To The Shores Of Tripoli, Part 6

Josh Marshall goes over the valid concerns of Operation Odyssey Dawn.

So let's review: No clear national or even humanitarian interest for military intervention. Intervening well past the point where our intervention can have a decisive effect. And finally, intervening under circumstances in which the reviled autocrat seems to hold the strategic initiative against us. This all strikes me as a very bad footing to go in on.

And this doesn't even get us to this being the third concurrent war in a Muslim nation and the second in an Arab one. Or the fact that the controversial baggage from those two wars we carry into this one, taking ownership of it, introducing a layer of 'The West versus lands of Islam' drama to this basically domestic situation and giving Qaddafi himself or perhaps one of his sons the ability to actually start mobilization some public or international opinion against us.

I can imagine many of the criticisms of the points I've made. And listening to them I think I'd find myself agreeing in general with a lot of it. But it strikes me as a mess, poorly conceived, ginned up by folks with their own weird agendas, carried out at a point well past the point that it was going to accomplish anything. Just all really bad. 

And those are still valid concerns and ones I agree with.  Libya is a huge gray area, frankly.  I don't know what winning consists of, other than the total ouster of Qaddafi.  But what then?  Nobody's asking that question.

What I am saying is that attacking Obama over this is completely counter-productive.  No, saying you're against Libya doesn't make you a Naderite.  But saying "Okay, we're doing this, let's do this right" doesn't make you a Cheneyite, either.