my thoughts is that until now things are going rather well. it is military operation. blessed by the united nations with a clear mandate, with a coalition involving arab league with no colonial targets. it s a humanitarian war perceived as such by the people of libya and so far it is well achieved. here s the big question everybody in america is asking, bernard, and as advocate in france maybe you can answer this. the optics as an american news consumer look like this, we launched 130 missiles. six launched by the british. we re operating off u.s. aircraft carriers to facilitate all of this. and at what point is this really
p pudding on this. if it turns into a bloody stalemate that goes on for months and months which is much more likely, then the president is going to pay a big political price. i don t think the constitutional is a big issue politically. presidents have done this on many occasions gone to war without a declaration from congress. we fought long wars and long war in vietnam without congressional declaration even the war of powers act doesn t change it much. the unilateral and multilateral issue is important as it applies abroad. this is the first genuinely multilateral war we ve seen. in the past bush s coalition of the willing was phony. in this case it s genuine. you are nodding when jon said proof is in the pudding. if it works out, great. if it doesn t, it s a disaster. i presume it s because you agree with that. he s right. not only are we always fighting the last war militarily but pundits are always fighting the last war and because of what
this war until its end. it is not a france problem. i heard the gentleman before me make a difference between american interest and french interest. this is not correct. we have the same interests. gadhafi was and would still be a danger for the free world. gadhafi is i understand that. i guess my question is simply from an american perspective is we have nearly 20% unemployment. we have a housing crisis. we have a ten-year war in afghanistan. we have a failed war in iraq. we spend 43% of the national defense budget. we have the world s ultimate war and killing machine. we just dropped another $75 million over the weekend to launch tomahawk missiles that were u.s. bankrolled and u.s. launched into this and other
doesn t r countries have an economic responsibility if this is everyone s problem and military staffing responsibility to actually step in here. number one, in this case it is not a killing machine. it is a peace machine. we are not there to make war. we are there to make peace. you re not answering my question. to put on the power i answer your question now. it is a strategy question for america. i know about unemployment. i know about crisis. i know about all that. if we together don t put gadhafi out of power, we will have ahmadinejad for a long time. my question is then so do you believe that france, england and other allies will write a check that is collected from french taxpayers and british taxpayers to fund the equipment of war that is being right now paid for
airpower perhaps more airpower they are not going to be able to win this war. thank you for that report, richard. i want to bring in a former u.s. ambassador to morocco and a senior fellow for advanced studies. how clearly is it defined and can we achieve it? as ambassador ginsberg told me is we ve taken sides despite what we say about trying to focus on humanitarian. as richard engel just talked about, there s no organization here. by the fact we opened the door, we ve now allowed rebels to move forward. not good or bad, it is what it is. the problem we have to face now is what is our end game? we have exceeded the idea of no fly. we re not now talking about humanitarian support. i see the very same path we went down for the bosnia situation. it opened up the same which with u.n. resolutions and us helping