I often end up disagreeing with the Post's Anne Applebaum, but I thought she had a good column ender yesterday:
Should the worst-case scenario unfold, the American president must not offer false promises or make commitments he cannot possibly hope to fulfill. Some have criticized him for embarking on his planned trip to South America this week, but they’re wrong to do so. Whether accidental or planned, cynical or cowardly, Obama should maintain his silence, continue his trip, keep expectations low and offer no encouragement to anyone who expects us to go in, gung-ho for democracy, and win the war.
Marc Lynch, who went from support for a no fly zone weeks ago to a more skeptical view, lays out his current appraisal of the situation:
Finally, as I warned last week, Arab support for an intervention against Qaddafi to protect the Libyan people rapidly begins to fray when the action includes Western bombing of an Arab country. It should surprise nobody that the bombing campaign has triggered anger among a significant portion of the Arab public, which is still powerfully shaped by the Iraq war and aggrieved by perceived double standards (one of the most common lines in Arab debates right now is "where was the No Fly Zone over Gaza?"). Amr Moussa's flip-flopping on the Arab League's stance towards the intervention should be seen as part of that tension between the desire to help the Libyan people and continuing suspicion of Western motives. Skeptical voices matter too -- ignoring or ridiculing influential or representative voices simply because their message is unpalatable is a mistake too often made in this part of the world.
It is worth noting that the Arab League called for a no fly zone and the U.N. security mandate went beyond that and the French attack began by attacking Libyan tanks. There's a reason that coalition management has been so hard on this one, the intervention in many ways did get steadily more ambitious. The wider range of means might increase chance of success, but they bear their own risks in terms of coalition management and direct casualties from bombing. For now, the two seem to be reconciled, but I have great difficulty imagining western ground troops being accepted in any case.
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