What Happens if the Rebels Win?

You may recall the last time the United States and its allies used military force to overthrow a hated Arab dictator. The resulting vacuum was quickly filled by anarchic looting, murderous rivalries and, ultimately, civil war. The blitheness of President George W. Bush's administration towards post-war Iraq was quite possibly the most inexcusable blunder in the history of American foreign policy. It's a mistake we wouldn't want to make again. That's why Lisa Anderson, one of the very few American scholarly experts on modern Libya and president of American University in Cairo, recently wrotethat "Any military and diplomatic intervention that will bring an end to the Qaddafi regime should be accompanied, from the beginning, by mobilization of the resources for political reconstruction."