a clear statement with libya, being heard by both the arab people and the arab dictators, elsewhere in the region sxooir and i say with regard to syria, that, assad, the dictator there, ought to and probably is getting a clear message. if he turns his weapons on his people, and begins to slaughter them as qaddafi did, he ll run the risk of having the world community come in and impose a no-fly zone and protect civilian populations, just as we re doing in libya. and, therefore, assad has one choice and that is to negotiate with the freedom fighters in syria to create an entirely different government there, or let me just interrupt briefly, senator lieberman, we are lung out of time, are you suggesting you would support an international coalition to go in and do in syria what we re doing now in libya? if assad does what qaddafi
that he has now saying about how it s really we re not really front and center on the mission and really a multinational operation and so forth this shows the inevitability of american leadership in the world. the ability that was shown to quickly impose a no-fly zone and begin to mount the air attacks that turned back qaddafi s forces was carried out by american war planes with help from other countries and now the matter goes to nato control, supreme allied commander is an american, nato itself, military prowess is heavily american. this is a sign of the old adage not much good can happen in the world without american leadership and the president despite his attempts to disguise it, is exercising american leadership. chris: it seems the biggest issue is what do we do about qaddafi? can we allow him to stay in power, explicitly target him or
responsibility and costs of upholding peace and security. command and control business is complicated. and we haven t done something like this on the fly before. chris: the president and defense secretary gates, with different views about how smoothly the coalition effort in libya is going. time now for our sunday group. brit hume, fox news senior political analyst, nina easton, fortune magazine, bill kristol from the weekly standard, and, fox news political analyst, juan williams. it certainly has not been smooth. but as we sit here at week s end, nato has taken command of the no-fly zone but the civilian protection mission, qaddafi forces have been pushed back from benghazi and ajdabiya and brega. brit, messy or not is the president s policy working out? so far, so good. and i think what the president may be noticing here is for all
which only trumpets arab unity, says he s a bad guy, hurting our people and you hear people in libya asking for help at this moment. that is a dinks and is imperative for the u.s. to respond for the reasons you laid out. chris: what does the president say tomorrow night. the big problem is the question is, what if qaddafi stays? the president said he has to go but he has not outlined the steps the u.s. is willing to take to oust him. you have to be clear about. that is not precisely true. he has spoken in what he calls a range of other measures that are a in place to oust him. these are nonmilitary matters. i don t know how much effect they ll have. freezing assets and trade embargo go and the rest, and obviously that would put pressure on him and one thing that is important, what we have seen in these up risings is the more benevolent of the ought
have been over then. it is clear air power is a decisive factor in battlefields of this nature. we found that out in world war ii. so, we should continue to make sure that civilians are not harmed or massacred or killed by qaddafi s forces. the day the french aircraft flew over the libyans stopped flying. this policy has been characterized by confusion, indecision and they. and is no wonder, the nature of your question, americans are confused as to exactly what our policy is because, on the one that and they say it is humanitarian and the other hand they say qaddafi must go and i hope the president will clarify in his speech monday night. chris: would you like him to commit the u.s. in some role in toppling qaddafi. i want to hear him say he should be with hugo chavez or the criminal court and make sure that happens over time.