U.S. should hold fire on Libya

America doesn't have all the answers. Policy-makers in Washington need to be reminded of this hard-won lesson as pressure builds for the Obama administration to do something dangerous about Libya.

The pressure for intervention is understandable because the situation in that country speaks to freedom-loving people everywhere. Brave rebels are battling to overthrow the poisonous dictatorship of Moammar Gadhafi, who has turned the full force of his remaining military firepower on them in his desperation to retain power.

Against government aircraft and mercenaries, the position of the rebels -- and the prospects for Libyan freedom -- seem tenuous. The rebels have openly appealed for western intervention, which has occurred elsewhere countless times in the past on much flimsier pretexts.

But that's one of the many reasons Washington must confine itself, at least for the time being, to denouncing government violence in Libya and exploring every nonmilitary avenue to secure the ouster of its strongman.

America in the past has intervened all too readily, only to discover that overthrowing far-flung governments by military force or covert action doesn't work out very well. Iraq is only the most recent tragic example. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, but sometimes we overthrow decent governments for worse ones, as we did in Guatemala in 1954 or Chile in 1973.

The beneficiaries of regime change, far from greeting us with laurels, can easily become hostile. And when the nation is in the Middle East, matters become infinitely more complicated as a result of its colonial history, religious passions and jaundiced view of America and its longtime ally, Israel.

The United States is already embroiled in two costly and protracted conflicts far from home, and it's not at all clear that military intervention in Libya would be clean, quick or welcomed by the global community. Even imposing a no-fly zone, as Sens. John McCain and John Kerry have advocated, is premature, and should only be considered under the imprimatur of NATO or, ideally, the United Nations, where several key countries are unlikely to go along.

The world's supply of repulsive governments is large enough that important national interests -- or outright genocide -- have to be at stake to warrant American military action. Oil is such an interest, much as we may prefer otherwise, but whoever controls Libya will continue to sell its oil, which is as likely to be disrupted by any American military action as by a Libyan civil war.

Libya may reach a point requiring international intervention. But it's not there yet, and bad as things are, we could make them a lot worse by rushing hastily to the rescue.

If we should have learned one thing by now, it's that America can't solve all the world's problems. It would be a miracle if we could solve a few more of our own.