Right now we're bombing the shit out of anything that looks even remotely military. Which is to say, I'm sure Gadhafi is packing every tank/APC and truck with civilians so when we bomb them he'll have a pile of dead civilians he can point to and say "See, They're killing us!!!"
The question I have is in the near future, when suddenly this ragtag group of rebels try's to take back some of the places that they've been pushed from and then we start providing air support for them... then we're no longer providing no {fly/drive} zone coverage. To make sure we don't accidentally bomb the rebels who look exactly like the pro-Gadhafi forces we'll have to put forward air controllers on the ground to direct the air strikes.... you see where this is going.
Pretty soon this will stop being a limited no fly/drive zone and turn into providing air cover and tactical support for the rebels, who for the most part have shown themselves to have plenty of guts, but little or no military training.
The other question, I have is... Who exactly are these rebels and are they people we really want to be consorting with? Honestly, nobody is really sure (that I can tell). Since Libya is basically a whole pile of different tribes, quite likely these are the tribes that were um... disenfranchised by those tribes who got in with Flynn with Gadhafi. Also, since there are zero democratic or social institutions in Libya, quite likely we're going to help the rebels depose one dictator they hate so they can install a dictator that they like... Who will quite likely hate America just as much as Gadhafi only won't be nearly as charismatically crazy and/or capable of holding the country together.
While were on the topic of African nations... Why Libya and not the Ivory Coast where the current president (who was defeated in an election that was widely viewed as being fair) is refusing to leave power and has instead started to raise an army to massacre the supports of the guy who was fairly elected?
How about Yemen and Bahrain where they've dropped all pretense and have just started firing into the protesters? Oh wait... the 5th fleet is stationed in Bahrain and Yemen is "helping" us in the war on terror... What's it going to take in those countries? When the security forces roll in the tanks and start firing grape shot at point blank range that we'll finally take a stand (and by take a stand, Mrs. Clinton will pen a strongly worded letter?!?)
I'm suspecting that we'll only get interested in Ivory Coast once it turns into a Rwanda like genocide that we'll suddenly take an interest... maybe... we've got a pretty poor track record... We howled a lot about Darfur but we didn't really do a thing. We'll just sit back and let the Africans slaughter each other.
