Marc Lynch says folks outside the U.S. haven't gotten the memo yet:
The deep concern for Libya is real, intense, and passionate. Arab activists and opinion leaders repeatedly warned that if Qaddafi survives it could mean the death of the Arab revolutionary moment. This is part of the wider identification across the unified Arab political space which has palpably emerged among young activists and mass publics. This includes Bahrain, by the way, where the intervention by GCC security forces against the protestors has had a comparable chilling effect even if it has received less coverage on al-Jazeera than has Libya. There is no question that most Arabs desperately want something to be done to save Libya from Qaddafi, and that this is seen as having broad and deep regional implications.
When it comes to military intervention, however, this deep identification with the Libyan protestors intersects uncomfortably with the enduring legacy of Iraq. The prospect of an American military intervention, no matter how just the cause, triggers deep suspicion. There is a vanishingly small number of Arab takers for the bizarre American conceit that the invasion of Iraq has somehow been vindicated. The invasion and occupation of Iraq remains a gaping wound in the Arab political consciousness which has barely scabbed over. Any direct American military presence in Libya would be politically catastrophic, even if requested by the Libyan opposition and given Arab League cover.
The real audience for the proposition that the invasion of Iraq has been vindicated by uprisings in the Middle East isn't actually the people living there -- it's the American political class. Iraq needs to be rhetorically "vindicated" so American elites can say, "That wasn't so bad was it?" and move on to the next military adventure. But anyone arguing for intervention in Libya without acknowledging the very deep costs of war in Iraq or answering the questions Eric Martin outlines here is more committed to intervention as a principle than the actual case for doing so.
