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Until Friday, most of us could have been forgiven for thinking nothing significant could possibly be happening beyond the catastrophic shores of Japan. But after weeks of mounting crisis over Libya, and accusations of dithering on the part of the Obama administration as Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces continued to take control of key cities along the Libyan coast, the week’s end brought a flurry of the highest level diplomatic maneuvers, resolutions and demands.

The Times pulled it all together:

WASHINGTON — President Obama ordered Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi on Friday to implement a cease-fire immediately and stop all attacks on Libyan civilians or face military action from the United States and its allies in Europe and the Arab world. In one of the most forceful statements he has issued from the White House Mr. Obama said that his demands were not negotiable: Colonel Qaddafi had to pull his forces back from major cities in Libya or the United States and its allies would stop him. The president said that he was forced to act because Colonel Qaddafi had turned on his own people and had shown, Mr. Obama said, “no mercy on his own citizens.” The president said that with the passage on Thursday night of a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing military action against Colonel Qadaffi to protect Libyan civilians, the United States would not act alone, and in fact that France, Britain and Arab nations would take the lead. That is the clear desire of the Pentagon, which has been strongly resistant to another American war in the Middle East. Mr. Obama said flatly that American ground forces would not enter Libya. “Muammar Qaddafi has a choice,” he said. “The United States, the United Kingdom, France and Arab states agree that a cease-fire must be implemented immediately. That means all attacks against civilians must stop.”

A visceral response from Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish soon followed:

The president’s speech was disturbingly empty. There are, it appears, only two reasons the US is going to war, without any Congressional vote, or any real public debate. The first is that the US cannot stand idly by while atrocities take place. Yet we have done nothing in Burma or the Congo and are actively supporting governments in Yemen and Bahrain that are doing almost exactly — if less noisily — what Qaddafi is doing. Obama made no attempt to reconcile these inconsistencies because, one suspects, there is no rational reconciliation to be made. Secondly, the president argued that the ghastly violence in Libya is destabilizing the region, and threatening world peace. Really? More than Qaddafi’s meddling throughout Africa for years? More than the brutal repression in Iran? And even if it is destabilizing, Libya is not, according to the Obama administration itself, a “vital national interest”. So why should the US go to war over this? None of this makes any sense, except as an emotional response to an emergency. I understand the emotions, and sympathize with the impulse to help. But I can think of no worse basis for committing a country to war than such emotional and moral anxiety.

Ezra Klein at The Washington Post struck a quieter, but similar note in his response to the speech:

I didn’t find President Obama’s remarks on Libya comforting. The point of the speech, as I understood it, was both to announce that we were engaging but also assure America that our engagement was going to be limited. But consider the promises made. “The United States is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya. And we are not going to use force to go beyond a well-defined goal, specifically the protection of civilians in Libya.” Those two sentences are at war with each other. Protecting civilians might well require more than bombing runways. If Gaddafi is deposed and the state collapses into tribal warfare, does our pledge to resist ground troops trump our pledge to protect civilians? Or will it be the other way around?

Even though he does not oppose military intervention in Libya outright, Klein can’t get his head around the justification for a possible war:

The easy response to this is to ask how I can be so diffident in the face of slaughter. But consider Obama’s remarks. “Left unchecked,” he said, “we have every reason to believe that Gaddafi would commit atrocities against his people. Many thousands could die.” Every year, one million people die from malaria. About three million children die, either directly or indirectly, due to hunger. There is much we could due to help the world if we were willing. The question that needs to be asked is: Why this?

At The New Republic, Jonathan Chait, in a post titled “The Libya Question Is Only About Libya,” takes the objections of both Klein and Sullivan head on:

Why intervene in Libya and not elsewhere is a question that needs to be asked. But it’s not a question that needs to be asked to determine the wisdom of intervening in Libya. Should we also spend more money to prevent malaria? Yes, we should. But I see zero reason to believe that not intervening in Libya would lead to an increase in in American assistance to prevent malaria. Why not intervene in Burma or Yemen or elsewhere? I would say the answer is prudential: for various political, geographic, and military reasons, the United States has the chance to prevent slaughter in Libya at reasonable cost, and does not have the chance to do so in Burma.

Max Boot, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, who had been urging Obama to action during the week, felt that the president’s speech had left out one important condition: that Qaddafi must go.

In his public statement today Obama sounded resolute — but he also set out fairly narrow goals and did not reiterate his previous call for Qaddafi’s ouster. Qaddafi has said he is imposing a ceasefire. What if his forces pull back from eastern Libya? Does that mean we won’t impose a no-fly zone or mount air strikes? If so that would leave Qaddafi in control of a substantial part of the country where he could continue the human rights abuses that are rightly condemned by the United Nations—and could force the U.S. to undertake a lengthy and costly military involvement to make sure that Qaddafi stands by his promises not to march into Benghazi. Much simpler and surer to do everything possible, short of dispatching ground troops, to topple Qaddafi. I have previously noted that such steps would include a no-fly zone combined with air strikes on Qaddafi’s ground forces and also training and arms for the rebel forces. That represents a substantial commitment on our part, and comes with attendant risks. No doubt there is still a faction in the administration hoping that a few symbolic moves will be enough to get Qaddafi to cease and desist. But our goal should not be simply a temporary cessation of the violence. A lasting solution requires Qaddafi to be gone, and that won’t be easy to achieve. We may have a real fight on our hands. I only hope that the administration is ready for that.

In a post before the president’s speech, Adam Serwer at The Plum Line pointed up another wild card — the Libyan rebels:

The problem is that we still don’t know very much about who the rebels are or what they ultimately want. Libya’s internal politics were opaque to the West even before the war. We don’t know how much international involvement will be required to ensure Gaddafi falls, or what level of commitment the United States, as the world’s only superpower, will ultimately be forced to make. In other words, none of the key questions looming over the crisis have been answered — even though we’ve already learned the hard way in Iraq what happens when we fail to plan for the peace before we start a war. All we really know right now is that America is destined to own the outcome in Libya.

Doug Mataconis in a brief post at Outside the Beltway asks a good question: “If this is for real, then one wonders if Gaddafi hasn’t just called the world’s bluff. If he puts a cease-fire in place and complies with it, then what justification is there for any military action against his regime?”

At The Guardian, Simon Tisdall has similar reservations about the current standoff:

It’s plain that whichever way the stated aims of the intervention are defined, achieving them will be highly problematic. The least of them — a genuine ceasefire — would effectively freeze the current confrontation in place, with rival camps entrenched in the east and west. The conflict could degenerate into a prolonged stalemate, as in the Korean peninsula or Georgia. Meaningful negotiation would be impossible while Gaddafi remained in power. Interventionists cannot achieve Gaddafi’s removal, another key aim, by force of arms, bar a ground invasion or a lucky shot. (The same goes for democratic governance.) The west is relying instead on more mass defections, an army mutiny or a palace coup — what analyst Shashank Joshi of the Royal United Services Institute has called “regime breakdown”. By withholding immediate attacks on Friday despite French impatience to get stuck in, Obama and Cameron appeared to be hoping the pressure on Gaddafi and his supporters would lead to internal rupture and an implosion.

Earlier in the week, Glenn Greenwald at Salon questioned not Qadaffi’s motives, but those of the U.S.:

As our other good friends Saudi Arabia and Bahrain collaborate on attacking civilian protesters, there are no calls for U.S. intervention there — even though that’s arguably more serious than what’s happening in Libya — because those governments serve our interests. Nor is there much anger among Americans (as opposed to Egyptians) over our decades-long support for the dictator of Egypt (and most of the other tyrants now suddenly being vilified). That’s because our conduct in the Middle East isn’t driven by humanitarian objectives no matter how manipulatively that flag is waved. It’s driven by a desire to advance our perceived interests regardless of humanitarian outcomes, and exactly the same would be true for any intervention in Libya. Even if we were capable of fostering humanitarian outcomes in that nation — and that’s highly doubtful — that wouldn’t be our mission.

Daniel Larison at Eunomia was more upbeat about the turn of events, but agreed that the U.S. goals would certainly go beyond the humanitarian:

The intervening governments may have caught a lucky break in that Gaddafi’s desire for self-preservation has given them a way out of going through with the folly of attacking Libya. This is temporarily a good outcome for Libya’s rebels, but there are several reasons why this may still prove to be bad for the U.S. and our allies. Intervening governments that have committed to providing defense for civilian areas in Libya and enforcing a no-fly zone are now stuck with that commitment for the foreseeable future. That could tie up military resources for as long as the conflict continues, and there’s no telling how long that might be. We can expect to see a lot more agitation from hawks here and in Europe that Gaddafi cannot be allowed to remain in power, and they are likely to see Gaddafi’s acceptance of a cease-fire as an unacceptable maneuver to buy time. Interventionists sold a Libyan war primarily on humanitarian grounds (“saving” Benghazi, etc.), but they will not be satisfied at all by a cessation of hostilities.

Ian Williams at Focal Points was a little more scathing — and metaphorical — in his assessment of the role of the United States in any intervention: