Phantom Endgames

Heather Hurlburt explains how she thinks about Libya:

I am less frantic about the endgame than many observers, not because I am more sanguine but because very often planners who have a clear endgame in mind are deluding themselves anyway. (The architects of the Iraq War believed they had thought through how everything would play out.). But that brings me to the largest point. International affairs are messy. Policy solutions are suboptimal. Different actors have interests which align only partially. And military responses of necessity involve killing.