So I'll add...

Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
1. Remain as neutral as possible. We are here to referee the fight, not help one fighter beat up the other..

2. Stay focused on the big picture, and that is the Arabian Peninsula. All operations in Libya must set a precedent for how we will act elsewhere, and must be designed to send messages to governmental leaders, resistance leaders, and the general populace.

3. Shape a new message for Western audiences as well. GWOT is far more about people seeking liberty and governance of their own design than about Caliphates and radical concepts on Islam. Helping facilitate evolutions of governance across the Middle East is far more conducive to making Americans save than going about changing regimes we dislike and propping up those we do.
I realize that the intentions here are all good, but I suspect that the outcomes will not be. 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.

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.