Ross Douthat writes that he wasn't defending the way the Bush administration went to war in Iraq:
Libya is (we can hope) a far smaller affair than the invasion of Iraq, and thus a far less dangerous venture. But we seem to be recapitulating the same kind of mistakes: We're intervening against a regime that should be a second-tier problem for the United States (at best!), and our plan for victory is ambiguous, to put it mildly. Getting hung up on U.N. resolutions and Arab League endorsements seems like a way to evade the more important question, which is not whether this war is multilateral but whether it is wise.
There is no perfect way to fight a war: Every approach to military action comes with distinctive dangers as well as with advantages. Which is why discretion in warmaking really is the better part of valor. Some conflicts are better approached as multilaterally as possible. Some are better fought under explicit American leadership, or by America alone. But many, in Iraq and now in Libya, are better left unfought entirely.
Like much of what Douthat has written about Libya, I don't really disagree with any of this.
