Don't use air power. It's awfully tempting to bomb your own people, but the blowback isn't worth it. (That's what tanks are for, right?) Advocates of protecting civilian populations with military force have consistently supported imposing no-fly zones. Some of the same proponents of the no-fly zone over Libya, such as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, columnist Nicholas Kristof, and retired Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak, had all earlier supported a similar step in Sudan due to the atrocities in Darfur.
In the case of Libya, even though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, acknowledged in early March that "we've ... not been able to confirm that any of the Libyan aircraft have fired on their own people," intervention supporters demanded the imposition of a no-fly zone. When asked why the United States would not support a no-fly zone on behalf of civilians being killed by regimes in Ivory Coast or Syria, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton replied, "Well ... there's not an air force being used." Air power may be effective, but it will draw international approbation and make intervention more likely.
JOSEPH BARRAK/AFP/Getty Images


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