Brendan O’Neill and Adam Garfinkle have written the two most impressive, utterly damning indictments of this absurd war. First, here is O’Neill:

This is not the return of the politics of empire or a re-flourishing of Western colonialism in north Africa, as some have claimed. Rather it is the barbarism of buffoons. This is an act of violence driven not by clear geopolitical interests but by the utter failure of modern Western governments to work out what their geopolitical interests are, and to act accordingly. In the rubble of various compounds and airfields in Libya, we can spy the incoherence of the Western political elites, and their elevation of the reckless, narcissistic politics of short-term gain over anything resembling a strategy or aim.

O’Neill explains very well just how arbitrary and unmoored from discernible interests the Libyan war is. He continues:

Never in the history of mankind has such a collection of know-nothings and narcissists led a military excursion into a sovereign state’s affairs.

I don’t know if it has never happened (Kosovo and Iraq do spring to mind), but a war based to a large degree on the ideas of Benard-Henri Levy and Samantha Power is exceptional for being one of the most ill-conceived and dim-witted exercises of military power in my lifetime.

O’Neill finishes his withering criticism with the conclusion that the entire Libyan war has been a desperate bit of political image-burnishing by the governments involved:

Driven more by short-term desperation than the “long view”, more by a desire for quick and painless political pay-offs than by a careful weighing up of interests and consequences, Western governments have turned Libya into a stage for a politically shallow yet deeply destructive form of moral posturing.

Garfinkle’s long post is worth reading in full, but this conclusion sums up his main objections:

What is crazy, however, is the consequences-be-damned argument for war on humanitarian grounds that the President has apparently embraced, and the utter vacuum of strategic thinking that seems to be its handmaiden.

P.S. It’s telling that both O’Neill and Garfinkle see the Libyan war as complete folly. They advocate two radically different remedies to the current predicament, and I certainly agree with O’Neill’s call to cease the war now, but it is striking how some of those who believe ousting Gaddafi is what must be done regard the entire thing as an unnecessary debacle from the beginning.