Why does the U.S. want the fighting to stop, Gaddafi’s forces to retreat and Gaddafi to leave the country? via Why Are We Going to War with Libya?–Updated – Swampland – TIME.com.
The strategy may have been outlined by President Obama last Tuesday, as repored by Josh Rogin:
His overall thinking was described to a group of experts who had been called to the White House to discuss the crisis in Libya only days earlier.
“This is the greatest opportunity to realign our interests and our values,” a senior administration official said at the meeting, telling the experts this sentence came from Obama himself. The president was referring to the broader change going on in the Middle East and the need to rebalance U.S. foreign policy toward a greater focus on democracy and human rights.
via How Obama turned on a dime toward war | The Cable
One former administration policy leader at State and now critic of inaction, Anne Marie-Slaughter of Princeton layed out the main concerns against intervention in a NYT Op-Ed last week, addressing the question of national interests, the danger of Western involvement, effectiveness, unknown outcomes, and other tactics such as arming the rebels.
And Max Boot writes in the WSJ of the tension between justice and conflict resolution, arguing that pursuit of Qadaffi may actually encourage him to fight.
“The very real fear that Gadhafi & Co. effectively may have no place to go outside Libya where they would be safe from pursuit…provides a compelling incentive to fight on,” explains Wayne White, a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington and a former State Department intelligence official.
For the international community, the dilemma has often amounted to a trade-off between conflict resolution and justice. In recent years, though, the arc of history has leaned toward justice, no matter the consequences.
via Threat of Trial Keeps Gadhafi Fighting – WSJ.com.
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