Yes, carry a big stick, but be sure to speak softly

Imagine that President Obama had spent the past few weeks denouncing Moammar Gaddafi, using the soaring rhetoric he has deployed in the past. Imagine that he had compared Gaddafi to Hitler — which is certainly possible, given that past American statesmen compared Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic to Hitler — or that he had spoken darkly of the menace the Libyan regime presents to the free world. Imagine that he had evoked the language of the U.S. Constitution and called for nothing short of democracy for Libya, too.

Had he done all of that, there would certainly be fewer European members of the “coalition of the willing” that has formed, tentatively, to prevent Gaddafi from entering Benghazi: I can’t see the French or the Spanish falling in behind an aggressive-sounding American campaign…

Enthusiasm and soaring rhetoric would also now lock the United States and its allies into an implied set of promises. If we’d compared Gaddafi to Hitler we’d have to eliminate him.