Is credibility worth dying for in Libya/
Ilan Berman presses for regime change in Libya:
Reasonable minds may differ over whether our intervention in Libya, a country exceedingly marginal to U.S. strategic interests, was warranted in the first place. What isnâ??t in dispute is that having made the decision to intervene, the United States and its allies need to do more than simply muddle through. They must now unequivocally seek victory, as they themselves have defined it: the removal of Col. Gadhafi and his regime, by proxy if possible and by direct military intervention if necessary.This certainly isnâ??t because regime change in Libya is necessarily a good idea. The West still knows precious little about Libyan politics, or what kind of political order might follow the Gadhafi era. Rather, itâ??s because, having committed its resources and prestige, a failure by NATO to finish the job would have catastrophic consequences.
According to Berman, these catastrophic consequences include Gaddafi's return to terrorism and the potential for Gaddafi to terrorize his own citizens worse than he already is. But the worst outcome in not seeking regime change, Berman writes, would be the demolition of NATO's credibility. In other words, while admitting that regime change might be a bad idea, we have to go ahead and do it anyway regardless of the costs, just to maintain our credibility.
If you had to choose between some embarrassment in NATO HQ vs. the potential for an Iraq-style quagmire, which would you choose?
