An Abstract War

Steve Negus puts words in Obama's mouth:

US President Obama is coming under increasing pressure to explain exactly what it is that the United States is doing in Libya. If he's honest, he might say something like the following: "We are there in support of a document produced by a committee, under time constraints, which is consequently rather fuzzily worded, authorizing vaguely-described actions to achieve some very generally defined goals. We are there to prevent a tragedy, the scale of which will remain unknown unless we allow it to happen. We will probably remain committed to some degree until a wide range of Libyan actors, most of whose identities and agendas we do not know, can reach a stable ceasefire agreement, the terms of which we only guess at."

Negus thinks that "that this is a good mission" and explains why.

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan