According to the Best Defense's parsing of Gates' announcement to the media it will only be as part of a NATO force and if one of the NATO nations is leading. Similar to the Bosnia setup of the late 1990s.

Iraq and Afghanistan have become monumental money sinks - 1.2 Trillion in Sept 2010 - and ungovernable states at the hands of American intervention. While the US Army can destroy any conventional army at will, establishing a democratic and stable civil nation is beyond their grasp. There is no guarantee Libya will be any different.

Let the Libyans and their Tunisian, Algerian and Egyptian neighbors help them work it out. They will probably like us more for not interjecting in future years anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if the Iraqi's feel robbed at the moment. Several other Arab nations got rid of their dictators and seem to be transitioning over to some hoped for form of liberal democracy legitimized by the peaceful protests.

Iraq was robbed of that mechanism by war and intervention.

I was hoping that the US would stay out of Libya, but it appears the US is going in. It also appears that the Obama Cabinet acted like a cabinet and debated the issue before a decision was made. This is the interesting break down of which sides the different participants were on until the cabinet decision was made. Thomas Ricks thinks this is a good thing;

Now, the sooner this no-fly zone gets up and running, the better. I think it would be good if Arab aircraft and pilots did most of the actually bombing and shooting. We can give them refueling and AWACs aircraft doing command and control. I know, a lot easier said than done. Running a no-fly zone is difficult and complex, especially when the enforcers are a coalition thrown together on the fly.

The force multipliers are always in high demand and short supply, and the US is the country with the most of those assets such as air to air refueling and AWACs. So it probably a good way for the US to be seen as part of this relief force and not get directly involved with the actual application of force.

The argument for the intervention is that it is more like Bosnia than Iraq or Afghanistan. Which is possible but America is doing the latter on the credit card and with no end in sight. It is hard to believe that Libya will be any different.

Another annoying part is that the political credo of late has been austerity and the need to cut from the budget just about everything - other than the military, social security or medicare of course. Yet the politicians are happy to rack up more credit card bills on the military machine and the security state.

This is where the Obama administration has been the most disappointing. There is little difference in this regard between the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration. Yes the Obama administration is more competent and effective but the security state and exceptionalism is the same continued policies from the Bush era.

If there was to be a refutation from that era, I would hope that would have been it.