A friend from high school asked my feelings on Libya. My readers might be interested in a redacted version of my answer:
You can probably guess how I feel about Libya; we should have stayed the hell out. It's an internal conflict, it's none of our business, but if the Europeans feel Libya is so important, let them go in there. This is going to turn out to be, at best, another exercise in nation building and/or, at worst, a disaster. The ruination of every empire in history has been imperial overreach, and we are at, or probably well beyond, that point now. My general approach to foreign policy has been enlightened but nonetheless quite strict non-interventionism for years; I'm not about to change now.
You ask why the Chinese and the Russians aren't joining us; I suspect they are not jumping into this quagmire because they are smart and possess a degree of humility and a sense of limits we have yet to achieve. But as the Afghans taught the Russians, they are teaching us, and maybe we’ll learn, but we never seem to learn.
The Libyan imbroglio is yet another case of an arrogant America throwing its weight around, the folly of empire in its dying days. The military, like any bureaucracy, is looking for more to do, America is convinced that only we have the answers and are entitled to tell everyone how to run their countries and affairs, defense contractors throw money at the politicians, "conservatives" equate patriotism with the willingness to go to war, "liberals" cannot bear to see anyone suffer when someone else's money and/or life might prove ameliorative, and this is the result.
God help us.
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