The Presidency, since Reagan, has swung on a pendulum from cowboy to world citizen to cowboy to world citizen. Neither type of leader, btw, is to be desired.

Like someone once said, motion should never be confused with action. Obama's policy in the case of Libya, influenced as it may have been by State (which is actually appropriate), seems to be driven as much politically, and in many cases, by the media, toward being seen as doing something, but with little thought toward geo-political reality, worrying about the long term later.

Hell, we haven’t even fixed Haiti, yesterday's news, a country that has immigration ramifications for our own country, sees more people dying of illness than KIA in Libya, and here we are finding ourselves embarrassed that Kaddafi didn’t fold-up like a Bedouin tent from our initial air and sea borne launched missile assault.

What is our answer? I hear brother John back from Libya says we should be giving the rebels uniforms. Between State and Congress, the inmates are running the asylum and know it. . .does Obama? At least Bush was running things, albeit, into the ground, but running them never-the-less.

I would rant on, but there doesn't seem to be too much activity in the control tower, so I think I'll catch some sack time.

This whole situation is incredibly bizarre. Slaughter was paid by the infamous Monitor Group to fact-find in Libya for a project to tell the world what a good guy Qadaffi really is. Mr. Samantha Power (aka Cass Sunstein) is linked to Monitor Group and helping write this same "What a Good Guy Qadaffi Really is" project. George Soros (yes, that George Soros) is known to have given Monitor cash. Meanwhile you have people who were against war in Iraq proposing war in Libya. Has Qadaffi really been that much more of a meanie than Saddam? And I can't help but see this vision in my head of all these self-interested parties standing around Obama, whispering in his ear, the President jerking his head around, reacting to each little voice, trying to form a foreign policy firmly rooted in knee-jerk reactions. And yet, we still have no real idea what we are doing in Libya other than our number one priority seems to have been to make sure everyone knows it was all Cameron and Sarkoczy's idea from the start. And lastly, why bomb Libya while watching Syria burn? I'm not saying Bush was any better, but I think a lot of us figured Obama had to be better merely because he wasn't Bush. That is turning into a bit of foolish wishful thinking.

I couldn't get past the first paragraph of the NYT piece. Overwrought. Do they employ editors there anymore?

I couldn't get past the first paragraph of the NYT piece. Overwrought. Do they employ editors there anymore?

Tom's line about smart girls gets it exactly right. Slaughter and her ilk have become a menace to sound policy-making, constantly spinning the facts to fit their pet theories -- not the kind of people you want running your planning staff. They have a role to play in academia, perhaps in public debate, but not operationally inside government. See Slaughter's recent defense of the Libya intervention in the NY Review of Books -- totally devoid of facts on the ground in Libya, or anywhere else besides the faculty lounge or CFR boardroom.