Chickens, meet roost

The trouble with the Internet for folks who preen in the public sphere is that it never forgets. Its memory of the Libyan intervention and the arguments made against it is especially long and revealing.

The politicians and pundits had all the answers of course:

Sen. Richard Lugar (March): “Once again, we in the United States have not defined what we believe the outcome should be." (He predicted disaster.) SecDef Robert Gates (Mar 12): Imposing a no-fly zone over Libya is easy, but is it “a wise thing to do?” National Review's Mark Krikorian (Mar 21): "Instead of a strong leader resisting calls for an unjustified military action — or even a strong leader resolutely supporting the military action — we have a timorous and irresolute leader reluctantly caving in to the demands of his staff. We are in for a heap of trouble." Sen. Lindsey Graham (Mar 22): "We have been overly cautious, unnervingly indecisive.” Maureen Dowd (Mar 22): "[Obama started a war] of choice with a decision-making process marked more by impulse and reaction than discipline and rigor." Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Mar 27): "This war is wrong on so many fronts. The initial stated purpose, protecting Libyan civilians, will soon evaporate as it becomes clear that the war has accelerated casualties and enlarged a humanitarian crisis." GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman (Aug 2): "We have no definable interest at stake, we have no exit strategy.”

The so-called experts also had their say.

Gen. Wesley Clark (Mar 14): "If we interfere and a couple of bombs go astray ... the first person to cry out and take a deathbed conversion to Islam will be Moammar Gadhafi, who will suddenly say that this is NATO and the West attacking Islam. And he'll be the first one to appeal for al-Qaeda to come in and help him. And there'll be a rallying cry for a fatwa, and before you know it, there will be fighting against Islam."

Dutch-Moroccan writer Abdelkader Benali (Mar 27): "There is even more trouble ahead by choosing intervention. The only way to force a decisive victory is by sending in ground troops. These ground troops will attract al-Qaida and religious copycats. Libya could become a new Iraq, internally divided and externally weak. Tension [will increase] ... and illegal migration to Europe will explode."

Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Ed Husain (Mar 27): "With undefined aims, lack of Arab support, unknown rebel forces and no clear exit strategy, there is a real risk of being drawn into a protracted conflict."

But a funny thing happened on the way to toppling Qaddafi. Every ever-loving naysayer quoted above was proven dead wrong, some dramatically so. As any American chicken would say, "buk buk." I simply wanted to take this opportunity to insert the shiv, and twist it.