The beginnings of Libya’s slide into a chaotic insurgency are plain to see in the tactics Qaddafi’s forces have adopted: They now dress like the rebels and drive around in “technicals” (armed pickup trucks) rather than tanks. In a classic example of asymmetric strategy, Qaddafi has stopped presenting the West with its preferred targets: warplanes, military vehicles, and identifiable installations. His forces are melting into the urban landscape, and it will not take them long to start appearing well behind rebel lines.

Obama’s strategy of diplomacy backed by air power is stripping the Qaddafi regime of the attributes of a functioning state. But those policies pose little threat to the regime’s tribalistic and terroristic core…

A logical strategy for intervention in Libya — assuming you really wanted one at all — would almost certainly have entailed boots on the ground. But nobody wants an occupation. No wonder Obama is trying to transfer control of the operation to NATO. He is searching desperately for some way to shift onto somebody else responsibility for the consequences of what he started and facilitated for no other reason than that everyone seemed to want it.