What are we getting ourselves into?

News of a conflagration in Libya has filled headlines for weeks, but the news today came as a shock. American and allied aircraft and missiles had struck not only the radar installations and surface-to-air missile sites in Libya but also ground troops and even a residence of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi.

What are we getting ourselves into? The photos and video from Tripoli look a lot like the scenes from Baghdad just eight years ago. President Obama and European leaders swear we will not get involved in a civil war in Libya, but using military force to aid one side against another looks an awful lot like getting involved in a civil war.

The United Nations voted to impose a no-fly zone over Libya as a means of preventing Qaddafi from slaughtering Libyans who wanted to overthrow him. American troops and armament are being used to support the anti-Qaddafi forces and to prevent Qaddafi from attaining his military objectives. No one in Europe or America is an admirer of Qaddafi. He has supported and exported terrorism for decades while strutting about as an Arab Napoleon. He has oppressed Libya and prohibited any political opposition. He is detestable. But is it America's or Europe's role to overthrow him? How much American blood and treasure are we willing to spend to ensure that Qaddafi doesn't prevail? Having set the precedent in Libya, will America be willing to lend military support to rebels in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Saudi Arabia or whatever Arab nation is the next to crush a popular revolt? And we have little reassurance that Qaddafi's successor will be any more democratic or humanitarian than he has been.

The world was appalled by Qaddafi's ruthless attacks on his fellow countrymen, but evil exists around the world, not just in Libya. Neither America nor the United Nations can save every poor dissident from every ruthless dictator, but we can get bogged down in a civil war in which we have little at stake. It looks like we're already there.

When is a coup not really a coup?

I had a hard time believing what I was hearing on the radio. An NPR reporter was interviewing the Honduran ambassador (or ex-ambassador, depending on whom you believe) to the United States about the military action that sent President Manuel Zelaya on a one-way trip to Costa Rica. The ambassador, Roberto Flores Bermudez, insisted that the rousting of Zelaya from his bed by armed men and flying him to exile was not a military coup. It was a legitimate constitutional action, he said. Huh? The ambassador, who had returned to Honduras for consultations with the new government, said that Zelaya had violated the constitution and that a legal order had been issued for his arrest, and the arrest was carried out. The new government was constitutional and legitimate, he said.

Wow! I thought. That is certainly a new way to justify a military coup. The coup — few people have called it anything else — has been roundly condemned by everyone from Venezuela's socialist Hugo Chavez to Barack Obama. But it turns out that there's more to the story than can be seen at first glance. Details have begun to emerge from other media sources.

Zelaya, it seems, had sought to extend his power beyond the single four-year term allowed by the Honduran constitution. He called for a national referendum to allow him to change the constitution. Under the constitution, the president does not have the authority to call for a referendum or amend the constitution. The Honduran congress condemned his unilateral action. Honduran courts ruled that he could not hold a referendum without the concurrence of congress. Congress began impeachment proceedings. Zelaya said, essentially, "the hell you say!" and had military officers under his control confiscate and distribute ballot boxes for his illegal referendum. The Honduran Supreme Court issued an arrest order for Zelaya, who was thumbing his nose at every legal authority in the country. It was this arrest that Ambassador Flores was defending as legitimate.

Imagine, by way of comparison, if Richard Nixon had chosen to fight to the bitter end in 1974. What if he had refused the turn over the White House tapes and had been impeached by the Senate and then refused to leave office? Suppose he cited the threat of nuclear war or the delicate situation in the Middle East and ordered military commanders to protect him from insurgents at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Would the removal of Nixon from the Oval Office by a military contingent be a coup de etat? Would what Zelaya's opponents did be any different than forcibly removing Nixon?

The background of the Honduran military action has received little attention in this country, and probably in others as well. The Organization of American States has called for Zelaya to be reinstated. Honduran opponents feared that Zelaya would, like his friend Hugo Chavez, set himself up as a perpetual president, essentially a dictator who would turn Honduras into a socialist haven without the oil wealth of Venezuela, that is, a wretched "workers' paradise" like Cuba. Zelaya had been elected as a conservative but declared himself a socialist in 2007.

Zelaya's opponents botched the arrest of the president by attacking in the dead of night and spiriting him out of the country instead of holding him for trial. It's hard to know from this distance whether impeachment of Zelaya is warranted or whether he should be allowed to serve out the remainder of the one term to which he was legitimately elected, but it's obvious that this was not a typical military coup, and the United States and other countries should see beyond the initial appearances.