Libya: You say you got a resolution ...

... well, you know, we'd all love to see the plan.

A rebel fighter shot down near Benghazi

French fighter jets are already flying over Libya.

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- French fighter jets soared over Libya on Saturday to counter Moammar Gadhafi's military forces who were intent on destroying the opposition as they pushed into the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

"Our air force will oppose any aggression by Colonel Gadhafi against the population of Benghazi," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking after an international, top-level meeting in Paris over the Libyan crisis.

"As of now, our aircraft are preventing planes from attacking the town," he said. "As of now, our aircraft are prepared to intervene against tanks."

I am perfectly content to let France and the other Euros take the lead here. I'd be more than happy if the US role never included actual, direct military action and was limited to logistic, intelligence and transportation support. It's the Euros who've been propping Qaddafi up all these many years, France in particular. So they can have it.

A FoxNews crew near Benghazi took this video of a rebel jet shot down by mistake by rebel ground fire:



Meanwhile, back in Washington,

After two weeks of playing down the prospect of military intervention in Libya, the Obama administration is on the brink of inserting itself into a third war in a Muslim nation — something the president, who has spent the first half of his term mending America’s relationship with Islam, had hoped to avoid.

The administration’s shift from skepticism to support for military intervention in Libya occurred over a frenetic week of war and diplomacy in Washington and Paris, at the United Nations and inside Libya, where facts on the ground changed swiftly.

However, we have not been told from the administration whether the president's "support for military intervention" includes direct action by US forces.

Having already addressed the fact that any direct-combat employment of US forces against Qaddafi woiuld be illegal absent Congressional authorization, I will here stipulate that the president will go forward with military intervention, approved by Congress or not. And my question for today is simply this: What's the plan?

I don't mean the military operations plan. I mean a comprehensive statement of national strategic objectives and rationale for the intervention, presented to the American people, that explains just what we are trying to do and why.

I frankly don't think that anyone in the administration, from the president on down, has the slightest idea what that could be in any more detail than, "Stop Qaddafi from killing the revolutionaries." But that's not a plan. It's not even a decent objective.

ABC News reported yesterday that in 2007 (while opposing President Bush's "surge" in Iraq), then-Senator Obama said,

"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."

Before a single US plane flies over Libya, the president must explain to the American people the following at a minimum:

1. What is Qaddafi's "actual or imminent threat" to America that justifies combat deployment of US forces on presidential order alone?

2. Absent such threat, what is his legal authority to send US forces into combat without prior Congressional approval? (Congressional approval, or not, may yet be forthcoming.)

3. What is the primary strategic objective that the United States will achieve through military forces that cannot be obtained otherwise?

4. What is the moral imperative that justifies killing and being killed?

5. Apart from opposing Qaddafi, what exactly makes the Libyan revolutionaries worth the expenditure of American lives and treasure?

6. The president is on record as saying that Qaddafi must not remain in power. Does that mean that regime change is a US objective and if so, will US military power be used to achieve it?

7. If not, will a partition of Libya into territories controlled by Qaddafi and the revolutionaries be acceptable, and if so, why?

8. What influence do you expect to have over the political nature of a potential revolutionary government?

9. What are the conditions of success in Libya? What must happen before American combat forces are withdrawn? In other words, how will you know when you've won?

About the moral imperative for war. If no one in the administration can explain what America is trying to do within the context of Just War Theory, which demands specifically to delineate the just cause of war, the just conduct of war and the just ending of war, then there is no justification at all.

If there is a moral imperative to intervene in Libya, presumably to stop Qaddafi's attacks against Libyan civilians, then inquiring minds want to know why this imperatives rules for Libya here when President Obama specifically rejected the very same imperative in warring against Iraq in 2003.

My position hasn't changed. To paraphrase what Bismarck said about the Balkans in 1888, "The whole of Libya is not worth the bones of a single American pilot." It is a war that only a liberal could love, one bereft of actual US national strategic interests.

Update: An obscure report that so far, the president will not send US forces into direct combat except for launching cruise missiles from offshore vessels: "... the US contribution will be logistics and support, including refueling and intelligence, but not represent the pointed end of the spear."

If this is so and remains so, then the president should be commended. But this administration's public communications are the worst in decades, and we the people deserve to know whether this report is true. Why are we still waiting?

Update: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, answering questions in Paris:

Is the goal to protect civilians or to remove Qaddafi from power? Clinton adamantly says it is to protect civilians.

Could Qadadfi remain in power? "Those are all questions that standing here are difficult to answer."

She did rule out use of American ground troops.

Marc Lynch at Foreign Policy - the makings of a quagmire.

Related:

Libya intervention will justify Iraq war

Cameron: shut down Libya's air force

The Illegal Libya War