Sometimes we ordered Qaddafi to leave; at other times we insisted we were only helping the rebels. Bombs seemed to be aimed at the Qaddafi family, even as we denied that such targeted killing was the goal — and were reminded that U.S. law forbids the assassination of foreign leaders.

The rebels were variously described as would-be democratic reformers, inept amateurs, hard-core Islamists, and mixtures of all three. Months later, no one seems to have the answer, though many of the insurgents share a deep-seated racial and religious hatred of Qaddafi’s African mercenaries. Who knows whether post-Qaddafi Libya will become an Islamic republic, a Somalia-like mess, another Arab dictatorship, or a Turkish-style democracy?…

The Obama administration asked for legal authorization from the Arab League — the majority of whose member states are not democratic — and from the U.N., but to this day strangely has not requested authorization from Congress. As Obama sought legitimacy from international organizations, he failed to note that no U.N. or Arab League resolution actually had allowed him to conduct a full-scale air war against Qaddafi’s ruling clique. The Chinese and Russians are both happy to keep pointing that out.