REMEMBER LIBYA? – AT 10:20 A.M. ET:  Isn't that a country in the Mideast?  Didn't we do some shooting there recently, for a few days?  Didn't Obama say that the dictator who runs the place has to get out?  Oh yes, I remember it well.

The big shot is still in power, and Obama is out campaigning.  He certainly knows how to conduct foreign policy, doesn't he? 

(Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said on Saturday he was ready for a ceasefire and negotiations provided NATO "stop its planes," but he refused to give up power as rebels and Western powers demand.

The rebels and NATO rejected Gaddafi's offer, saying it lacked credibility. A spokesman for the insurgents said the time for compromise had passed and NATO said air strikes would go on as long as Libyan civilians were being threatened.

Weeks of Western air strikes have failed to dislodge the Libyan leader, instead imposing a stalemate on a war Gaddafi looked to have been winning, with government forces held at bay in the east and around the besieged city of Misrata while fighting for control of the western mountains.

With neither side apparently able to gain the upper hand, Gaddafi struck a more conciliatory tone in an 80-minute televised address to the nation in the early hours of Saturday.

COMMENT:  Conciliatory?  The guy is still in power.  The American president shows no interest.  NATO hasn't got the will or equipment to go long term.  He sees that Syrian leaders can fire into protest crowds and get only wrist slaps.  He can afford to be conciliatory.

The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once wrote an essay called "Defining Deviancy Down."  In it he argued that deviant, unacceptable behavior becomes acceptable over time because people get used to it.  My fear is that Americans will get used to the erratic, strange, and ineffectual foreign policy of the Obama administration, and accept it as normal.  That is a catastrophe.

April 30,  2011