… there’s something a bit head in the sand about proclaiming this a simple “humanitarian” undertaking. Showing up with bags of rice in a famine zone is a humanitarian undertaking. Sending in some Marines to help guard the trucks full of bags of rice is a plausible military element of a humanitarian undertaking. What we’re doing is providing tactical air support to one faction in a civil war in order to help them prevail against a rival faction that has much more heavy military equipment. This may or may not produce some net humanitarian benefits in the end, but it’s hard for me to know how you’d make an accurate forecast about that one way or another.Sensitivity to how weak the humanitarian argument is as means of justifying or explaining this almost unexplainable intervention probably accounts for the hyperbole spokespersons for the Obama administration are now resorting to when talking about Libya - for example saying prompt [really?] action by the coalition prevented the massacre of 100,000 in Benghazi - that is a flat out ridiculous number - there's not much doubt thousands probably would have died, and there's a good chance many of them would have been largely innocent [ie, not rebel fighters] but we're almost certainly talking four figures here, not six.
Still, that Obama as Commander in Chief would result in actions and postures and initiatives and ideas that do not inspire confidence is not surprising [sure, if I try I can come up with an interpretation of what he's doing or thinks he's doing in Libya that is not wholly unfavorable - but that's the problem, we're more than a week into this and no one really knows what the plan is - hell, the administration is still insisting that regime change is not a goal even though it is and that we are not allied with the rebels in a civil war even though we are] - nor is it surprising that liberals would be utterly confounded by watching their redeemer, the man they anointed and championed as the exalted non-Bush, the enlightened antithesis of all the incarnate awfulness of Bushdom, involve the country in another war in a Muslim country and do so with an imperialistic disdain for explaining himself that would have made Karl Rove blush - no, these things do not surprise me - what shocks me is how many conservatives seem to have learned nothing from Iraq and Afghanistan and consequently not only clamored for this war but fret over how limited it seems. Nothing sends up the absurdity of this better than recent revelation that fighting with our new rebel friends, in some cases as leaders, are erstwhile jihadist enemies of ours from Afghanistan - bad enough, but turns out they've also enlisted some al Qaeda elements into the fight - ya think conservatives would be up in arms about this, no? But of course their over zealous support for the 'war' makes circumspection impossible - indeed, their support for the war is entirely premised on skimming over the central and thoroughly unpleasant question 'so, you've won your little war - what now?' [and that's the sunny optimists version of the question - the more vexing versions go like this: 'so your little war is stalemated' or 'so you lost your little war' or 'so it's been three months and Qaddafi ain't dead yet and France is kinda losing interest' or 'hey, Israel just invaded Gaza again, when will the NATO humanitarian effort on behalf of the Palestinians begin?' or...]. Hell, the question's so unpleasant and so [we surmise from seeing the great passion brought to bear in avoidance of it] seemingly unanswerable that Obama apparently hasn't even bothered to essay the effort of asking it of himself, and it's his war. So conservative have said nothing - our military is at war in support of an alliance that includes jihadists and members of al Qaeda [and god knows what else] and conservatives have decided that's no big deal - I find that a bit shocking.
