I don't really understand why this sort of criticism from Christopher Preble seems to be so popular:
In the end, the Valkyries got their war. Clinton's advice, along with that of Samantha Power and Susan Rice, who have all loudly called for U.S. military intervention in the past, convinced President Obama to override Gates and Mullen's objections, and to launch what Colorado Congressman Mike Coffman aptly characterized yesterday as "just the most muddled definition of an operation probably in U.S. military history." Anne-Marie Slaughter, who recently returned to Princeton after a stint at State's policy planning staff, was sniping from the sidelines. Pressure from our European allies, especially France's Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron in the UK, also appears to have been decisive.
I don't really understand how referring to Obama's woman foreign-policy advisers as "valkyries" bears on the wisdom or feasibility of the operation in Libya. This line of argument relies on the odd notion that people with lady parts are not supposed to have hawkish views on foreign policy and that it's some sort of crime against nature for them to do so. The problem with intervening in Libya is not that the advisers in Obama's Cabinet failed to confine themselves to Preble's archaic conception of proper gender roles. The term "valkyries" isn't much of a fig leaf either; everyone reading this knows which term it's being used in lieu of.
