Written By : Dave Blount
April 1, 2011

We may have an explanation for Comrade Obama’s inscrutable behavior in Libya. There’s no need to envision a complex, SPECTRE-esque international conspiracy of the sort Glenn Beck is often on the verge of revealing, when our foreign policy is better explained by a single word: incompetence.

As NATO takes over control of airstrikes in Libya, and the Obama administration considers new steps to tip the balance of power there, the coalition has told the rebels that if they endanger civilians, they will not be shielded from possible bombardment by NATO planes and missiles, just as the government’s forces have been punished.

That is, we may soon be bombing both sides.

The warnings, and intense consultations within the NATO-led coalition over its rules for attacking anyone who endangers innocent civilians, come at a time when the civil war in Libya is becoming ever more chaotic, and the battle lines ever less distinct.

Irregular troops, including civilians and driving around in civilian vehicles, have been fighting on both sides. With no ground intelligence, how is NATO — i.e., US Armed Forces — supposed to know who to waste extravagantly expensive cruise missiles on?

Also adding to the chaos is that we have no coherent objectives and don’t even know what we’re doing over there.

The deliberations about where to draw the line, going on at the highest levels of allied nations and among senior officials across the Obama administration, show how an intervention to stop a potential massacre is evolving into a much more complex, and perhaps open-ended, role in policing the Libyan chaos.

“Open-ended” means it’s time for libs to dust off a word they used to love: quagmire.

David Glazier, a professor of national security law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, sums up the situation:

“This is all poorly defined. It really is all about politics…”

Maybe making a left-wing community organizer Commander in Chief of the military because it made liberals feel good about themselves to vote for the black guy with a name like a terrorist wasn’t such a good idea after all.

On a tip from Ghost of FA Hayek. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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