Start the Revolution Without Me

Fred Kaplan, of Slate, has a column about Libya and President Obama. He opens with an excellent question:

Is President Obama dithering over Libya?

The next paragraph answers in the negative:

In the past week or so, a diverse array of commentators—Republican hawks, the usual neocons, and some normally gun-shy Democrats, including Sen. John Kerry—has called on Obama to take action now. Some have charged Obama with queasiness or lack of principles for not charging the ramparts from the get-go. But one can imagine several very good reasons for the president's … let's call it caution.

Kaplan goes on to list many reasons for caution, none of which are specific to the current situation in Libya - they would apply to any military engagement. He notes that many questions would have to be answered before the U.S. military were to get involved (I counted 26 question marks in the article). All the questions are legitimate, but generic ("What are the rules of engagement?" "What is the desired goal of this action?"). This is why we have a President, a Defense Department and a State Department - to answer such questions. Getting hung up on unknowns is exactly how caution can turn into dithering.

Near the end of the column, Kaplan impersonates Hamlet:

There may be—there probably is—a good way to help the rebels militarily. The United States does not have vital interests in Libya; that's usually a solid argument for staying out of trouble. But we might well have an interest in demonstrating that we can, and will, help brutalized people in that part of the world. Other countries, such as Britain and Italy, have more tangible interests still. It may be that the Obama administration has spent some time these past two weeks persuading them to do something, too.

Kaplan is so uncertain about what to do, he's hoping Obama has secretly convinced another country to do something!

Kaplan concludes:

But if they're smart, Obama and his aides have spent most of the time figuring out, first, what they want to see happen, and only then, whether the United States has any leverage to help that come about, and only then, what's the best—or the most feasible—course of action.

This sounds like dithering to me. Or, is it normal for an administration to take weeks to figure out what they want to see happen? Once that is figured out, should we give them another three weeks to determine if the U.S. has leverage? At that point, because we can only expect it to happen then, how long will it take them to decide what's the best course of action? A month? Kaplan acknowledges that there probably is "a good way to help the rebels militarily," we just shouldn't expect a decision until Memorial Day. But, make no mistake about it - that's not dithering!

Among military analysts, Kaplan is the #1 Obama apologist writing today.