"... The manufactured crisis in Libya ..."

"...  The manufactured crisis in Libya is a prime case in point. No foreign states have vital interests at stake in Libya. Events in this rather odd and isolated land have little bearing on the rest of the tumultuous Mideast region. Also not to be dismissed, there are far, far worse humanitarian horrors elsewhere. Yet, U.S. neoconservatives and liberal humanitarian interventionists have trapped another U.S. president into acting as if the opposite were true.

Once this terrible duo starts tossing out words like "slaughter" and "genocide," the media goes crazy. Then, the chorus begins to sing of heartless inaction by the U.S. president, blaming him for the deaths. White House common sense crumbles into insanity. The reason why neither President Obama nor his coalition partners in Britain and France can state a coherent goal for Libya is that none of them have any central interest in the outcome there. It is only when a nation has a clear vital interest that it can state a clear objective for war. They've all simply been carried away by their own rhetoric.....

....... The no-fly zone the U.S. enforced over Kurdistan after the first Gulf war worked just fine. But the one declared for the Shiite southern part of Iraq didn't. That's mainly because the U.S. government said the no-fly dictum applied only to fixed-wing aircraft, not to helicopters. And what Saddam Hussein used to put down the revolt in the south was helicopters, tanks, and ground troops. That's precisely what would happen in Libya if the no-fly zone pertained only to fixed-wing aircraft. Because Gaddafi's main power flows from helicopters, tanks and troops, no-fly by itself would have been of very limited value. If the goal is to save civilians, there is no choice other than hitting all military targets.

So now comes the ultimate hypocrisy—the one of intoning that a sin is so mortal and a threat so deadly that only somebody else can do the job. Remember the West's joy after the Arab League's blessing of a no-fly zone? Foreign policy experts reacted as if Arabs were putting aside their Arab-first cloak and actually joining the hated Westerners in humanitarian military action. In reality, however, they were just saying, "You do it." Thus, it is no surprise that those Arabs are nowhere to be found when it comes to translating their heroic rhetoric into action. So far, it appears that their contributions will be limited to Egypt providing some arms to the Libyan "freedom fighters," four Qatari jets flying over Libya (as fast as they can, I assume), some cash payments to the Western devils, and other unspecified considerations. Just in case the self-delusory Westerners didn't get the point, the Arab League head Amr Moussa set them straight on Sunday. He criticized the Western devils for killing Libyan civilians in no-fly zone operations. Apparently, the League thought that an effective no-fly zone was like flying kites—just a beautiful thing to watch with no one being injured. Westerners must have been confused and actually believed that the Arab League desired the no-fly operation to reduce Gaddafi's killing Libyan civilians. Apparently, only some Arabs are permitted to kill certain other Arabs. (MY WORDS EXACTLY!) In which event, the Arabs should have gone and flown their own planes against Gaddafi's in the first place. President Obama erred initially by saying that Gaddafi "must go." .....  Pray that he sticks to that course and puts America in a strictly supporting role. Pray he is not drawn deeper into the Libyan snake pit by events or the hypocritical oratory of world leaders and foreign policy experts."