High stakes gamble?

Foreign Policy writer Marc Lynch rightly worries about the geo-political endgame:

"On my flight to Beirut earlier this month, I read the new book by Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose, "How Wars End." Rose warns that leaders should never go into a military intervention without thinking through the political endgame. Again and again, he warns, the United States has gone into wars focused on the urgency of the need for action without thinking through where it really wants and needs to go. War advocates prefer to focus on the urgency of action, usually minimizing the likely risks and costs of war, exaggerating the likely benefits, and discounting the viability of all non-military courses of action -- exactly the script on Libya the last few weeks. Thinking about the messy endgame would only complicate such advocacy, and so it gets set aside."

President Obama knows history (unlike Bush) and has shown a capacity for learning the right lessons from it (unlike Bush). There are risks. Big ones. And given the intangibles, no one can predict the future with certainty. But I suspect Obama is thinking 4-5 chess moves ahead and has contemplated several endgame scenarios. A substantive role by Arab allies in the intervention will provide a critical clue.