"If Muammar Qaddafi violently suppresses the Libya uprising while America stands by, will Arab and Muslim opinion really believe that we were 'neutral'? Or will they believe that we tacitly support Qaddafi – as they believed through the 1990s that we tacitly supported Saddam Hussein?"
I don't really have any way of knowing or caring how Arab public opinion will behave in response to an attempt to overthrow Qaddafi, much less why I should care, but keep this question in mind; it will be important later on
"What behavior can we expect from a Muammar Qaddafi who survives this uprising? Qaddafi turned to the West after 2003 because he was frightened by the overthrow of Saddam. Having crushed an uprising – and successfully defied an American president – which way will Qaddafi turn next? How confident are you that he won’t revert to terrorism, if not against Europe then against a newly volatile Egypt right next door?"
Here is where Will's argument is so much more powerful. Will asks what will happen when Qaddafi successfully defies our no-fly zone, when we have put actual power on the line and face defeat. Won't we be dragged into real war that way, or else face this same fear of "looking weak"? There's a slippery slope of escalation that can take place, proceeding from demands for cheap rhetoric (can't the President show solidarity? It costs so little, and it shows how much we care about morality) to demands for military intervention (can't we back up our words? How dare we let anyone, anywhere in the world defy our demands! Besides, we are powerful, they are weak, we will hardly lose anything...) to all-out war (America cannot retreat! Terrorists will think we lack will, and people lacking in will are the sort of people terrorists like to attack...) The further you go down this path, the greater the costs of either continuing or turning back. Countries all over the world are defying us all the time. And yet when it comes to terrorism, countries seem to be pretty scared of us. Yemen and Pakistan have allowed us to practically colonize them for fear of ending up like the Taliban.
"Iran crushed its uprising in 2009, with impunity. Hezbollah has seized power in Beirut. Hamas holds Gaza. The Muslim Brotherhood is rising in Egypt. Who looks like the ascendant power in the Middle East today? Iran or the United States?"
This is sort of a non-sequiter, as he's not demonstrating that, for instance, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood will swing behind Iran, or what goals Iran is about to achieve at America's expense, or what Libya has to do with any of this and how a fight there would be an efficient use of American power to contain Iran.
"How many Libyans will flee the country after the rebellion is crushed? Where will they go?"
Refugees will probably threaten stability in Egypt or somewhere. I have no idea if there will be more of them as a result of an American no-fly zone, or whether such a no-fly zone would shorten or prolong Libya's civil war, whether it will break or cause stalemate
"If you are the king of Saudi Arabia, what conclusions do you draw from the fall of American ally Mubarak and the survival of American enemy Qaddafi?"
I would probably not give America much thought, instead noting that Mubarak had the choice of seeing Egypt descend into chaos or losing power, and decided to leave power, and that Qaddafi, faced with the same choice, decided to cling at the expense of chaos. I would probably try to avoid having things come to such a pass by appeasing the street ahead of time.
America didn't want to see a friendly country, Egypt, descend into chaos, so it kicked nudged aside its personal ally, Mubarak; but then again, Egypt's military made the same decision, and Mubarak was far more reliant on his military than on us. Qaddafi has decimated his military over the years precisely to avoid Mubarak's predicament. I understand that Saudi Arabia's military doesn't play anything like the role that Egypt's does, but what exactly is Saudi Arabia going to do? Subordinate itself to Iran in hopes that Iran will defend it against a rebellion that it probably believes it knows how to stave off?
You see how arbitrary this all is. Some actors ("Arab public opinion," above) are supposed to decide that we are all-powerful, and that Qaddafi must be our friend, because he survived; others are supposed to decide that it is bad to be our friend, because Qaddafi is our enemy and he survived. In no case is there any acknowledgement that anything besides America's willpower, and other people's perception of that willpower, matters.
"If you are the prime minister of Iraq, what conclusions do you draw from the apparent regional ascendency of Iran and the apparent decline of the United States?"
Not to say that any of this has anything to do with Libya, or that our intervention in Libya won't accelerate our decline, but I suppose that if I were prime minister of Iraq and I perceived that Iran was growing in strength, I would allign with its my weaker neighbors to form a counterweight.
"If you are the president of Syria, what conclusions do you draw from the success of Qaddafi’s brutal suppression of revolt?"
I take it as confirmation of what I have known for decades, that one ought to brutally suppress revolts.
"If you are the president of Venezuela and you lose an election, how will you react when President Obama tells you that you 'must' honor the election results?"
I ignore him, just as everybody ignores loud declamations of American Presidents. I remember that Bush recognized the government that resulted from a coup against me, and I withstood that; I'm not especially afraid of American power (without it, what would I have to rail against?) and would be marginally less afraid of it if it were preoccupied in Northern Africa....Shouldn't we assume that American diplomats have ways of making clear which of our 'musts' other countries should take seriously? Isn't that why we have diplomacy, so that we don't have to go fight a war to prove our toughness every time somebody defies our big talk?
"If you are a Libyan insurgent and you are offered arms by international Islamist groups, do you say yes or no?"
I say yes, of course. Regardless of whether there is a no-fly zone.
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