EDITORIAL : THE NEW YORK TIMES, USA

At War in Libya

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi has long been a thug and a murderer who has never paid for his many crimes, including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. The United Nations Security Council resolution authorized member nations to take “all necessary measures” to protect civilians and was perhaps the only hope of stopping him from slaughtering thousands more.

The resolution was an extraordinary moment in recent history. The United Nations, the United States and the Europeans dithered for an agonizingly long time and then — with the rebels’ last redoubt, Benghazi, about to fall — acted with astonishing speed to endorse a robust mandate that goes far beyond a simple no-fly zone. More extraordinary was that the call to action was led by France and Britain and invited by the Arab League.

American commanders on Monday claimed success in attacking Libyan air defenses and command and control operations. Over the weekend, there were strikes against Libyan aircraft on the ground, forces headed toward Benghazi and even Colonel Qaddafi’s compound in Tripoli. Colonel Qaddafi remained defiant and announced plans to arm one million loyalists. He gathered women and children as human shields at his compound. On Monday, his forces drove rebels back from the strategically important town Ajdabiya.

There is much to concern us. President Obama correctly agreed to deploy American forces only when persuaded that other nations would share the responsibility and the cost of enforcing international law. The United States is already bogged down in two wars. It can’t be seen as intervening unilaterally in another Muslim nation. But even with multinational support, it should not have to shoulder the brunt of this conflict.

After endorsing a no-flight zone 10 days ago — a move that allowed the Security Council resolution to go forward — the Arab League is sending mixed messages. This military operation requires the Arab states to reaffirm support for the coalition and contribute their own arms, forces and cash. Qatar made a commitmment: four fighter jets. Colonel Qaddafi will find it easier to dig in his heels if he thinks the region is divided.

There has been unsettling dissonance from the allies, too. The operation was portrayed as led by France and Britain. Yet the Americans — which have the ships and cruise missiles to take out Libyan air defenses — are actually directing this phase. They say command will soon shift, but it’s not certain if that will put NATO, France or Britain in charge. A permanent alternate command needs to be established as soon as practical and the broadest possible coalition must be engaged.

We also have questions about the objective. President Obama has said Colonel Qaddafi has lost legitimacy and must go. He also insisted the military aim is only to protect civilians and American ground troops will not be deployed. We hope he sticks to those commitments. There are enormous questions: What will the United States and its allies do if the rebels cannot dislodge Colonel Qaddafi? At a minimum, they must be ready to maintain indefinite sanctions on the regime while helping the rebels set up a government, should they actually win. Mr. Obama should have brought Congress more into the loop on his decision, and must do so now.

There is no perfect formula for military intervention. It must be used sparingly — not in Bahrain or Yemen, even though we condemn the violence against protesters in both countries. Libya is a specific case: Muammar el-Qaddafi is erratic, widely reviled, armed with mustard gas and has a history of supporting terrorism. If he is allowed to crush the opposition, it would chill pro-democracy movements across the Arab world.

 A Dangerous Pursuit

In a world where most people consume their news safely, perhaps in a comfortable chair on some electronic device, it is worth remembering how dangerous news-gathering has become. Monday’s release of four New York Times staff members in Libya was a powerful reminder of the hazards journalists face around the world.

Anthony Shadid, The Times’s Beirut bureau chief; the photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario; and Stephen Farrell, a reporter and videographer, were released almost six days after they were captured in eastern Libya by forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Turkish diplomats intervened for the journalists and helped get them out of Libya on Monday evening.

That happy outcome is tempered by the fact that so many working journalists are under siege around the world. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 852 journalists have been killed since 1992 when the committee began keeping records. Most recently, in Libya, an online journalist and an Al Jazeera reporter were killed covering fighting near Benghazi.

The Newseum, a museum about the news media in Washington, has reported that more than 160 journalists have died in Iraq since the war began. That is more than both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam combined.

That, in a tragic way, has always been the risk of covering war. But journalists also are increasingly targets of repressive governments — in Russia, Mexico, the Philippines and now in the Middle East. Turkey, which helped our journalists so effectively, has a bad record when it comes to reporters at home.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented more than 50 attacks on the press in Libya since political trouble began last month. Those include 33 detentions, two attacks on news facilities, the jamming of broadcasts and interruption of the Internet. At least six local journalists are missing, and Libyan authorities are still holding four Al Jazeera journalists. Agence-France Presse has reported two journalists missing in Libya.

The BBC reported three of its journalists were beaten, subject to mock executions and forced to witness torture of other Libyans at a military barracks.

News flows so freely and easily these days — on Web sites, on cellphone apps, on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube — that it seems almost effortless.

Getting it still requires old-fashioned courage and perseverance.

 Arizona Flinches

Arizona, the nation’s leader in over-the-top immigration laws, has pulled back. Its Republican-controlled Senate rejected five anti-immigration bills in one day last week. It was a startling rebuke to the Senate president, the architect of the state’s go-it-alone approach to enforcement. Other states weighing similar crackdowns should take note.

The reversal has to do with money, of course. The bills were dead once the state’s business lobby weighed in against them. Sixty chief executives signed a letter to the Legislature saying the harsh immigration measures were having “unintended consequences” — boycotts, lost jobs, canceled contracts, publicity so bad that businesses with Arizona in their names were suffering — even one based in Brooklyn. The chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Glenn Hamer, said the reaction to Arizona’s extremism had already cost the state $15 million to $150 million in lost tourism revenue.

For the record, the new bills sought to end automatic citizenship for illegal immigrants’ newborns. They would have required hospitals and schools to collect records on undocumented patients and students. They would have made it a crime for illegal immigrants to drive and prevented them from going to college.

The bills were the product of one overreaching politician, the Senate president, Russell Pearce, who has made it his mission to rid his state of illegal immigrants by ever-more-aggressive means. He was the sponsor of the one bill that started it all, SB1070, requiring police officers to check papers of anyone they suspected of being unauthorized. That bill last year made Mr. Pearce a national figure, and his success prompted this year’s follow-up flurry. One of the bills,SB1611,  was a mashup of 16 enforcement measures he had offered repeatedly in sessions past. It died with the others last week.

While it is a relief to see Arizona realizing that bigotry is bad for business, it is not the end of harsh, shortsighted laws. Other legislatures were already striving to follow Arizona’s model. There is still a federal vacuum on immigration reform that allows state mischief to thrive. And it’s important to note that none of the objections by Arizona’s businesses had anything to do with the strong moral arguments against xenophobic anti-immigration bills.

 New York’s Prisons Fall Short, Again

Perhaps as many as three-quarters of New York State’s 57,000 prison inmates need drug counseling or treatment to have a chance at productive, crime-free lives once they are released. Athree-year study of drug and alcohol abuse programs in the New York State Department of Corrections suggests that prisons are failing to provide adequate treatment programs for the tens of thousands of inmates who need them.

The study by the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit group, examined drug treatment programs at 23 of the state’s nearly 68 facilities. It found that the programs varied wildly in effectiveness and that most departed significantly from best practices laid out by the addiction research division of the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

The New York prison programs have several deficiencies in common. They fail to screen candidates based on the severity of their problems, which means they wastefully enroll large numbers of people in intensive programs they don’t need. They also routinely enroll poorly motivated inmates, which limits effectiveness. In a particularly glaring oversight, they fail to coordinate prison treatment programs with those offered in the communities to which the inmates will return.

The correctional association’s researchers found model treatment programs in at least four state prisons, including Hale Creek in upstate Fulton County. According to the report, these prisons use a three-phase system that begins with a six-month residential treatment program, in which the targeted inmates live in a separate prison dorm. This is followed by an integration component, under which people typically receive treatment during work release. Finally, newly released men and women are formally enrolled in community programs.

According to the study, the Department of Corrections could improve drug treatment without spending any more than the estimated $19 million it currently devotes to this problem by deploying the existing staff in better designed programs. The result would be better drug treatment, safer communities and less recidivism.