Speaking of violence . . .

I want to comment on an op-ed from today's New York Times: A Very Liberal Intervention, By ROSS DOUTHAT.  The article is critical of America's involvement in the Libya campaign as a "liberal intervention," which apparently is one defined by interest in democracy, rather than selfishness.  Mr. Douthat (Doubt Hat?) trips lightly through a list of other "liberal interventions" from the 1990's and claims that every one of them was some sort of failure, and concludes that this intervention likely will be too.

First of all, I thought history recorded the Kosovo campaign as an outstanding success for American foreign policy.  Not only did we succeed in protecting Kosovo from the aggressions of an evil dictator, but we did it without boots on the ground, he was eventually overthrown by his own people and brought to justice in an international criminal court, and the area is now being monitored by an international force of peacekeepers.  Oh yeah - and we were fighting to protect Muslims.  It's hard to find a better example of American use of force from the past 50 years.

Of course, Libya is not Czechoslovakia, and Benghazi is not Kosovo.  So far, the structure of this war seems much closer to the beginning days of the war in Afghanistan, where local Afghani opposition troops fought against the Taliban, backed up by long-distance American firepower.  Lest we fear another quagmire like Afghanistan, let us remember that Obama is not Bush, and Col. Qaddafi is not Mullah Omar.

My point is not that Libya is Libya (although it is).  My point is that the paradigms for this conflict are not as gloomy as Mr. Douthat would like you to believe.  In the mean time, the United Nations has saved the pro-Democracy movement in Libya from the brink of destruction.  To be sure, no one knows what the future will hold, and that's an unsettling place to be in when we have American servicemen and women over Libyan airspace.  But it's been a long time since we've used our military power for something that was unquestionably right, and I have rarely been more proud to be an American.

J<