Minor Thoughts from me to you

Victor Davis Hanson elucidates why conservatives oppose the "non-war" that President Obama is "not fighting" in Libya.

2) Approval: To start a third war in the Middle East, the president should have first gone to Congress, especially since he and Vice President Biden have compiled an entire corpus of past speeches, some quite incendiary, equating presidential military intervention without congressional approval with illegality to the point of an impeachable offense (cf. Biden’s warning to Bush over a possible Iran strike). And why boast of U.N. and Arab League approval but not seek the sanction of the U.S. Congress?

3) Consistency: Why is meddling okay in Libya but was not okay in Iran when dissidents there were likewise making headway? Is there any rationale that determines our response to unrest in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, or Libya? It seems we are making it up ad hoc, always in reaction to the perceived pulse of popular demonstrations — always a hit-and-miss, day-late-dollar-short proposition.

4) Aims and Objectives: Fact: We are now and then bombing Libyan ground targets in order to enhance the chances of rebel success in removing or killing Qaddafi. Fiction: We are not offering ground support but only establishing a no-fly zone, and have no desire to force by military means Qaddafi to leave. Questions: Is our aim, then, a reformed Qaddafi? A permanently revolutionary landscape? A partitioned, bisected nation? What is the model? Afghanistan? Mogadishu? The 12-year no-fly-zone in Iraq? A Mubarak-like forced exile? Who are the rebels? Westernized reformers? Muslim Brotherhood types? A mix? Who knows? Who cares?

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