As long as this anomalous situation continues—with President Barack Obama threatening and Qadhafi resisting—the weaker the United States looks. Unless we get lucky —and the Libyans get rid of him by themselves — our options for doing so aren’t all that attractive…

So far, the Obama administration has done fairly well. They may have come a little late to the Libyan saga, but they followed the how-to-pressure-a-dictator manual pretty faithfully: mobilizing economic sanctions, freezing assets and orchestrating political isolation…

When our U.N ambassador, Susan Rice, says Qadhafi is slaughtering his own people, when the president and the secretary of state urge his departure and when we begin to send naval units to the Mediterranean, the world watches and its expectations for action grow.