ok i'll try! i admit: we have no idea how this is going to turn out. i do not know how this is going to turn out. but i think people's lives count the same close to home or across the globe, la rana. i think it's very likely that we will save more lives than we take, and that most of those we take will be servants of a screeching murderer. it seems to me that it is unlikely that the next regime will be worse than gaddafi's: there just aren't that many as a percentage that are. but the situation is incalculable, and i will really try to eat my words if so. i do not know what role oil plays in the calculations, lisa; i do know that i'd say the same either whether there was any oil in libya or not. 

there is very unlikely to be an american occupation of libya. it is not politically viable, either domestically or in the middle east. there might be a un peacekeeping force with american involvement. or there might be a decent rebel-type regime. or there might be a nightmare of one kind or another. i do not know.

there are better and worse uses of military force, in my opinion. if someone could have stopped rwanda, darfur, the killing fields, they should have. of course, the regime they unleashed might have been worse. very unlikely, however. i'm glad the world didn't lay down for hitler. does that mean i love stalin, or even truman? definitely not. is libya rwanda? well, maybe not. but it would have gotten extremely bad extremely fast for a lot of people. does neoliberalism suck? definitely, though i'm still a little fuzzy on its parameters. have we prosecuted bad wars? absolutely. should we have saved the people of bengazi? i think so.