Truth is I might be in favor of our actions in Libya if I knew what those actions actually were......
I'm sure many in congress feel the same way.
I might be too, Ollie, if I knew just exactly what it is we are attempting to do. As it is, I have made every effort to give the president the benefit of the doubt on this one (since we only have one CinC at the time, that seems rational to me). I am increasingly concerned that once again, we have frittered away the better part of an opportunity in "consensus building", as opposed to taking appropriate and decisive action to exploit a situation which stood to work in our favor.
In fairness, this is not a vice confined to this administration; I have seen (and lamented) it before; it has bedeviled our foreign policy since Vietnam. The problem is one of lack of agility and imagination in our foreign/military policy, and it stems from being a de facto empire (as we have been since WW II), and not being sure if we wish to acknowledge that and act the part, or not. Instead of having a plan in place to exploit an opportunity to get rid of a noxious regime, andf acting on it when the situation occurred, America (as usual) has dithered and dallied, trying to get as many countries on board as possible, before doing the first thing. The predictable result (to this point) has been too little, too late, with too many people not on the same page, and too many cooks spoiling the stew.
What we can't seem to learn is that coalitions are useful in some instances, and downright worse than useless in others. The concept works well enough, in a relatively protracted scenario like the first war in the Gulf, or even in the former Yugoslavia; it works a lot less well in fleeting opportunities like we had in Libya, or those emerging in Syria and Yemen. In the first sort of instance, there's relatively more time to find potential partners, build a consensus, decide on a plan, and carry it out; the aggressor isn't going anywhere, (except perhaps back home, which is precisely what we want him to do anyway). In the second sort, a nascent revolt can well be crushed, before there is enough time to do all the above. There it is imperative to have a plan in place beforehand, have the elements we can work with on the ground already identified, and then strike quickly decisively and surgically, while the iron is hot. There will be ample time later for cutting up the corpse, and deciding what went well, and what did not. Once again, we have shown an inability to know when to be reactive, and when to be proactive.
