Five Reasons the U.S. Should Not Have Intervened in Libya

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Amar Bakshi, my colleague at CNN’s new Global Public Square blog, offers five arguments against U.S. action in Libya, articulated by some of the country’s most prominent wonks and pundits. They range from the realist to the moral to the downright thrifty. Read them all here. Below’s my favorite:

James Fallows says that the American military rarely asks this essential question:

Count me among those very skeptical of how this commitment was made and where it might lead….The most predictable failure in modern American military policy has been the reluctance to ask, And what happens then? We invade Iraq to push Saddam Hussein from power. Good. What happens then? Obama increases our commitment in Afghanistan and says that “success” depends on the formation of a legitimate, honest Afghan government on a certain timetable. The deadline passes. What happens then?