In the preceding post (click here to see it), I chastised Mr. Kopel at the Volokh. Conspiracy for what I considered his "rah rah let's go to war and isn't it splendid" attitude in a post he wrote on the U.N.'s resolution that can be interpreted as authorizing almost any military action short of occupation to assist the rebels in Libya.
I should note that Qadaffi has at least made a gesture in response to this UN resolution, claiming to have instituted a cease fire. There is much skepticism about this: he has publicly said he is issuing a cease fire, but as of yesterday evening, it appears that he either really hasn't or that his military hasn't gotten the memo or that, maybe more or maybe less disturbingly, "his" own factions are not obeying him and he doesn't have control over his own army (the latter I have not heard anyone mention, but I find it at least possible).
To the extent that I believed--and I think I did, although I did not say so in that post--that the UN resolution would lead to nothing but bloodshed and a quagmire, I might have been wrong, although events still need to bear out one way or another. And to the extent I believed that early and more expeditious US intervention would have done the same thing, I also might have been wrong, although that proposition, remaining a hypothetical, isn't something I'd bet my apartment lease on.
But this I do not recant: war, even when necessary and the right thing to do, should never be entered into or considered joyously, but with somber deliberation, and not with slogans and chants from the French Revolution.
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