From the 2062 edition of Twitter’s Global History Project:
…There was every reason for that enterprise to go wrong: the double-standard – Gaddafi was far from the only ruler trying to suppress the Arab uprising that the West had welcomed – the lack of common purpose within the coalition, ill-defined objectives and, above all, the unwillingness by the U.S. or any other member to do the one thing that would undoubtedly have been effective – send overwhelming numbers of ground-troops and invade. Such an action, of course, would not have been approved by the Security Council, and would have gone far beyond the obligation, sanctioned by the U.N., to protect people from assaults by murderous tyrants.
Then there was the suspicion that Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the main driving force at the outset and who had fraternized with Gaddafi not very long before – literally: they had called their friendship fraternelle – had his own reasons. His extreme right-wing adversary in the forthcoming presidential election, Marine Le Pen, was doing better in the polls than he was. He thought this would do him good. In fact, his approval ratings went down. Also, it soon became known, thanks to a leak in the Turkish paper Hürriyet, that the government in Istanbul was about to have brought about a regime-change in Tripoli when the bombing began and that it had kept the U.S. government informed of these talks.
Why David Cameron was so enthusiastic at first, was not quite clear. Perhaps he thought Libya could do for him what the Falkland Islands had done for Mrs. Thatcher. Nor was it clear why the Labour Party was so moved by the universal humanitarian rhetoric that they supported him, just as all the political parties in Canada supported the government in Ottawa.
In war colleges all over the world ever since 2011, i.e., during the last fifty years, the Libyan Enterprise – it could not be called a war – has been used as a prime example of international self-hypnosis generated by a worthy cause. The other lesson that is being taught: don’t sell arms to anybody who might use them against you.
Had it not been for the Law of Unintended Consequences the enterprise would have lasted much longer than it did.
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
There’s one other action (besides a massive ground invasion) which would undoubtedly be effective: targeting Gaddafi directly, i.e., removing him from the scene “with extreme prejudice,” ideally along with his sons. Of course diplomacy forbids announcing this as an explicit strategy; but surely it could be engineered as an “accident.”
Yes, but why hasn’t it happened by now? We are all waiting.
While we wait, here’s an interesting take on the target, er, Libyan ruler:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/opinion/25brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
A terrific column. Amazing.
I do recall similar apocalyptic predictions about the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts before the allies went in. Skeptics said “Why are we going to war against a banker? These peoples have always fought each other (not true actually!), and most ominously “This will trigger a broader conflict in Eastern Europe”.
Are there military battles in the Balkans today?
Does anyone else remember the chearing crowds in Prestina, Kosovo welcoming German tanks as liberators (Really!) ?
Have the Muslim Bosnians or Muslim Kosovars turned against us?
The cup is still at least half full in Libya.
Mike Sky
It is hard to believe but it seems to be true. The wackier the longer you stay in power. A very good column. The reason they welcomed the Germans was because Croatians and Muslim Albanians all hate the Serbians.
Another interesting piece is in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, March 14-20 ’11, pp. 7-9. It’s about the corrosive role played by pervasive nepotism, an outgrowth of clan-based tribal systems, in the Arab world. E.g.: “The rage that has united young Arabs from Tunis to Tripoli is fueled not just by hatred of their rulers but also by the widespread and entirely valid belief that those rulers intend to bequeath power to their equally loathsome offspring.” Also “the sons… can be just as venal as the fathers – witness the transformation of Saïf Qaddafi [the second son] from urbane, London-dwelling architect to paranoid desert thug.”