I was watching "Morning Joe" today, and they had Richard Haas, the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, in to talk about Libya and the Arab revolts.Morning Joe makes a big deal about how it reflects elite opinion in Washington. If that's the case, then we're in big trouble.
They were arguing that the unrest in Libya argues for intervention, and Joe was complaining that it would inevitably be Americans who would be called upon to intervene. We - the West in general, but Americans in particular - have to be very careful in our diagnosis of ongoing revolutions. Mike Barnicle said to Haas that he thought Tripoli could become the 21st Century equivalent of Mogadishu.
Not only is this argument probably wrong - it is also very dangerous.
Tripoli could also become the 21st Century equivalent of Singapore. We don't know, and we should be very careful about imposing our diagnosis and predictions on countries which we know very little about. In a similar way, this is the same mind-set that got us into Iraq 8 years ago. We must act as observers - partial on the side of personal freedom and democracy - but observers nonetheless. This is not our country, nor is it an area where we have a lot of leverage.
Also, Pat Buchanan was calling for the Italians to intervene in Libya, because they were formally a colony. Just because Berlusconi shares some of the same qualities as Mussolini, we should't think that Libyans would happily welcome back their colonial occupiers.
I don't know what the outcome in Libya will be, but I do know that looking at it only through the lens of oil prices - which is how its being played on all the daytime news networks - will only lead to short-term, self-interested responses.
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