Obama's clever rope-a-dope

"The very slow and seemingly lackluster American leadership that the Obama administration is being criticized for by both neoconservatives and liberal internationalists may be precisely what will keep us from owning the mission -- and that lack of ownership is an insurance policy against getting politically bogged down in Libya as the weeks drag on. I don't think Obama has been timid; I think he has been sly. It has been precisely the deep skepticism of intervention in Libya from some quarters of the administration that has forced the Arab League and the Europeans to pony up and relieve us of the political burden. Had we intervened decisively a week or two ago, we would have owned the mission, and then we would possibly have had a small-scale Iraq or Afghanistan on our hands. But delay has brought us allies, not only in name but in fact." -- Robert D. Kaplan, Foreign Policy, "The U.S. Is Right Not to Own It"