Obama flexing his muscles at the wrong time in Libya

At least the one reader (you know who you are!) who has engaged me on discussions regarding America's response to the protests in Libya, well, that reader will probably be shocked and surprised that I am not in favor of American involvement at this point.

If it were on grounds of idealism and principles, and that ought to be the reason any time, then we would have expressed our outrage from the very beginning of the protests.  We would have then applied pressure on Gaddafi right from that first day, and there is a fair chance that most of the Arab countries would have backed up that kind of pressure from the US and Western European countries.

But, we didn't.

Instead, we watched the President waffle through weakly, as if even he had even lost his oratorical gifts.  Secretary Clinton tried some weak version of diplomacy; but then who really cares any more for what diplomats have to say in the aftermath of the WikiLeaks cables, eh!  Those leaks made it very clear--they confirmed--that we say one thing in the public and lots of different things in private and the two sets don't necessarily converge.

So, Mad Dog Gaddafi figured that the rebels weren't going to get any support--psychological and material--from America and the West.  Gaddafi went on the offensive, and he now pretty much has regained control over the country.

And now the President is acting all tough, and issuing ultimatums.  What the hell is matter with this guy?

So, if he is acting strictly as a response to the horrific developments over the last couple of days, then the President has a tough question to answer: how will he then respond to the murderous assaults on protesters in Bahrain, or the merciless killings of protesters in Yemen?  And what about the horrors that Robert Mugabe has inflicted upon his his country and people over a couple of decades?  The President is now beginning to tread on dangerous military missions if his leadership will be in response to imagery and not clear principles.

Will he then use the same logic of gathering up the international community to impose whatever variations of a no-fly-zone are in Yemen and Bahrain?  Wait, we already have a base in Bahrain; so, we just open the doors and let our forces go and straighten out the Bahraini/Saudi forces?

So, now that we have the UN resolution, now what?

The hope may be that the resolution's passage, and the current preparations to enforce it, would be enough to make Qaddafi crumble. But, as the saying goes, hope is not a strategy. At this point, if the fighting continues, Obama, the Europeans, and—presumably—the Arab League forces will have no choice but to respond, and not just to shoot down planes but to attack (from the air) Qaddafi's airfields, weapons, and maybe troops on the ground.
At that point, we would be intervening in an Arab civil war. This would be done in a putatively humanitarian mission, under the authority of a U.N. resolution, with (perhaps merely in support of) other Arab countries in the region—but it's still intervening in an Arab civil war, and this is the sort of thing that makes senior U.S. military officers nervous.
How will it go? In a tactical sense, probably pretty well. U.S., European, and even Arab air forces are very capable of pummeling Qaddafi's army and air force if they want to do so.
Where will it end? That's a different question. Will Libya bog down in a protracted civil war or into mutually hostile regions? Will Qaddafi hang on to power? If he crumbles, who will take over, and what will that person or family or tribe or faction do—and with what resources or institutions to mobilize the population, inspire their allegiance, and rebuild?

Couldn't we have played our cards at the very beginning when there was a fair chance that Gaddafi might have fled, perhaps to Venezuela?

I know I am stupid, but it appears that I have some presidential company here.

Finally, a request to Obama, Clinton and all you administration people: stop saying "all options are on the table."  I would like to impose restrictions on what options can and should remain on the table, and when those options can be exercised.