The Job Is Far from Over in Libya

Libya is free of Gaddafi's quixotic tyranny but is still miles from building a democratic alternative. Neither Britain, France, nor the UN will do it for them. The assumption that a central government or a national army can be unloaded in kit form from the nose cone of a C-5 Galaxy, and stay long after the transporter has lumbered home, is an imperial conceit. State-building has been the untold disaster of liberal interventionism. Mr Cameron and Mr Sarkozy have shown that they lack the attention span, the money or the political will to do it. But repeated failure has not lessened their appetites for planning for fresh conflicts, like the one about to be launched against Iran. If not them, who? The Arab League is dominated by the Gulf states. Saudi Arabia is using the civil war in Syria to divert attention from the suppression of its own internal dissent, which is inexorably rising. No help there.