My bolding at the end: it’s from The American Interest’s (via Jim Geraghty) unhappy assessment of the mess in Libya that we seem to have stumbled into.
As I have said, a Qaddafi left armed and dangerous when the dust settles is an unacceptable outcome. Civilian planes will likely start failing out the sky, as did the one over Lockerbie; assassination attempts will multiply, like the attempted Libyan-backed murder of the Saudi king in 2003; al-Qaeda and affiliates might be aided and abetted to do Lord-knows-what to the Italians, the French, the British and, of course, to us. With nothing to lose, and way beyond the threshold of worrying about sanctions and such, Qaddafi could well become more dangerous than ever. If I were Silvio Berlusconi, in particular, I’d pick my future whorehouses with extreme care.
President Obama, by the way, should be thanking God every night that the Right is still largely willing to say “we seem to have stumbled into,” and not “he seems.” But fair warning: we’re not the Activist Left. If the Democrats try to use the belt on us in the same way that the Democrats routinely use the belt on them… well, they won’t try that trick twice.
Moe Lane