Why Obama Goes to South America While Europe Goes to War in Africa

Some details are emerging regarding the US policy for Libya. This little detail by Laura Rozen strikes me as being very under reported.

The fact that Obama privately told Congressional leaders Friday that U.S. planes would not be involved in enforcing the Libya no-fly zone went some to way explain the White House's insistence all week that Obama planned to proceed with the Latin American trip even as the U.S. appeared poised to enter another complicated Middle Eastern intervention.

Barack Obama is terrible at communications, because when he addressed the American people it would have been very useful for him to mention that US fighter aircraft are not authorized to be used in directly enforcing the no-fly zone. This suggests that the US contribution will be logistics and support, including refueling and intelligence, but not represent the pointed end of the spear.

As an American, I think this is a great policy. Somehow or another, the President has put together what I think is perhaps one of the most sensible and strategically beneficial policies for the United States for Libya, but at the same time somehow failed to articulate it very well at all. Essentially, we are participating on the margins in support of European led military operations, and Europe is actually taking care of a crisis in their neck of the woods without the US having to make an enormous contribution. This is win-win for the US, if Europe can do the job.

Folks are asking what the exit strategy is. Under this policy, that question isn't our problem - it's Europe's problem. I don't want to make predictions, but I will ask some questions.

1) Is the reason why it is taking so long for the no-fly zone to be enforced because Europe doesn't have forward deployed naval capabilities necessary to influence events on land?

2) How many US sorties will be flown per day to support the operation? How many cruise missiles? I ask because these are questions that tell us whether all of Europe has the military power anymore to conduct operations against weak military states like Libya without the US.

3) How long before ground troops are used? I've had more than a few people highlight how flexible the language is in the resolution, and specifically "while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory" represents not the exclusion of using ground forces, but the exit strategy for ground forces used.

4) No-Fly zones are not easy. It will be interesting to see how things unfold. There are a lot of rumors circulating that Gaddafi is putting human shields near several expected targets. I wonder if the Europeans are going to be as frustrated with the propaganda of war as Americans have been over the last decade. Does Libya have a fighting chance?

Expect combat operations to begin sometime in the next 12 hours, around the time the Paris summit starts on Saturday.