No "No Fly Zone"

Continuing his outstanding analytical coverage of the situation in Libya, Andrew C. McCarthy dissents from the official editorial line of his editors at National Review in order to oppose the UN-backed "No Fly Zone" over Libya, which will commit Western countries to another aimless war in the Middle East, sacrificing the lives of our best soldiers, for no good reason, and in aid of shadowy "rebels" who include among their number many Islamic jihadists.

McCarthy concludes:

I appreciate that it is hard to say, “Butt out.” Qaddafi is a monster and his opposition is murky enough (for now) to be portrayed as “rebels” and “freedom fighters.” But I fear we’re being swept away by emotion and by what we should now know is the vain hope that making sacrifices for besieged Muslims is going to make the ummah like us better. It is essential to attack Islamic terrorists who plot against America, but our humanitarian military efforts in the Islamic world have been a disaster — at staggering costs in lives and hundreds of billions of dollars that we don’t have. We should be working on how to get the nation disentangled from Islamic countries, not leading the nation headlong into another conflict that we cannot win.

Read the whole thing. No Western leader has articulated any kind of meaningful or coherent plan of what they want to achieve in Libya, and for this reason they MUST NOT commit to it, lest it become another Afghanistan.