destruction of our adversary. Things change, and new things come to light as conflicts evolve.

[carl]

It might be well to recognize the limitations of the study of the origins of the foreign jihadi types who went to Iraq. The authors were careful to note the limits of the data they had and cautioned about making definitive conclusions based upon it.