My friend Marc Thiessen points out in the Washington Post:
It tells you everything you need to know about Barack Obama’s worldview that he sought authorization from the United Nations, and not from Congress, before launching military action in Libya. (The fact is, as commander in chief, he required neither.) But putting aside the president’s obeisance to an international body over one representing the American people, the U.N. resolution he secured could prove to be a disaster for the Libyan people and American national security.
The U.N. Security Council’s stated objective is “the immediate establishment of a cease-fire and a complete end to violence.” This is entirely incompatible with President Obama’s stated objective of getting Moammar Gaddafi “to step down from power and leave.” If the violence ends, Gaddafi will not leave. To the contrary, if military intervention succeeds in achieving the United Nations’ goal of forcing a cease-fire on the warring parties, it will lock in the status quo on the ground. Two weeks ago, this would have left the rebels with control over large swaths of the country. But today, Gaddafi has regained most of the ground he lost to the resistance. The air campaign stopped him from driving the rebels from their last urban strongholds. But now the opposition holds Benghazi as the capital of a liberated enclave, protected by Western air power — much as Iraqi Kurdistan was during the decade before the fall of Saddam Hussein.