Libya

Juan Cole has been unabashed in his support for the invasion of Libya. In two recent posts, he explains why he thinks Obama's speech and actions were and are correct and he takes swipes at the "left" for its opposition.

I find this claim wrong-headed:

Leftists are not always isolationists. In the US, progressive people actually went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, forming the Lincoln Brigade. That was a foreign intervention. Leftists were happy about Churchill’s and then Roosevelt’s intervention against the Axis.

He goes on to castigate the 

fringe left adulation for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the grounds that he is ‘anti-imperialist,’ and with an assumption that he is somehow on the Left.

I've never met any of the latter but maybe all two of them exist. As to the former position, the reason non-pacifists of whatever political stripe aren't "always isolationists" is because calling someone an isolationist is a trope designed to slur and, consequently, ignore their reasons for rejecting this intervention/invasion. Except, of course, Pat Buchanon, who is a loon, there really are few isolationists[1]. It would be nice if we could avoid this kind of rhetorical trick and address the arguments against this intervention/invasion.

Cole actually does sort of do that when he argues that

[t]he proposition that social problems can never be resolved by military force alone may be true. But there are some problems that can’t be solved unless there is a military intervention first, since its absence would allow the destruction of the progressive forces.

I perfectly willing to accept that Ghadaffi was going to and will, should he get the chance, kill as many people as he could because he, too, is a loon and making life miserable for others is the hallmark of a loon. I don't know that there was any good option here. Obama's pragmatic moralistic militarized response to a looming and likely humanitarian disaster may well be right. However, given the scope of the destruction wrought by the humanitarian and tyrannical  bombs for either lives or continued tyranny, I wonder humanitarian costs of bombing for lives will be.

For me, the question is what's next. I understand that Obama and Co have promised cross their heart and etc, not to allow the mission to creep. I find this totally unconvincing. Plus and also I worry about what we do when or if infighting among the rebels/insurgents/freedom fighters takes place. Are we going to use our air superiority to stop that? Or will we send in NATO troops? And, as by the way, when we hand things off to NATO it's important to recall that we are a part of NATO.

While I understand Cole's position, I am remain unpersauded that this was the best way forward and, to the extent it matters, I would argue that this kind of rhetoric

I would like to urge the Left to learn to chew gum and walk at the same time. It is possible to reason our way through, on a case-by-case basis, to an ethical progressive position that supports the ordinary folk in their travails in places like Libya.

Isn't designed to persuade anyone of anything and smacks of the "I am seriously serious person and my opponents are blinkered morons" style of argument we lived through during the Bush years.

[1] Did you know that Gerald Ford was a member of America First? Not really the kind of guy you'd call an isolationist, is he? I mean, after all, if somebody stops having sex for week you wouldn't call them rededicating their life to chastity, in the word's contemporary meaning, would you?