I’m sure there are plenty of people who will think I’m wrong about this, and this being the Internets, they won’t hesitate to correct me on it.
But hasn’t the prime opportunity to intervene in Libya already passed? Yes, it looked for a while like the rebels would win, but now it looks like Qadaffi has overcome their initial surge of optimism with a steady grind and it seems impossible that the rebels — untrained, cornered in Benghazi, and ill-armed — have the capability of surging back.
Despite whatever good arguments there are for facilitating the removal of Qadaffi as the leader of Libya, now is not the time to consider imposing a no-fly zone and aerial strikes against Qadaffi’s forces. That time was two weeks ago, when the rebels were advancing on Tripoli and air power was all Qadaffi had left. At that point, we dithered and along with the rest of the West, wrung our hands about whether it was a good idea to intervene or not. Well, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice, and we chose not to act. That was our policy choice, it may well have been the least bad choice available, and now we are seeing the results of that choice implemented.
Now is the time to figure out how to deal with a post-civil war Libya still run by Qadaffi.
Indeed.