Austin Bay on Strategy Page (by way of Craig Nordin) a couple days back talking about covert action.
I don't know Bay personally, but he always impresses with his just-aggressive-enough logic that you always want him in the discussion, and I believe his thinking here is especially welcome.
Everybody keeps saying, No-Fly-Zone equals act of war, but that's a red herring. It is a clear abrogation of sovereignty in this age, but it does not signal a classic state-on-state war dynamic, where the "act of war" logic is appropriate. No one thought we were at war with Saddam across the 1990s when we NFZ'd both north and south, and this is an entirely feasible route for us to go here, one that's short of serious intervention (and all that entails) and beyond just sitting on our hands or taking in refugees.
But here's Bay's point that really struck me, because it's why I'm writing my WPR column for Monday on having exactly the same feeling in my own head these past few days: We are letting a winning hand go to waste here.
Bay:
Here's a clue: 2011 finds America representing history's winners at the strategic, long-term level. The demands for freedom in the streets of Tunis and Cairo echo the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Ironically, 2011 also finds an American government that is tactically alienated from these energized democratic forces because it is convinced of America's past agency in what its left-wing academic gurus call imperialism, racism, reactionary-ism, et cetera. For these toffs, the hint of U.S. involvement in an event taints its historical purity, or some equivalent balderdash.
But the world isn't a faculty lounge. In Libya, as President Obama mulls, Gadhafi's air force mauls.
We only get so many opportunities to lead, and this is one of them. So this is where Obama has to decide if he really is, as the Right contends, born and bred for a "post-American world" or whether his definition of renewal allows for a reversal of that perception. I find the whole PAW concept (less Zakaria's actual book but how the notion is employed) to be the most insidious form of self-defeatism, and entirely inappropriate for the age we're in. Even the "risers," when you examine where they're at and what they need, don't really welcome this notion in reality--just in anticipation. Unless Obama can start articulating something post-"post-American world," I would have to argue that we'd be better off with somebody else come 2012, just like I did with Bush in 2004 (and yes, I am concluding that, in this era, we cannot afford 2-term presidents). I just don't think the world can afford 4 more years of such non-leadership. We need something short of Bush but above what Obama is mustering right now.