"An allied intervention in Libya"

[Clio the Leo]

An allied intervention in Libya
Posted at 08:20 PM ET, 03/19/2011
By David Ignatius

Many Americans — and Arabs, too, for that matter — have a visceral sense that if there’s a war in the Middle East, the United States must be in the vanguard. I’m glad that’s not the case this weekend with the Libyan intervention. Americans should be happy to let France and Britain, who live in the neighborhood, take the lead.

President Obama is turning a page, by letting other nations take the first whacks at Moammar Gaddafi, no question about that. But that strikes me as good strategy, not a feckless blunder.

What’s increasingly clear watching the play of events over the past week is that Obama really does want to change the narrative about America and the Arab world — even at the cost of being criticized as vacillating and weak-willed. He senses (rightly, in my view) that over the past several decades America, without really intending to, became a post-colonial power in the Middle East. The narrative of American military intervention stretches from Lebanon to Iraq to Afghanistan, with the ghastly interlude of Sept. 11, 2001. Obama seems determined to break with it. He really is the un-Bush.

The administration has gotten criticized for changing course on Libya over the past week — resisting intervention and then supporting it. But the essential point, it seems to me, is that Obama was prepared to intervene only when it was clear there was an international consensus — with the Arab League and then the United Nations voting for action. That strikes me as the proper ordering of things, especially at a time when America still has big armies in two other Muslim countries

more...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/an-allied-intervention-in-libya/2011/03/03/ABhS5Yx_blog.html

[Bonobo]

1. "Intervention".

LOL. As in "better check yerself before you wreck yourself?"

Like, umm, an intervention to help a drug addict?

Like a Dr. Phil moment?

That's a cute and sly way to call what the US (and a couple of other minor players) are doing.

So warm and friendly. Like big, comforting hug.

[Clio the Leo]

2. Intervene...

in·ter·vene/ˌintərˈvēn/Verb
1. Come between so as to prevent or alter a result or course of events.
2. (of an event or circumstance) Occur as a delay or obstacle to something being done

.... like, say, stopping an assault on private citizens with armored tanks.