Neocon Maximalists Call for Ground Presence in Libya

Even if the military goal doesn’t start with regime change, without a strategy for what happens next it could easily move to that. Gadhafi will not leave willingly. Without air support, he and the rebels can just play out a long-term civil war. So to protect the population and achieve the long-term goal of regime change, the coalition will have to end up doing more. Which implicates them deeper.

Conservatives, faced with a President who basically acted on their initial request, have just moved the goalposts again without a hint of irony. There is a muddled response from Republicans in total: some are simply bound by hatred of Obama and will just prescribe the opposite of whatever he does, some in the Tea Party are genuinely conflicted about military action abroad, and some, like neocon Max Boot and his allies, will just pursue a maximalist strategy. And the neocons still have the main hold over Republican foreign policy. So Obama will have to respond to this. And I’m not sanguine about the outcome.