Never On Sunday

This past Sunday, NPR continued coverage of the Libyan uprising. The report included a snatch of an interview with a Libyan rebel, whose position was what might charitably be described as “conflicted.”

“We don’t want the Americans here!” he insisted. “This is our country, our war! But when the struggle is over, there will be a reckoning with all the countries that didn’t come to help us. Where is NATO? Where are the Americans?”

Well, they’re sitting anxiously at home, precisely because you and others like you keep shouting that you don’t want them here.

We have powerful motivations to stay out. Our invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 bombings transformed America once again from victim to aggressor in middle-eastern eyes; the invasion of Iraq on far flimsier justification spread the change of perception to the whole world, not to mention the crushing drain on the treasury when we could scarce afford one and the strains on a military already larger and pushed harder than we can sustain. Khadaffi is clearly hunkered down and praying for American or European intervention, just the kind of external enemy he needs to deflect anger from his own regime.

When the very people an intervention is meant to help express outrage at the idea of intervention, there is nothing to weigh against these substantial costs and the lessons of recent history.