This morning's New York Times reports that CIA and British agents have been on the ground in Libya “for several weeks.” So Washington and London did indeed send covert operatives in just about the time I was recommending they do so and hoping the agents were already secretly in place. But I also called for providing intelligence and tactical advice to the rebel leaders as soon as we figure out who they are. And boy do they need it, as their latest rout shows.

I'm beginning to feel like a Chicago Cubs fan here. Guys, stop running straight up and down the highway already and try outflanking someone for a change. As long as Qaddafi's forces know you're strung out somewhere on the road, they can fire their artillery blind and still have a decent chance of hitting you. Get out into the desert where at least you can maneuver in two dimensions and, while they're still trying to target you, come into the town you're attacking from the south. Once you get in a built-up area, their tanks and artillery will be less effective and your mobs of untrained infantry will be more effective. Of course, first you have to get your mobs of untrained infantry to listen to someone who actually has a plan instead of jumping in their pickup trucks and rushing up and down the road half-cocked.

God damn it.

On a lighter or at least stranger note, I was interviewed about Libya by a Romanian website. The English original is available on my site, www.LearningFromVeterans.com.

First off, there is no Qatari crisis. Qatar is fine. I am sure you meant to say Bahrain. The only two countries who may be mostly immune to the Arab Spring are the UAE and Qatar.

The Arab Spring is far from over. If anything it is just beginning. There has been some violence all along. Some countries have been able to contain it better than others. Some leaders have been able to be more flexible and reactive to the people's requests. Others have not. Some countries were lucky to have strong, professional armies, such as Egypt. The Army in Libya was kept weak and divided by Kaddafi. The Army in Yemen is mostly tribal and structure and will likely lead to a splitting of the country. The Army in Syria so far seems to be the guard dog for the Al Assad regime and their cronies, but one wonders how long that will last. The main glue to this is the Alawite generals who see these demonstrations by mostly Sunnis and the Sunni generals who see the demonstrations as a threat to their gravy train from the Al Assads. Bahrain's dissent is fueled, like many of the others by economic and political grievances, but Iran is also using their grievances of the Bahraini Shia to try to get further inroads into the country, which they have sometimes claimed as theirs in the past. The Sunni Al-Khalifas, who have ruled the country for some time, surely disagree with that. Syria and Bahrain have the boiling Shia-Sunni divide to contend with. So also does Yemen, with its Houthi rebellion in the north. Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia do not have such troubles. Libya, however, has another set of tribal distinctions across the country. The Ghaddadfa tribe is where the Ghaddafis are from. That tribe and allied tribes, mercenaries and the like, are battling groups and tribes not just from the east, but also from the west and the south. The Tamazighen, who we would call inappropriately (to them) call Berbers, are also against Ghaddafi because of his suppression of their culture and language, as well as some outright discrimination against them. Tunisia and Egypt are far less tribal, but still have to contend with the curse of "wasta" and "koosa". These two revolutions may be far from over. There are many issues still to work out and the people of these countries are still trying to figure out what the next steps are. Jordan has its Bedouin and the sometimes counter-tribe, the Palestinians. But Jordan has the benefit of a young and smart King who may just bring them through these difficulties a lot better than most other leaders will. Another possible lucky monarch is King Mohammed VI of Morocco, but that is to be seen. There are rumblings in both of these countries, but they are far from the full fledged rebellions we have seen in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, and Yemen. Iraq seems to showing signs of some beginning of an Arab Spring, but for them things will be very different given their troubles recent history. Iraq also has its Shia-Sunni divide. Add to that the Kurdish divide and we have an interest mixture of tensions that could go over the top at times or worse. Kuwait has so far kept the problems to demonstrations here and there and it may stay that way, but it is hard to tell. Oman is in about the same position. Saudi Arabia is the elephant in the room. Where Saudi goes the whole world economy could go. Then there are those nagging and seemingly unsolvable Palestinian issues. One wonders when Gaza and West Bank will explode into their Arab Spring. Lebanon is a country in search of itself with not only a Shia-Sunni divide, but also 12 major religions and, effectively, many tribal groupings according to clan and allegiances. Lebanon is a powder keg that could go up with the announcement of the UN Tribunal indictments or may be headed over the ledge if Syria goes into full scale rebellion. In the back of the scenes in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, and even in Saudi Arabia lurks the Iranian regime that is looking for every opening to increase its power and hegemony in the region. Why Saudi Arabia? Most of the people who live about its massive oil fields in the east of the country are Shia. Qatif, Saudi Arabia is just across the Causeway from Bahrain, turn right to head north for a few miles and you are there.

All of these countries with growing internal dissent have huge problems with unemployment and underemployment, corruption, and more. The Arab Spring did not come from nowhere, and it is being fed by not only continuing problems and in the slowness or inadequacy of response to the grievances of the people by leadership, but also by the meddling of the Iranians in some cases.

The fires that lit the Arab Spring have a lot more fuel left in them. The youth of the region and others are saying "enough". The region will never be the same, nor should our relations with the region and its people.

It is time we starting talking with the regular folks instead of just the elite. Many of the elite are under indictment in some of these countries and others are in exile. This is far from over.

This is far from over. Get ready for another round of troubles. Libya is far from over. Yemen is far from over. Syria is far from over. Egypt is in significant uncertainty. Lebanon is ticking. Oman and Kuwait are taking deep breaths to see what happens next. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are throwing money at the people in massive amounts and I wonder how long this will hold back the pressures from the street. The Palestinians are in an increasing boil. Iraqis seem to be holding their breath hoping the next mass murder from bombings and attacks will be less than the last.

And Al Qaeada and others are watching and waiting to see what their play might be in all of this.

Let us remember that this started in Tunisia just about 3 months ago. That is a short time period and the region has a lot to work out. If anyone thinks this is going to just disappear in apathy that person should think again. The Shaab in the region, the poor, the weak, the unconnected, and the just plain fed up are not ready to pack it in yet.

Then there is Algeria. Tick, tick, tick.... It has huge unemployment and underemployment problems, maybe the worst housing crisis in the region, and a lot of other grievances voiced by the people. This is the wild card neighbor of Libya and Tunisia and a very cold and problematic neighbor to Morocco. It also has many Tamazighen, as in Libya, who have been the source of serious dissent in the past.

This could be an interesting summer of even more surprises. Oh, yes, spring has just started, hasn't it?

I thought the President’s speech yesterday on Libya was a good one, as far as it went, which was probably about as far as practical politics allow. (A truly great leader might have transcended those limits by redefining the debate, but Obama is merely a good one). But there is a lot more that he didn’t say but that I hope he was thinking – or, if Obama isn’t thinking it, someone in government had better be.

Obama framed his argument largely in terms of universal moral principles. That’s fine. But he only touched on the reasons that we are actually acting on those principles here and now, having done nothing in so many places and times before. Libya is different because it is in a critical place at a critical time.

Right now, as I write this, the Arab world is in the midst of its most hopeful moment in living memory. It’s a chaotic, messy, often brutal moment, true. But despite civil war in Libya and – maybe – Yemen, despite repression in Syria and Bahrain, and despite uncertain transitions in Egypt and Tunisia, the bottom line is positive. Democratic forces have never gotten this far in the Middle East before. Never have Middle Eastern dictatorships suffered such dramatic reverses.

The only comparable moment in modern history is the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and that was captured almost at the start by the religious reactionaries led by Ayatollah Khomeini. If you want to call 1979 a “Persian Spring,” it was blighted almost as soon as it began and froze into a perpetual winter of repression at home, isolation abroad, and a ten-year war. This “Arab Spring” may not end well, either. There are far too many dead already, and more will die before this is done. But those lives have bought something worth dying for: the prospect of human freedom in the Middle East.

Egypt by itself is so important that the progress there outweighs the setbacks in other, smaller countries. Even if Assad gets away with murdering protesters in Syria, even if the al-Khalifa dynasty blocks any reform in Bahrain, even if Yemen follows Libya into civil war – and none of these unhappy endings is ordained – just breaking Egypt out of its political stasis means that the Mideast as a whole comes out ahead. Even if the transition to a post-Mubarak regime stalls or degenerates into a new dictatorship, what has already happened in Egypt sets a historic precedent in the minds of Arabs everywhere. A democratic, popular, and (almost entirely) peaceful movement has overthrown the dictator of the largest Arab country. No amount of backsliding can make that not have happened. No amount of propaganda can make ordinary Arabs forget it. Whatever happens, the precedent is there.

But of course we want more than a precedent for the next revolution: We want these revolutions to succeed. And right now, the biggest threat to them comes from Libya – specifically, from the murderous nutjob who wants to stay in charge of Libya. A prolonged civil war, let alone a Qaddafi victory, not only complicates the post-Mubarak transition in neighboring Egypt – the “real prize” here, as fellow blogger Robert Killebrew has said – but also broadcasts a dispiriting message across the Arab world which could cancel out Egypt’s inspiring example. Sure, the regimes and their supporters will be able to say, you can try to change things, and maybe you’ll even succeed like the Egyptian; but, then again, what if you end up like the Libyans?

So we need to help the Libyans not only for their own sake, but to keep them from becoming a grim object lesson for the rest of the Arab world. Of course we also want to prevent humanitarian catastrophes and advance democracy against dictatorship. But to be brutally frank, there are plenty of places where we have not particularly tried to prevent humanitarian catastrophes, advance democracy, or combat dictatorship – and in most of those places, we’d be well advised to keep on not trying.

Some of the critical people who pushed Obama to act in Libya were driven by the memory of the U.S. failure to stop the Rwandan genocide in 1994. That’s particularly true of the power trio of Hillary Clinton (Secretary of State), Susan Rice (ambassador to the UN), and Samantha Power (National Security Council). But, to continue with the brutal honesty, from the standpoint of U.S. national interests, what was the worst that could happen if we let Rwanda sink beneath a sea of blood? Well, it could destabilize all of Central Africa and drag down neighboring states into civil war. Guess what? That happened. Congo is still a nightmare of atrocities going beyond mere murder to mass rape. Guess what else? The American people at home and our position in the world are not affected. Rwanda and the Congo are too far away – not just physically, but in terms of their linkages to the interdependent global economy. In purely selfish terms, the cost of U.S. intervention outweighs the gains. So, sadly, American foreign policy has to write off most of Sub-Saharan Africa for at least a generation.

The Arab world is different.

To start with, most of the Arab world is right across the Mediterranean Sea from Europe, and despite all our disagreements Europe remains collectively a critical trading partner and our largest ally. Libyan refugees are already showing up in Italy. Like Bosnia and Kosovo – but unlike Rwanda and the Congo – the Arab countries are physically close enough to the West that trouble spreads from the one to the other.

Besides sheer proximity, the Arab world also has oil. Egypt doesn’t, and Libya barely does – just two percent of the planet’s production, enough to roil markets but easily replaced by, say, loosening environmental restrictions on offshore drilling in the U.S. But the Arab world as a whole is critical to the global economy, and what happens in one Arab country spills over into another. (And likewise between the Arab world and Iran, as culturally different as they are).

We need stable, functional regimes in those countries – except that for decades, we’ve chosen “stable” in the short term over “functional” in the long term. It turns out dictatorships don’t so much prevent disorder as postpone it, allowing it to compound and ferment until it explodes. Our strategy of backing Middle Eastern dictators has failed decisively, starting at least with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979 and continuing through 9/11, when Osama bin Laden targeted the U.S. largely because of our support of the Saudi monarchy. (That said, our pro-Israeli policies hardly help).

Then, after 9/11, we overcompensated in the opposite direction and decided to remove the worst dictator in the Arab world – and the one we liked the least – by force. Eight bloody and expensive years later, we’ve relearned the lesson that you can’t impose your vision on a country from outside. The people of a country have to change it for themselves; foreigners can only hinder or help, not decide the outcome.

But now the people of the Arab world are changing their countries for themselves, and we should help. In Libya in particular, although we cannot and should not win the rebels’ war for them, we can take away the dictator’s crushing advantage in conventional firepower and allow popular support to become the deciding factor. And what we do or fail to do in Libya will echo around the region, for good or ill. The Arab world is at a critical juncture, and we need to get on the right side of history for a change.

There are some significant differences in the evolution of the unrest in Bahrain, Libya, Yemen & Syria, as there was when longstanding regimes in Tunisia and Egypt were challenged.

The President did a rather good job last night in pointing out the compelling reasons why an initially rather hesitant US allowed itself to be pressed into action by various overseas quarters related to Libya: its five star status one of the region's three most chronically ruthless and bloodily repressive regimes. That is not to say that the Bahriani and Egyptian regimes, for example, have not been guilty of heavy-handed repression, but not even close to the scale and lethality Qadhafi has employed. Nor have these other regimes, including even Ali Abdullah Salih's in Yemen, engaged extensively in international terrorism or bankrolled (and armed) appalling human rights violators farther afield such as a Charles Taylor. Moreover, prior to UNSC-sanctioned intervention, Qadhafi already had slain well over a thousand civilians and ravaged the property and infrustructure of heavily populated areas. There is a question of sheer scale that must be considered in these difficult choices: in other words, going into Libya and not doing so in a state like Bahrain is not simply a question of the quality of relations between the US and other interested governments and the country in question.

Now the Assad regime in Syria also is an equally--if not more--loathesome human rights violator than Qadhafi & Co,in Libya, having slain some 30,000-40,000 oppositions (and leveled much of the old city) in Hama alone back in 1982. That said, so far the level of bloodshed and destruction there has been far lower this time around than it has been in Libya and mainly limited to two locales: Deraa and Latakia (and in the latter case there may be a nasty mix of local Sunni versus Alawite violence amidst the unrest). Despite the terrible drought and other grievances existing particularly in Deraa, however, otherwise fearful Syrians might have been encouraged by events in Libya, both the extent to which the regime was challenged internally and the international intervention.

Nontheless, still other factors would have to be weighed seriously by the international community prior to any forceful involvement in any possible parallel effort in Syria. First off, the limited resources of those countries contributing to the Libyan venture probably would not be sufficient for a second major venture. Also, Syrian population centers to be protected and military targets to be addressed mostly are not arrayed vulnerably along a narrow coastal strip and are more numerous. Furthermore, Syria's military capabilities--ground and air--are vastly more superior to those of Libya, and losses would be inevitable among foriegn air forces engaging in any robust intervention. Similarly, even should they turn out in far larger numbers than seen so far, oppositionists in Syria would face a potentially far more powerful reaction from highly proficent, powerfully armed, and well-maintained units especially loyal to the regime, such as the Republican Guard Division (commanding well over double the manpower of Libya's 32nd "Khamis" Brigade).

Yemen is an especially problematic case. Yemen is a considerably more rough and tumble country frought with chronic and very active regional, sectarian and tribal complications. Aside from perhaps the potential east-west divide in Libya, only in Yemen is there the very real possibiltiy of civil war between the traditional Sanaa-dominated north and the formerly Aden-dominated south, following a formal (and hostile) separation for many decades, a secessionist north-south civil war in 1995, and revived secessionist sentiment more recently prior to the outbreak of more generalized unrest. In fact, even if a post-Salih order emerged in Sanaa, that new government might then have to contend with heightened regional, sectarian and tribal challenges after the more central power struggle had been resolved in some respects.

Consequently, the Obama Administration (as well as other nations involved) can build a relatively stronger case for greater involvement in Libya, at least right now. That said, one huge question looming over all of this is that of "how long?" With the the opposition in the east apparently posing only a limited threat to Qadhafi's better equipped ground forces for some time (even with the arms embargo against him) and those in battered Misuratah barely hanging on, short of the emergence of a major challenge against Qadhafi from within his own regime, he could survive quite some time.

A summary of President Obama's remarks on Libya has reached me seredipitously. Here are the main points.

1. I’ve been on top of this from Day 1 and I've orchestrated the world-wide response.

2. Our principal objective has been reached: we have saved the citizens from Benghazi from a massacre. And we've given the opposition a chance to fight on a level playing field field.

3. Our military objective of establishing s 'free fly zone' was achieved in a less than a week thanks to the skill and devotion.....

4. I want to make one thing clear: this is not an American action, not a unilateral intervention. We are working together with 'X' countries to promote democracy and bring peace to the region. NATO allies, Qatar, AU...

5.Americans rightly wonder about how long this action will continue; is there a danger of a long-term involvement? I want to assure you that American involvement is self-limiting. By transferring command authority to NATO yesterday we already are exiting the first phase of the operation. We now will rely progressively on the efforts of other nations to enforce the no-fly zone.

Into ‘dead’ mike: “It’s win-win for us. If the opposition topples Gaddafi, I can take credit since I said that he has to go. If the crisis is protracted, then it’s a multilateral responsibility and we have to realize that America cannot be expected to do I all and do it on its own I’ve followed the responsible path of prudent idealism.”

AMERICA’S MIDDLE EATS FUTURE

“The Middle East never will be the same again” is the declaration of every observer’s lips. True – but in itself that tells us very little as to consequences and implications for the United States from the political cataclysm shaking the region and reshaping its politics. Restraint in predicting what those implications will be is praiseworthy. Anyone who boldly claims to know the specific and concrete effects is talking through his turban. Yet it is imperative that we begin to think rigorously about what the future holds. So let’s begin with a rough taxonomy.

1. Those countries that have experienced political turbulence can be placed in three categories. A) Popular action has toppled both the existing autocratic and his regime. B) Popular action has toppled the autocratic but important elements of his regime remain in place - at least for now

C. Popular action has been repressed with no structural political concessions.

2. How stable is the outcome of countries in each of the categories. For those in Category B, irresolution means that the outlook is cloudy by definition. Interim outcomes in the other two categories still leave relatively wide confidence margins as to what the future will bring.

3. Foreign policy outlooks and attitudes are liable to change where there is a discrepancy between public opinion and the orientation of government elites. This holds even where the opposition has been suppressed since there will be incentives for leaders to reduce points of friction and grievances among the general populace.

4. American preoccupations have centered on securing support for its four principal objectives: prosecuting its ‘anti-terrorism’ campaign; avoiding rifts with Israeli; maximizing pressure on Iran; and securing undisrupted access to the region’s all. On all of these, Washington has placed strong emphasis on short-run risks rather than satisfying these objectives over the long-run.

5. Democracy promotion has been a means to these ends rather than an end in itself.

6. Contradictions among these objectives have gone unrecognized or dealt with on an expedient basis. That will prove much more difficult to do in the future.

Here are some of the new ‘givens’ in the new context.

1. American credibility, already low, has hit rock bottom. This holds for government elites (e.g. Saudi Arabia) and for public opinion everywhere. We are widely distrusted; Washington’s words and those of President Obama in particular will be viewed with pronounced skepticism and will nowhere be taken at face value. The U.S. will receive fewer benefits of the doubt.

2. The political power of fundamentalist Islam has been greatly exaggerated. In no country has it been the primary force as either ideology or organized movement. Whatever role they may play in the future, it would be a cardinal error to fix on fundamentalist groups as a main point of attention and as a measure of whether things are going in a positive direction.

3. The dangers posed to the United States by terrorist groups, too, have been greatly exaggerated. This is true not only as regards the assumption as to some link between Islamic fundamentalism in general and al-Qaida in particular. It holds as well for official estimates of the latter’s capability and threat. The terrorist factor should be given less weight than is done currently. The notion, affirmed yesterday be Secretary Gates, that the ‘war on terror’ suffers a serious setback with the weakening (or fall) of Mr. A.A. Saleh in Yemen defies is striking evidence of this obsession. AQAP has very limited ability to attack major American interests; it has been an enemy of convenience for Mr. Saleh just as the ‘war on Communism’ was years ago; he under no foreseeable circumstances will give priority to doing our bidding; and disorder itself is the danger insofar as AQAP is concerned. Expressed worries about losing the help of Gadaffi’s intelligence services in chasing after al-Qaida in the Sahara is an even clearer demonstration of the extremity of our obsession.

4. Our ability to maintain the 5 party coalition in support of Israeli’s draconian plans for Palestine is in jeopardy. Egypt (above all), Saudi Arabia and Jordan will come under increasing popular pressure to change their policies, and will be more susceptible to it, than in the past. Brutalization of the Gazans, forcing Fatah into humiliating concessions, and holding hands with the Israeli ultras will be harder for our Arab allies to tolerate. That should be welcomed as occasion to rethink our supine kow-towing to the Netanyahu government. Id we don’t, our high wire act could end in tragedy.

5. The Sunni-Shi’ite rivalry has deepened and become more embittered – largely due to events in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia. Doubtless this will solidify already strong backing for our hard line approach toward Tehran. Whatever thoughts there may have been among Sunni governments about negotiating a modus vivendi with Iran are now beyond the pale. In the short run, the Obama administration may see this as desirable given its commitment to coerce Iran into abandoning its nuclear problem and its hopes for reform change. On reflection, though ,a Middle East beset by the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict cannot serve our interest in regional stability. For its strengthens the hands of the ultras in Tehran, complicates the challenge of achieving political reconciliation in Lebanon, lays the basis for more violet and more anti-American uprisings by Shi’ites in the Gulf, and adds to the already powerful inertial forces moving Iraq further away from the United states.

6. The gap between American rhetoric and American actions has widened to the point where it no longer is bridgeable. America as the beacon of democracy rings hollows after our string of equivocations, half steps, selectivity and cynical calculation. American diplomacy thereby has lost an asset. A candid reversion to realism has its own liabilities. The American public is deeply attached to the idealistic notion of the U.S. as a principled country that acts in the cause of virtue, enlightenment and morality. If Washington is widely seen as abandoning its native idealism, domestic political support for the inescapable hard policy choices that lie ahead will be unpredictable.

Do not expect President Obama to address frankly any of this tonight.

Real peace, prosperity, and security will only come to the Middle East and North Africa when these regions are dominated by free-market democracies. The US has an interest in seeing that future. As the first nation founded on the principle of the sanctity of individual freedom, to not advocate that right for all other peoples is to deny the universality of the belief that all ought to be free. Furthermore, the more free nations there are in the world the safer it is for all nations—including America. Achieving that goal, however, requires policies that are principled as well as practical and prudent. Freedom has many enemies in this part of the world and far fewer friends. American leadership is important to shift the balance.

Bottom line: we just don't know where this is going. Every one of these countries is very different, from traditional states to made-up ones. One thing is very true. This is the great test of the foreign policy lessons we should have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan.