Diamond mainly discusses the consequences for the Libyan people, but I think that the harm will be global. Barack Obama’s America is showing itself to be a paper tiger; and every one of America’s enemies, especially the tyrants in Iran and Venezuela, are realizing that they can step up their aggression. If Gaddafi stays, he will resume his nuclear and chemical warfare plans and his support of global terrorism, secure in the knowledge that this American President will do nothing to stop him, unless the Russians and Chinese give permission. This week is may be one that will cause terrible problems for the United States for decades to come, comparable to the week when Khomenei seized power in Iran. ~David Kopel

Via Andrew

Ah, yes, Venezuelan aggression. It’s a good indicator that your argument doesn’t make any sense if one of the main things you are worried about in the world is Venezuelan aggression. Seriously, “the harm will be global”? At least some of the advocates of intervention in Libya have been honest in acknowledging how tremendously low the stakes are:

The question of who rules this desert state is not, after all, a matter of U.S. national security. And though Qaddafi has plainly committed terrible atrocities, they don’t begin to compare with those perpetrated by Bashir or Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, or by the factions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. So neither the strategic nor the humanitarian case for action is overwhelming.

Since the U.S. has nothing at stake in Libya, warmongers have had to resort to alarmism. If he survives, Gaddafi might start building WMDs! Gaddafi might support terrorism! Yes, it’s possible that a victorious Gaddafi might resume weapons programs, and he could become a sponsor of terrorism again, in which case things would be back where they were for almost decades before 2003. This would be a problem, but it would be as manageable as it was in the 1990s and in the early years of this century. This isn’t remotely comparable to the effect that the revolution in Iran had, not least since Libya isn’t anywhere as important to the U.S. as Iran was then. Is it a big enough problem to merit taking sides in a civil war or initiating a new international war? Not even close.

A government doesn’t reveal itself to be a paper tiger by not intervening in conflicts in which it has no stake and doesn’t have a real interest. In fact, jumping into conflicts where there are no U.S. interests is a good way to create the impression of weakness later on, as there will be enormous pressure to get out immediately when something goes wrong (and something always goes wrong). One way to avoid appearing as a “paper tiger” is not to make every conflict the business of the U.S. government. Hawks love to talk about the withdrawals from Lebanon and Somalia as things that encouraged enemies of the U.S. to expect that Americans had no staying power, but this would never have become an issue if the Reagan and Bush administrations that sent U.S. forces to these countries and the Clinton administration that escalated involvement in Somalia had recognized that the U.S. had no business involving itself in the conflicts raging in Lebanon and Somalia. The lesson of Lebanon wasn’t that Reagan should have “stayed the course,” but that he should never have sent American forces into the middle of a war in Lebanon.

The “paper tiger” worry is a relic of the late 1990s. For good or ill, almost ten years of U.S. combat forces deployed in Afghanistan have shown that this is not true. It is ludicrous to be worrying about the U.S. appearing as a “paper tiger” after persisting in two foreign wars for the better part of a decade. The problem that the U.S. has now isn’t the danger that other states and non-state groups won’t respect American power, but that many Americans think every political crisis in the world demands that the U.S. government engage in constant, pointless demonstrations of strength.