EDITORIAL : THE DAILY MAIL, UK

Sending in the warplanes is the easy part

After a bad beginning, for which it was rightly chided, the Government has got a grip on its Libyan policy.

The Prime Minister may have fumbled at first, but he has successfully pressed for international intervention and skilfully involved several Arab countries. He has neutralised or soothed potential opponents and made a strong case for his strategy to Parliament and the country.

Whether it is by accident or design, the arrangements put Europe, especially France, in the forefront, the US in the background and the UN’s endorsement on top.

This is good Middle Eastern diplomacy in the post-Bush world. Nobody – especially the US – wants a repeat of the Iraq fiasco. France, by contrast, does not want a reputation for always standing back when there is hard work to be done.

But that was the easy part. In all the long history of such actions, it has always been far simpler to order forces into action than it has been to be clear about precisely what we are trying to achieve.

Mr Cameron knows very well that he must be careful not to behave like Tony Blair, whose ever-shifting objectives in Iraq – weapons of mass destruction one day, regime change the next, often depending on his audience – still remain unresolved.

Nor must he echo John Reid, whose unwise musings about British troops leaving Afghanistan without a shot being fired will haunt him for the rest of his days.

A successful military intervention has to have a realistic, clearly defined objective. All efforts can be concentrated on attaining that target. The operation can be ended when it is met.

At present this is not the case. The diplomacy may have been tightly controlled and neatly directed. But the UN resolution is alarmingly open at one end. ‘All necessary measures’ is a very wide licence.

The promise that there will be no occupation force does not rule out the deployment of troops. Notoriously, soldiers are a hundred times harder to extract than they are to insert.

Colonel Gaddafi is nothing if not cunning. There is a risk that our intervention will save Benghazi, but only by creating an unresolved stalemate, similar to the one which bedevilled Iraq for so many years, in which the regime survives, the people suffer and fleets of pitiful refugee boats head north across the Mediterranean.

If our real objective is regime change, which the UN and the Arab League cannot approve, then we are also entering very foggy territory.

It is quite unclear who would take over if Gaddafi is overthrown, or how long they would last without outside support.

And if we believe that rulers who kill their own people are unfit to govern – as seems to be the policy – then our inaction over the state-sponsored massacres in Yemen and Bahrain is inexplicable and embarrassing.

Now is the time to be very careful indeed, and much more specific about what we want to do.

Mr Cameron has enough sense to resist the seductive call of war leadership. He will need it.

The thrill of being obeyed by seasoned, grizzled generals and the joy of poring over war maps in secret bunkers are as exhilarating as champagne. But there is always a hangover afterwards.

How bad it is will depend on just how wise and restrained the Prime Minister is now.