Libya Model For Future U.S. Interventions?

Libyan Intervention: The expectation of the world's lone superpower in a major military operation is "stalemate." Welcome to the era of the Obama "smart war."

Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen has been warning that he is unclear of the "endgame," as the Daily Telegraph describes it, in Libya. The outcome of Operation Odyssey Dawn is "very uncertain" and could end up as a stalemate that keeps Col. Moammar Gadhafi in power.

Appearing Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Mullen said U.S. force will mean that Gadhafi is "going to have to make some choices about his own future."

Sounds like we're sending Dr. Phil over to Tripoli to give the longtime tyrant some tough love.

Is this how U.S. force is used today? Not getting rid of threats to American lives but just adding a little United Nations-authorized sting to economic sanctions?

The president says our military operations were "authorized" by the U.N. Security Council and the Arab League. He didn't give the U.S. Congress — the Constitution's authorizers — even one of those bows he likes to perform in the presence of foreign gentry.

Is one of the purposes of Operation Odyssey Dawn to illustrate the New Multilateralism — i.e., a Change-We-Can-Believe-In U.S. foreign policy in which we never shoot until the U.N. Security Council gives permission?

The odd odyssey in Libya does not qualify under President Obama's own oft-advertized criteria for a "smart war." He liked to call Saddam Hussein "a bad guy" without whom "the world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off," but who should never have been attacked because he was "no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors."

Saddam "can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history," Obama argued. Well, Gadhafi was pretty well-contained for decades.

Striking Iran "without a clear rationale" would "only fan the flames of the Middle East and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaida," Obama used to argue. But where is the Libya rationale? And will al-Qaida exploit the wreckage?

Or perhaps, since the Bush administration intimidated Libya into giving up its nuclear program, we want to teach Gadhafi and his ilk that when it comes to dealing with the U.S., no good deed goes unpunished.

Also, what about another war tying up "badly needed resources" for "the war we need to win" in Afghanistan, as candidate Obama often said regarding Iraq?

Libya seems to be "a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics," as Obama said of Iraq. We've seen that passion on the covers of tabloid newspapers with Navy-released photos of Tomahawk cruise missiles and headlines like "Take That!"

As for the politics, it certainly would be convenient for the president to be able play the hawk as the 2012 election approaches.