Advocates for war against Libya can’t even count on Wesley Clark to support them. Clark has written an op-ed in which he outlines an updated Weinberger-Powell Doctrine. This is fairly remarkable considering Clark’s role as the commanding officer in the illegal war in Kosovo and his later efforts to turn that experience into a political springboard in the 2004 presidential race. Clark’s account of the Kosovo war in the op-ed isn’t very satisfying, but he makes a solid argument against starting a war with Libya. First, a Libyan war does not serve American interests:

How do we apply this test to Libya? Protecting access to oil supplies has become a vital interest, but Libya doesn’t sell much oil to the United States, and what has been cut off is apparently being replaced by Saudi production. Other national interests are more complex. Of course, we want to support democratic movements in the region, but we have two such operations already underway – in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then there are the humanitarian concerns. It is hard to stand by as innocent people are caught up in violence, but that’s what we did when civil wars in Africa killed several million and when fighting in Darfur killed hundreds of thousands. So far, the violence in Libya is not significant in comparison. Maybe we could earn a cheap “victory,” but, on whatever basis we intervene, it would become the United States vs. Gaddafi, and we would be committed to fight to his finish. That could entail a substantial ground operation, some casualties and an extended post-conflict peacekeeping presence.

Clark points out that a no-fly zone isn’t going to achieve the outcome its advocates want, and there would be other means of addressing humanitarian concerns:

In Libya, if the objective is humanitarian, then we would work with both sides and not get engaged in the matter of who wins. Just deliver relief supplies, treat the injured and let the Libyans settle it. But if we want to get rid of Gaddafi, a no-fly zone is unlikely to be sufficient – it is a slick way to slide down the slope to deeper intervention.

The U.S. is wholly unprepared for the post-conflict situation, and we don’t understand what forces we’re enabling:

In Libya, we don’t know who the rebels really are or how a legitimate government would be formed if Gaddafi were pushed out. Perhaps we will have a better sense when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with rebel leaders, as she is scheduled to do this coming week. In a best-case scenario, there would be a constitutional convention, voter lists, political parties and internationally supervised free and fair elections. But there could also be a violent scramble for authority in which the most organized, secretive and vicious elements take over. We are not well-equipped to handle that kind of struggle. And once we intervene, Libya’s problems would become our responsibility.

There is no legal basis for intervention:

In Libya, Gaddafi has used and supported terrorism, murdered Americans and repressed his people for 40 years. The American public may want to see him go. But his current actions aren’t an attack on the United States or any other country. On what basis would we seek congressional support and international authorization to intervene in a civil war? Do we have the endorsement of the Arab League? A U.N. Security Council resolution?

Clark sums up his argument and concludes that the U.S. should stay out of Libya:

Given these rules, what is the wisest course of action in Libya? To me, it seems we have no clear basis for action. Whatever resources we dedicate for a no-fly zone would probably be too little, too late. We would once again be committing our military to force regime change in a Muslim land, even though we can’t quite bring ourselves to say it. So let’s recognize that the basic requirements for successful intervention simply don’t exist, at least not yet: We don’t have a clearly stated objective, legal authority, committed international support or adequate on-the-scene military capabilities, and Libya’s politics hardly foreshadow a clear outcome [bold mine-DL].

But although intervening on behalf of regime change in Libya has grabbed the attention of the commentariat, no such calls are heard for America to defend democracy just a bit further to the south and west, in the Ivory Coast, where a democratically elected president, Alassane Ouattara, has been unable to compel his predecessor, Laurent Gbagbo, to transfer power. Gbagbo’s militias are using no less violent methods to hold on to power, but because the dramatic images have yet to saturate our television screens, pundits have not seen fit to gravely warn how Obama’s “failure” to act jeopardizes U.S. global leadership. ~Nikolas Gvosdev

Gvosdev isn’t calling for intervention in Ivory Coast, and neither am I, but he makes a very important argument that the current fixation on Libya is almost entirely a product on what happens to be the latest story that catches the attention of international media. The growing conflict in Ivory Coast isn’t more important, but it’s remarkable that hardly anyone is paying attention to a comparably violent, destabilizing conflict there when it is no less important. The extent of displacement, human suffering, and death in Ivory Coast is no less and may already be greater, and the effects of instability there may prove to be more destructive for the country and its neighbors.

Had a Libyan civil war broken out last year, or had it started a year from now, would it be anywhere near the top of the administration’s agenda? It is doubtful. Western governments and publics would have been focused on another crisis somewhere else, and the relative unimportance to the U.S. of what was happening in Libya would be clear for all to see. Because fighting in Libya broke out in connection with the protests in other Arab countries, there was already built-in interest in covering the story and a ready-made narrative for explaining what was happening. Even though they are both equally violent and destructive, a popular uprising against a dictatorship catches more attention than a post-election struggle to make the defeated incumbent step down. Westerners know and loathe Gaddafi. They might come to loathe Gbagbo if they got to know him, but for right now he is just a name and most people won’t even know that.

Ouattara is widely recognized as the legitimate, elected president of Ivory Coast, Gbagbo and his followers are resisting the outcome with both thuggery and military offensives against opposition centers, and the clash has the potential to cause another civil war less than a decade after the last conflict there. What are the democratists and humanitarian interventionists doing while this is going on? Many of them are busily agitating for war against Libya for the sake of rebel forces that they don’t fully understand and some of whose political goals they probably abhor.

Apparently, disputed elections are no longer our preferred causes celebres. That was last decade’s fad. We have just as much business becoming involved in an internal Ivorian conflict as we have getting involved in an internal Libyan conflict (which is to say none at all), but the total silence from interventionists on the former tells me that humanitarian concerns, claims of moral obligation, and worries about lost U.S. “credibility” are mostly rhetorical maneuvers to push for military action wherever and whenever there is an opening for it.

The doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” has several requirements before international intervention becomes appropriate on R2P’s terms. This is supposed to guard against the abuse of humanitarian intervention for anything other than genuine humanitarian disasters. As we have seen over the last few weeks, humanitarian interventionists are nonetheless happy to invoke the authority to “protect” without demonstrating that the conflict in question qualifies. The criteria for intervention are similar in many respects to the requirements of just war theory: just cause, right intention, final resort, legitimate authority, proportional means, and reasonable prospect. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that intervening in Libya meets the first two criteria. What about the other four?

Intervening in Libya certainly isn’t a final resort at this point. Options other than military action have barely been considered, much less exhausted. The only legitimate authority that the “responsibility to protect” doctrine acknowledges is the Security Council, so that will certainly be lacking. Establishing a no-fly zone might be a proportionate response, but it doesn’t have a reasonable prospect of success, unless success is defined as the effective enforcement of a no-fly zone.

James Traub dispenses with all of this, and says that the U.S. should entangle itself in Libya’s civil war anyway:

So neither the strategic nor the humanitarian case for action is overwhelming. And to be effective, that action would require a serious commitment of military force. So again, why do it?

Because it would be the right thing, and because it would be good for the United States. It would be the right thing because U.S. and NATO force could stop a ruthless tyrant from killing his own people and bring his monstrous rule to an end. Western intervention in the Congo wouldn’t have solved the problem, while military action in Darfur might well have provoked a massive backlash in the Islamic world. But Libya is a case where force could work and where it will be deployed only after non-coercive methods have proved unavailing, as the doctrine of the responsibility to protect requires. And it would redound to America’s benefit because the United States would be placing its military power at the disposal of the Arab world in order to liberate Arab peoples.

I have to congratulate Traub on his demonstration of the complete bankruptcy and irrationality of the pro-war argument. If there is neither a humanitarian nor strategic case to be made for starting a war against Libya, and there isn’t, there is no case for U.S. involvement at all. Traub isn’t just calling for a no-fly zone. He wants an air campaign against Gaddafi’s forces:

There is no point in establishing a no-fly zone unless both the West and Arab leaders are prepared to take the next step. This would be the kind of airstrikes that finally brought Slobodan Milosevic to heel in 1995: strikes against troop concentrations, bunkers, air-defense systems, and the like. This would be an outright act of war, though one that did not put foreign boots on Libyan soil.

A no-fly zone would be an “outright act of war,” too, but why worry? Once again, Traub does us a service of pointing out where intervention in Libya must lead. Western governments aren’t prepared to take the next step. Many of them don’t even want to take the first step. I doubt there is much enthusiasm among Arab leaders for what Traub is proposing. The Arab League is apparently fine with a no-fly zone, perhaps because some of the governments in the League don’t fully appreciate what is involved in enforcing it, but will it support an ongoing air campaign against Gaddafi’s forces? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Traub’s argument is a good example of the unthinking, reflexive responses of interventionists in this debate. There is no particularly good or well-reasoned argument for what they want. It’s just the right thing to do. It could all go horribly wrong, and there’s no reason for America to be involved, but it makes us feel better, so let’s do it. The quality of debate in this country over a matter as grave and important as warfare is just appalling.

If Gadhafi and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad still rule territory in a month’s time, and if Hezbollah and Hamas continue to rely on their armed presence to back up the militant policies they impose, the promises of Middle Eastern democracy will look very hollow. And the incentive structure of the Middle East will acquire a sinister new look.

Gadhafi’s departure from power in other words is not just a requirement of humanity and decency. It’s not only justice to the people of Libya. It is also essential to American credibility and the stability of the Middle East region. ~David Frum

Ross has called Frum’s argument “one of the strongest” cases for military action in Libya, and he may be right, which says a lot about how horribly weak the argument for military action is. Consider that first paragraph in the quote. For the sake of the “promises of Middle Eastern democracy,” the U.S. must ensure that Gaddafi loses power (and within just the next few weeks). Apparently, the “promises of Middle Eastern democracy” also hinge on Ahmadinejad’s being driven from office, Hizbullah’s coalition losing power, and Hamas, well, ceasing to be Hamas. In a month’s time, Ahmadinejad will almost certainly still be in office, Lebanese PM Miqati will still be haggling with the other parties in organizing Lebanon’s government, and Hamas will remain in the same position it has been in for the last four years, which will tell us little or nothing about what we can expect from Tunisia and Egypt. For what it’s worth, Miqati is the duly appointed nominated prime minister of the coalition that represents a majority in the Lebanese parliament, and Hamas gained part of its hold on power through the brilliant democracy-promoting efforts of the Bush administration. If the “promises of Middle Eastern democracy” look hollow to Frum, it is because electorates in many parts of the region support political causes Frum rejects. None of these other countries has anything to do with Libya, and all of this is to make Gaddafi’s hold on power seem more significant for the region than it is.

It is “essential” to American credibility and the stability of the region that Gaddafi be overthrown? The last time that interventionists were warning about the de-stabilizing regional effects of a dictator, we ended up with the Iraq debacle in which millions of people were displaced or driven into exile, and hundreds of thousands were killed. Widening and escalating Libya’s civil war into an international one are more likely to contribute to regional destabilization than anything currently happening in Libya. When did Gaddafi’s downfall become “essential” to American credibility? When Obama said that he “must go”? It wasn’t a good idea to say that publicly if there was no intention of following through on it, but this is a bit like saying George Bush was required to attack Iran because he included them in the “axis of evil” or else undermine American “credibility.” Careless rhetoric is unfortunate, but that doesn’t mean that U.S. policymakers have to treat it as if it were an ultimatum.

Today, we can hear a chorus demanding intervention in Libya. Many of the reasons are those we’ve grown used to; we heard them all in the long lead-up to Iraq and we’ve been hearing them all over again since uprisings began to spread in the Arab world. But, added to the mix is something new: America must intervene in order to restore its reputation and moral standing. We are A Very Serious Nation, and Very Serious Nations that are not taken seriously, on a moral/military level, do not long retain their status. We must do something, somewhere, but soon—for the sake of our reputation. ~J.L. Wall

Wall makes an interesting and instructive comparison between arguments for intervention in Libya and those made in support of Cast Lead, the Israeli military operation against Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. Maintaining or restoring “credibility” is a common theme in all of these arguments, and as I have noted before it was a significant part of the argument for NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999. The trouble with this isn’t just that these campaigns all contributed to the additional loss of credibility for the states and institutions involved, but that this is an incredibly bad reason for taking military action. Short of complete success, any military action is going to do more to tarnish national reputation than bolster it.

The comparison with Kosovo may be the most instructive one for Libya, since NATO intervened in a conflict that was entirely internal, which is what interventionists propose that the U.S. and allies do again. Like Kosovo, all that interventionists are proposing right now is that the U.S. use air power to limit Gaddafi’s military advantage. Back then, McCain was one of the louder voices calling for at least the threat of using ground forces, but today not even McCain proposes something like this. Kerry made a point of rejecting the idea of sending in ground forces in his recent op-ed, because we all understand that it is politically a non-starter with so many American forces remaining in Iraq and Afghanistan. Interventionists aren’t willing to level with the public what their preferred policy goal would actually require, so they are pretending that the first part of a larger intervention is all that the U.S. should do. One reason that Kerry’s position is hard to take seriously is that the mission in Libya he describes would probably be a very long one with goals that U.S. and allied intervention alone couldn’t realize.

Instead of having a much more limited objective of compelling Gaddafi’s forces to leave a certain area within Libya, U.S. and allied forces would presumably continue their no-fly zone for as long as Gaddafi remained in power, and it wouldn’t stop until he stepped down or was overthrown. It took 78 days of bombing to compel Milosevic to order the evacuation of forces from Kosovo, and that was during a campaign in which Serbian forces rarely fought back in order to avoid being destroyed. We would have to be prepared for a possibly much longer commitment against a regime that now has every incentive to fight back and make intervention as dangerous and costly as possible. Once the war for the sake of “credibility” begins, it isn’t going to end until Gaddafi is no longer in power, but the relatively minimal nature of the intervention could allow Gaddafi to hang on for quite a while, which is why the no-fly zone will be just the first in a series of escalations leading to an air campaign and possibly invasion.

Gaddafi has already lost control over eastern Libya, but neither the rebels nor the anti-Gaddafi brigades in the West appeared satisfied with this. Unlike Kosovo, a war against Libya would be waged with the purpose of hastening Gaddafi’s downfall rather than securing the separation of a part of Libya from Tripoli’s control. This is not only a much bigger undertaking than compelling Serb forces to leave Kosovo, but it makes the success of U.S. intervention dependent entirely on the ability of the rebels to defeat Gaddafi’s other forces and/or encourage Gaddafi’s supporters to turn against him. Even most advocates of a no-fly zone aren’t proposing a coordinated campaign together with the rebels, which would require U.S. or allied soldiers to coordinate operations with them, and it’s not clear how this would be accomplished practically if the rebels don’t want any foreign soldiers on Libyan soil. Were such coordination to happen, there’s also no way of knowing whether it would fragment the rebels into different camps:

But others disagree. “We’ll stop fighting the tyrant and shoot the Americans instead,” says a veteran of Libya’s war in Chad, who now mans an old anti-aircraft gun on Benghazi’s corniche. Some Islamist leaders say they may face pressure to fight American troops if they became involved.

If Muammar Qaddafi violently suppresses the Libya uprising while America stands by, will Arab and Muslim opinion really believe that we were “neutral”? Or will they believe that we tacitly support Qaddafi – as they believed through the 1990s that we tacitly supported Saddam Hussein? ~David Frum

Does anyone accept the idea that Arab and Muslim publics believe the U.S. tacitly supported Saddam Hussein in the 1990s? This is risible. The massacres of Shi’ites after Desert Storm followed President Bush’s decision to call for an uprising against Hussein, which created the expectation of U.S. support that Bush had no intention of providing. The mistake was to give people in Iraq false hope, which is effectively what a lot of advocates of intervention in Libya argue that the administration should be doing. Just as earlier proponents of rollback had given false hope to the Hungarians that the U.S. would aid their uprising, Bush encouraged people to launch a suicidal rebellion. The U.S. wasn’t perceived as tacitly supporting Hussein. The shame of the 1991 massacres was that the U.S. had stupidly implied that it would give support to rebels that it wasn’t prepared to deliver.

Frum has several more questions, but this one stood out for its absurdity:

If you are a Libyan insurgent and you are offered arms by international Islamist groups, do you say yes or no?

Libyan rebels would likely say yes and would have done so anyway, not least because many of the Libyan rebels are jihadists and sympathizers with those same “international Islamist groups.” As The Economistreported last week:

Libyans have a strong jihadist tradition, going back a century to Omar Mukhtar, who conducted a holy war for two decades against the colonising Italians; he lost but remains a heroic unifying symbol. Religious, tribal and nationalist feeling is still strong. More recently, Libyan jihadists have been prominent in Iraq, where, according to a study by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center in 2008, Libyans (nearly all from the eastern part of the country) made up a fifth of foreign jihadists, the second-largest group after the Saudis and the highest per person of any country. Sufian bin Qumu, a rebel leader in Darna, north-east of Benghazi, was once Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur.

If Frum is concerned about the growing power of Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood (some of which has been made possible by the Iraq war and U.S. democracy promotion), why does he want the U.S. to intervene in a conflict that will help put such people in positions of power? How does it weaken Iranian influence if the U.S. is pulled into a Libyan civil war? How can it be to America’s advantage in trying to contain Iranian influence if its attention and resources are diverted into yet another conflict that has nothing to do with American interests?

For sheer irrelevance, this question also caught my attention:

If you are the president of Venezuela and you lose an election, how will you react when President Obama tells you that you “must” honor the election results?

Does Hugo Chavez base his reactions to anything said by Obama or any other Western leader on anything other than his interest in consolidating power? Is Obama supposed to take military action in Libya so that he can more effectively scold Hugo Chavez for electoral fraud? This is supposed to be an example of how Obama will damage U.S. “credibility” by not intervening in Libya, and it is just as ridiculous as you would expect it to be.

If Muammar Qaddafi takes Benghazi, it will be Barack Obama’s responsibility. That is what it means to be the American president. ~Leon Wieseltier

In addition to not plunging needlessly into another country’s civil war, the Obama administration’s restraint on Libya so far has had another positive effect: it has revealed just how unhinged and fanatical many of the advocates of intervention are. Do these people really believe that every event in the world is the responsibility of the President of the United States, or is it just hyperbole to get the war they want? It seems that some of them really believe it. Laurent Gbagbo hasn’t given up his hold on power in Ivory Coast. Is the violence by Gbagbo supporters in Abidjan Obama’s responsibility, too?

Such people are are thrilled by Sarkozy’s recognition of the Benghazi transitional government, because this is the sort of diplomatic mistake that obliges Western governments to become more involved, but it is telling that many other European governments see Sarkozy acting recklessly and foolishly. Fresh off the embarrassment that was the exceedingly cozy relationship with Ben Ali and his cronies, and on the heels of dumping the foreign minister responsible for a sizeable part of that embarrassment, Sarkozy is trying to re-invent himself as the zealous supporter of Libyan rebels. Naturally, interventionists here in the U.S. don’t see this as a desperate attempt by Sarkozy to change the subject, but instead treat it as serious moral leadership, which tells us a lot of what we need to know about what they think morality and leadership mean.

The only thing that bothers them about what Sarkozy is doing is that the French beat America to the punch in engaging in dangerous grandstanding. Of course, Sarkozy can afford making these statements, because no one, not even his American cheerleaders, expect him to follow through on it. France meddles in its former colonies’ affairs quite often, but meddling in Libya would be something different.

Western military intervention in Libya’s civil war doesn’t make much sense, no matter which government is calling for it or leading it, but if any Western governments should be taking the lead in responding to a civil war in North Africa it should be European governments. Some European governments have something at stake in the Libyan civil war, and the U.S. has nothing at stake, so if there had to be outside intervention it would make a lot more sense if Europeans and other states from around the Mediterranean and North Africa were bearing most of the burden.

Greater allied burden-sharing is something that ought to be appealing to Americans regardless of what one believes the U.S. role in the world should be. It can relieve the U.S. of outdated or unnecessary commitments, but it also helps keep the U.S. military from being spread too thin. Letting regional powers and organizations take the lead in these situations isn’t just a good way to keep the U.S. from getting bogged down in conflicts in which America has no interest, but it is also a good way to begin the process of offloading some of the responsibility for regional security that the U.S. has had for much longer than necessary.

Huntsman is expected to make his perceived electability a centerpiece of his platform.
The Huntsman campaign-in-waiting is already at work making this case, seizing on the White House’s apparent concern with the charismatic former governor whom they may have incorrectly assumed to have successfully exiled to the other side of the world when President Obama appointed him ambassador to China in 2009.

On Wednesday, Obama seemed particularly intent on drowning Huntsman with praise, calling him “an outstanding advocate for this administration” as the ambassador prepares to head home next month to mull a political future that could set him against his current boss.

“Despite the fact that Huntsman’s still virtually unknown, the president and his advisors have enough political sense to recognize that he would be the most formidable opponent in the general election,” said a strategist likely to be involved in a Huntsman campaign. “The only reason they are meddling in the GOP primary at this early stage is because they know Huntsman can win.” ~Scott Conroy

Huntsman supporters are very entertaining, and I’m looking forward to several more months of this sort of comedy. They understand that Huntsman is pretty much doomed in the primaries by his association with Obama, but for whatever reason they want to repeat as often as possible Obama‘s assessments of Huntsman’s electability, Obama‘s decision to appoint him as ambassador, and Obama‘s supposed fear of a Huntsman nomination. This is rather odd reverse psychology. It’s as if they’re saying, “The only way to beat Obama is to take Obama’s advice on choosing the candidate he thinks would be most effective against him, so trust Obama when he says that Huntsman is electable! Obama wouldn’t lie about a thing like that!” I submit that this is a losing message.

Republican voters don’t trust Obama. Even if they were inclined to believe Huntsman’s electability, Obama’s supposed roundabout endorsement of Huntsman’s electability (by praising him effusively) gives them reason not to believe it. If Obama were right and Huntsman is the most electable Republican in the 2012 field, Republican voters wouldn’t care because they would conclude that serving as ambassador under Obama makes him unacceptable no matter how electable he is. The rallying cry against Huntsman will be, “We want an echo, not a copy!” This will be unfair and inaccurate as far as most of Huntsman’s record is concerned, but that is what comes from putting such a high premium on political team loyalty.

There’s something else genuinely odd about what Huntsman supporters are saying. Electability is going to be the centerpiece of Huntsman’s campaign, and one of the reasons his supporters believe he is electable is that he has foreign policy credentials, which he has been building during his time in Beijing. At the same time, they want to suggest that Obama has been speaking out so enthusiastically about Huntsman’s service in order to cripple him politically. That implies that Obama is deliberately exaggerating the quality of Huntsman’s work to make it seem as if he is closely aligned with Obama and therefore less viable in a Republican primary. It seems to me that this is a serious disservice to Huntsman, as Huntsman has been widely praised for actually being a very competent and effective ambassador who deserves praise for his work. In other words, whenever Obama credits Huntsman for doing a good job, he is supposedly “meddling” in the Republican primary rather than commenting on Huntsman’s work, which will lead Republican voters to question his foreign policy credentials as well. This is what Huntsman’s supporters are saying. Just imagine what his enemies will do.

When I saw the article outlining that Huntsman’s would-be campaign was going to focus heavily on New Hamsphire, I was thinking that it could create an annoyance for Romney, since Romney needs to dominate in New Hampshire and Huntsman could peel off some moderate and independent votes that Romney might otherwise win. On second thought, Romney doesn’t need to worry. Once Huntsman goes “all-in” in New Hampshire and fails, Romney won’t have to fight with him over moderate Republican voters.

P.S. As this New Hampshire Journalstory reports, Huntsman’s growing campaign organization leans heavily on McCain 2000 staffers, and the strategy seems to be a warmed-over version of McCain’s 2000 pursuit of undeclared voters. Leaving aside Romney’s presence in the race, it wouldn’t be enough anyway:

Reports have been surfacing about an early May Huntsman visit to Wayne Jennings’ group, the New Hampshire Cultural Awareness Diversity Council. Given Jennings’ remarks in Real Clear Politics earlier this week, the strategy for a Huntsman candidacy thus far seems clear: focus on undeclared voters. While on the surface some may think this is a winning strategy, even John McCain tied George W. Bush among Republicans in his stunning 2000 primary upset. Statistics show that only between 25 and 30 percent of undeclared voters will make up the total 2012 Republican primary electorate, and it is highly unlikely that Huntsman can win more than 50 percent of those voters in a crowded Republican field. Huntsman will need a big chunk of Republicans to have a shot of pulling off a McCain 2000-type victory in hopes of throwing the nomination fight on its head as the calendar turns to the more conservative South Carolina.

The war between an all-powerful dictator and a ragtag group of rebels, whose motives range from tribal loyalties and religious fervor to dreams of democracy, is fast becoming the Mideast’s equivalent of last century’s civil war in Spain.

Remember that? There were good reasons for America to stay out of the Spanish conflict, including the fear that if Gen. Francisco Franco lost, the communists would take over Spain. In hindsight, Franco’s victory clearly emboldened his allies, Hitler and Mussolini, and helped to usher in the bloodiest decade in human history, which ended only with the defeat of Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan — and with half of Europe in Communist hands. ~Benny Avni

Ah, yes, the old Emboldening Effect. If it hadn’t been for Franco’s victory, apparently Hitler and Mussolini would have retired to lives of peaceful contemplation. It is somewhat fair to describe the Spanish Civil War as being a “dress rehearsal” for WWII in Europe in that it provided a testing ground for some Axis weapons, and it has been conventional (and largely mistaken) to identify Franco’s regime with contemporary fascism, but it isn’t true that an internal Spanish war “helped usher in the bloodiest decade in human history.” None of the causes of WWII can be found in the Spanish Civil War. What is striking about the Spanish Civil War with the advantage of seventy-five years of hindsight is how significant some contemporaries thought it was and how largely unimportant (for everyone outside Spain) it proved to be.

It isn’t true that “the future of the whole region is increasingly tied to the Libyan crisis.” All the states with the most at stake in Libya are not eager for military intervention. Indeed, it is mostly those states that have no reason to take an interest in the conflict that are calling for action or have been called upon (as the U.S. has been) to lead the intervention. If there is a major regional conflict in the future, it won’t be because of what is happening in Libya, and it certainly won’t be because the U.S. is too reluctant to take military action in the region.