Because you showed on the map just a minute ago Afghanistan. You know, we asked our allies, our NATO allies, to go into Afghanistan with us 10 years ago. They have been there, and a lot of them have been there despite the fact they were not attacked. The attack came on us as we all tragically remember. They stuck with us.

When it comes to Libya, we started hearing from the U.K., France, Italy, other of our NATO allies. This was in their vital national interest. The U.K. and France were the ones who went to the Security Council and said, “We have to act because otherwise we’re seeing a really violent upheaval with a man who has a history of unpredictable violent acts right on our doorstep.” So, you know, let, let’s be fair here. They didn’t attack us, but what they were doing and Gaddafi’s history and the potential for the disruption and instability was very much in our interests, as Bob said, and seen by our European friends and our Arab partners as very vital to their interests. ~Hillary Clinton

If we took this seriously, it seems to me that this would be yet another argument against the continued existence of NATO. NATO allies have been supporting U.S. efforts in Afghanistan to varying degrees, but this was done under Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty on the grounds that our allies had treaty obligations to the U.S. if the U.S. came under attack. The solidarity and support were and are much appreciated, but there is no reason for NATO forces to be in Afghanistan over nine years after 9/11. Invoking NATO support in Afghanistan as a reason to go to war with Libya just draws attention to how pointless it is for NATO allies to be in Afghanistan and how pointless it is for the U.S. to be attacking Libya.

The U.S. keeps them around partly for burden-sharing, and partly to exaggerate the multilateral nature of the Afghanistan war. In Libya, things are reversed: the most aggressive European governments want the U.S. involved to make waging the war possible, which it would not have been without U.S. involvement. Our NATO allies aren’t legally obliged to be in Afghanistan, but they do so to win American goodwill. Libya is an even worse case of coming to the aid of allies, since a defensive alliance in no way obliges the U.S. to aid European governments if they start a war of their own.

Whatever one wants to say about the U.S. continuing to be in Afghanistan, it is absurd to expect Europeans and Canadians to make military contributions at this point as part of their responsibilities within NATO. They stuck with us, and a majority of most allied nations would say that this has been a mistake that needs to be corrected as soon as possible. It is an indication of how lousy the case for the Libyan war is that administration officials have to play the allied solidarity card. The administration is saying that the U.S. needs to show solidarity with European allies, but most of those allies aren’t contributing anything and many of them are outright opposed to the action.

One thing that is noticeable about the European military contributions to the war is how few governments have contributed compared to Iraq and Afghanistan. This is partly because NATO and the EU are divided about how best to respond to the crisis in Libya, and partly because many of the new NATO members don’t have the capabilities to make sustained military commitments overseas. This points to the military weakness of many new NATO allies, which raises the question of what value the last two rounds of expansion have added to the Alliance. More than that, it shows that most European members of NATO want nothing to do with the military action that it supposedly “vital” to Europe.

Let’s also be honest in acknowledging that none of these states’ vital interests demanded starting a war with Libya. Having let the civil war end on Gaddafi’s terms would have been much more in the interest of Italy, which has the largest stake of all of our allies in Libya. The main reason why the French and British governments staked out a different, aggressive position on Libya is that Sarkozy wanted to erase the embarrassment of ties with the Tunisian regime, and the British government wants to back the rebels now because under Blair it was instrumental in rehabilitating Gaddafi and now finds this terribly embarrassing. One could argue that Washington is doing political favors for Sarkozy and Cameron, but it is quite a stretch to say that the national interests of France and Britain are being served in the process.