War by committee in Libya a snafu in waiting

If the latest proposal to get NATO and the Arab League more involved with the action in Libya isn't a clusterfuck-in-waiting, I don't know what is.

Earlier Tuesday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed the creation of a wider political committee to run the operation, which would include the Arab League as well as NATO members.

"For us, the intervention is firstly an operation wanted by the United Nations. ... It is run by a coalition of member states, all of whom are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization," said French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe in outlining the proposal.

"This is, therefore, not a NATO operation, even if it must be able to rely on military planning and intervention capacities of the Alliance," Juppe said.

He said the new body would bring together foreign ministers of participating states — including Britain, France and the U.S. — as well as Arab nations. It is expected to meet in coming days, either in Brussels, London or Paris.

Once again, military action without an exit strategy rears its ugly head.

Here's part of the problem:

While all the countries in the coalition share a political goal — Gadhafi's removal from power — "not everyone agrees whether this is the military aim," said Shashank Joshi, an analyst with London-based Royal United Services Institute.

"Britain and France want to keep this as an option, because they see it as feasible and viable ... while the policy of the U.S. is that they are absolutely not willing to take military action to further that end," Joshi said. "They want to set a clear limit to their enmeshment, for symbolic and practical reasons."

And we know the Arab League doesn't want military intervention.

That said, how many more U.S. journalists can Gadhafi hold hostage before Americans push for something, anything "more" to be done?

And, I have to say, I disagree with Juan Cole saying Libya is not Iraq. It's not that Cole doesn't make some valid points, it's that some of them are irrelevant, or, per a Glenn Greenwald, could be applied to dozens of countries besides both Libya and Iraq. In short, Cole comes close to becoming a Wilsonian interventionist, if not embracing it fully.