The critics of humanitarian intervention who say that the outcome is likely to be messier and more protracted than its proponents imagine are right. You have to be prepared to live with the unforeseen consequences of your acts. NATO and the United States thus have to stay the course not only to deliver the Libyan people from Qaddafi but also to demonstrate that such interventions are not exercises in imperial hubris — or “wars of whim,” as my Foreign Policy colleague Stephen Walt mockingly puts it. ~James Traub

Scoblete labels this a shift of rationale for the Libyan war, and it is. This is a roundabout way of acknowledging that the original rationales for the war have since been discredited. The main stated reason and formal justification for intervention was the protection of civilians, and it is difficult to see how the vast majority of the civilian population of Libya has been protected by the last four months of outside intervention. When Micah Zenko offered a report card on the Libyan war almost two months ago, he had already given the effort to protect civilians a D. If anything, that grade was too generous then, and the grade must be lower now. Other supporting arguments for attacking Libya have fallen apart in the weeks and months that followed the start of the bombing.

Surely, “staying the course” to “deliver” the population from Gaddafi is nothing if not an exercise in imperial hubris. Presuming to dictate the outcome of another country’s civil war by use of military force would seem to qualify as just such an exercise: it is violent, it is arrogant, and it treats the internal politics of another state as if it were our legitimate business. Despite having no authorization or right to do so, a relative handful of foreign governments have decided that the existing government of Libya must be overthrown and power handed to a different group of Libyans. Last Friday, if they had not done so before, the U.S. government and assembled allies endorsed the rebel leadership as the Libyan government. This was not because they actually were the de facto government of Libya, but rather because they were nothing of the sort and because they are nowhere near to becoming so without massive external support. No matter how much the administration insists otherwise, the U.S. and our allies are working to impose a new government in Libya that could never have taken hold without our support.

Gaddafi had been cooperating with these same governments for several years. Five months ago, he cracked down violently on opposition forces, and then these governments decided that his misrule had become unacceptable to them. Up until five months ago, it had not concerned them very much, but starting in February Gaddafi and their connection to him had become embarrassing. These governments never much liked him, he made himself expendable with his crackdown, and now they are in the process of deposing him and installing a more agreeable replacement. To that end, they are prepared to continue jeopardizing the welfare of the civilian population of Libya, and in the process they have exposed their populations to the risk of retaliation and attack in the future. This is entirely consistent with imperial hubris. Seeing the war through to its conclusion for the sake of nothing except reputation and credibility is exactly what one would expect of an exercise in imperial hubris.