@Irishk,
All of this should remind us that history is not over. We have not seen the last of national rivalries and enmity, betrayal and oppression. The notion that there are accepted standards of international justice that a cohesive "international community" will persistently enforce is contrary to nearly everything we can observe in a still very fractous world. It is both naive and dangerous to buy into such nonsense. Those who urge us to act on these "principles", buit who don't actively do so themselves are not our friends.
The Russians are still taking cheap shots at their former Cold War rivals; the Arab League continues hedging its bets (it is more than intertesting that Saudi Arabia & Kuwait haven't even contributed any money to the peacekeeping effort in Libya); and the European Community appears to be breaking down along increasingly familiar lines, with Germany working hard to separate itself from the other powers.
Adm. Mullen's comments quoted above are a reminder that we too are hedging our bets on this venture - and with good reason. From Ghadaffi's perspective, it might not be either difficult or risky to extend the conflict betting on a lack of staying power of the intervenors. From Vietnam to Nicaragua to Afghanistan that has been the strategy of the oppressive regimes we were trying to defeat or contain. We're too big to escape this stuff entirely, but do need to be very coldly calculating about the degree of our real self-interest in each situation.
