The United States is granting Libyan rebel leaders full diplomatic recognition as the governing authority of Libya, after five months of fighting to oust longtime ruler Moammar Gaddafi, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday.

The decision–announced at a meeting here of 30 Western and Arab nations–paves the way for the rebels to access some of Libya’s frozen U.S. assets, which total more than $30 billion. ~The Washington Post

At least this ends this absurd situation where the U.S. wages war against Libya on behalf of an alternative regime that it can’t bring itself to recognize. It’s worth noting that very little has changed since early June. Back then, the administration was in no rush to recognize the TNC as the Libyan government, and the reasons for non-recognition would appear to be just as true today. As Joshua Keating reported:

Administration officials tell Richter that the council “may not control enough territory or population to qualify as sovereign,” but more to the point, transfering recognition from an established government, no matter how despotic, to a rebel group goes against long-standing U.S. policy.

Very little has changed in terms of the territory or population under the TNC leadership’s control, and whatever control that the authorities have over the territory their forces occupy is often nominal. Long-standing U.S. policy certainly hasn’t changed. The only thing that seems to have changed in the last six weeks is that more governments have chosen to recognize the council. Even so, it’s still true that there is no ” international, or even regional, consensus recognizing the Transitional National Council as the legitimate government of Libya,” to use Keating’s words. Perhaps this is because the council could not function without massive outside support, and it has no business being treated as if it were the Libyan government.

The Post story explains what changed:

For weeks, U.S. officials have stopped short of full diplomatic recognition even as they inched up support for the Libyan rebels’ cause. The main concern was over how capably and inclusively the rebel leaders would govern, said a senior U.S. state department official who was not authorized to speak by name.

The United States decided to change its position after a presentation to the international contact group by Mahmoud Jebril, the foreign representative of the transitional council, who walked through the rebels’ post-Gaddafi plans for governing Libya.

Well, if he made a presentation, that should settle it. The capacity for inclusive governance is already on display in some of those western village mountains.

Dov Zakheim makes several good points in this short piece on Libya, but unfortunately the U.S. will not now “terminate this mindless, costly and counterproductive exercise.” Now that the U.S. recognizes the council as the Libyan government, it is unlikely that the administration is going to want to halt the war. Instead, the new Libyan government is going to become the collective ward of the U.S. and NATO, not least because so few states outside NATO are going to acknowledge it as the government, and our government and our allies are going to be expected to keep propping it up.

Update: Massie describes the war very well:

Libya: an intervention launched on an untenable premise, conducted lethargically, with little regard to interest and little idea of what the end game should look like in even the most favourable circumstances.