Sadly, as history tells us, the Libyan matter is just beginning.
As Robert Haddick reminds us in a piece for Foreign Policy:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...he_libya_modelAs we have seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, the greatest threat to the civilian population may come in the "post-war" period when the real fighting for resources and political power is likely to begin. It would be a bitter tragedy if the ouster of Qaddafi -- done in the name of protecting the population -- resulted in Hobbesian chaos afterward. If this occurred, the duty of "responsibility to protect" would seem to fall heavily on NATO. And that might result in pressure to deploy a large stabilization force into Libya, the very outcome the Unified Protector strategy was designed to avoid.
The campaigns in Kosovo in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, and Libya in 2011 show that it takes surprisingly little military power to overthrow brittle authoritarian regimes. It takes more than air power -- in all of these cases, indigenous or outside ground forces were an essential element of military success. What has yet to be demonstrated in recent memory is whether there can be a relatively bloodless transition to a new political order without a large outside stabilization force. NATO leaders are hoping that Libya will be the first such case, or at least that they can keep thousands of NATO boots out of Libya. We'll see.
While wishing the Libyan people well, our lessons of history teach that the hoped-for final defeat of all opposition only marks the opening of the next and far more complex one.
Already, we see the emergence of potential fault lines (East versus West Libya and their relative contributions to success, turncoats versus long-term opponents, and, the lack of tribal/regional agreement for what comes next (power, influence, resources, control).
These are the threads that need to be joined into a fabric for a positive future. History shows this is a difficult process.
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