The fighting in Libya continues, but you’re forgiven if you haven’t been keeping up.
Our attention was starting to fade even before the devastating succession of calamities that struck Japan. And we were diverted for a time, of course, by the comedy in Wisconsin.
But Libya continues, and important decisions must be made. And the fact that the decisions are so difficult makes it harder, in a way, to stay focused.
The easiest thing for us to do in Libya is nothing.
It’s also — in your standard foreign policy paradox — the hardest.
It’s not an issue of which side to root for. We may not know exactly who the rebels are in Libya, but it’s a fair guess that, whoever they are, they’re preferable to Col. Khadafy.
I’ve heard arguments from both sides about whether we should take action there — particularly with a no-fly zone that would ground Khadafy’s air force — and give the hard-pressed rebels a better chance.
Not only have the rebels asked for no-fly help, but also, stunningly, has the Arab League, which supported Saddam Hussein but can’t bring itself to back Khadafy. France and Britain are pushing for a no-fly zone. Here at home, the people who pushed for the invasion of Iraq — with a couple of surprise entries, such as John Kerry — are pushing for intervention in Libya.
The argument for intervention is easy to make. Khadafy is, without question, a very bad guy. But more to the point: If he crushes the rebels in his country, he may well also crush the nascent democracy movement in the Middle East while, as a bonus, providing a model for how a ruthless dictator can forever stay in power.
What began with the fruit seller in Tunisia spread to Egypt, and the victories came easier than anyone could have reasonably expected.
In Egypt, the questions looked difficult at first. But it wasn’t long before it became obvious that what was good for Egypt was also good for America and probably good for Israel. And with Egypt at the center of the Arab world, the secular-seeming, popularly driven revolution was impossible not to support.
The narrative that we’d seen playing out in the Middle East — the people take to the streets; the government resists but eventually resigns to the forces of history — looked as if could send an endless series of dominoes tumbling.
Now, troops from Saudi Arabia and police officers from the United Arab Emirates have crossed into Bahrain to deal with opposition democracy groups there.
And in Libya, neither sanctions nor world disapproval seem to have any impact on Khadafy. The rebels have been losing ground, and the dominoes are suddenly frozen in place. Libya is no Egypt, Khadafy is no Mubarak, and America doesn’t have the leverage in Libya that it had with the Egyptian military.
So, you institute a no-fly zone, crush a few runways, and watch the Libyan pilots go aground.
What could go wrong?
How about everything?
The lesson of Iraq, as conservative columnist Ross Douthat points out, is that there has been no lesson of Iraq. The disaster there seems to have left no impression.
And so, we’re fighting in Afghanistan with no clear exit strategy and with deadlines that somehow don’t seem like deadlines and with the problem you always face in places like Afghanistan: There is no good time to get in and there is no good time to get out.
Newt Gingrich says we should institute a Libyan no-fly zone immediately. He doesn’t want to wait for the United Nations or NATO. He assumes, I guess, that we’ll be greeted as liberators in Libya — if you can, that is, greet fighter pilots midair.
Bob Gates, meanwhile, warns of real difficulties in setting up a no-fly zone, because war, even a no-fly war, is dangerous. And Wesley Clark makes a compelling argument in The Washington Post that a no-fly zone inevitably leads to the deployment of troops. What else happens when the war bogs down and your side is starting to lose?
This is an easy gut call: Just crush Khadafy. But let’s say that we’re seeing the best case — a fever spreading across the Middle East. How often can we intervene? How many no-fly zones? What’s our tolerance level for civilian deaths — for American deaths? What’s our take on when American intervention becomes counterproductive?
It’s our battle. It’s any democratic nation’s battle. But is it our war?
That should be the lesson of Iraq, I guess. It can’t always be our war.
E-mail Mike Littwin at mlittwin@denverpost.com.
