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   Military experts and Libyan rebels say that Libya's abrupt promise of a cease-fire today, just hours after the U.N. voted for a no-fly zone, is canny brinksmanship by Col. Moammar Gadhafi designed to buy time in his escalating cat-and-mouse game with the West.Rebel commander Khalifa Heftir told reporters in Benghazi today that Gadhafi was "bluffing," and CNN reported today that residents in the battered coastal city of Misrata said they were still under bombardment."What cease-fire," asked a doctor in Misrata. "We're under the bombs. This morning they are burning the city. There are deaths everywhere."Gadhafi is secretly moving his heavy artillery out of the open and parking them in between houses so Libyans will be used as human shields to protect the weaponry from any Western air strikes, said a Libyan activist who just left the country."He's still bombarding cities, but what he's focusing on right now is protecting his artillery," Madghis Madi, a coordinator of the 17th of February Revolution, told AOL News today."He's moving about 250 tanks and rocket launchers in some towns in the Nafusa mountains. That way he can blame the West if any civilians are killed."Madi and others interviewed by AOL News say that while the cease-fire announcement could be genuine, it could be a tactical move to neutralize U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' stated desire to take out Gadhafi's defense as part of a no-fly zone and confuse the West."This looks like mischief making," said former British Brigadier Ben Barry, a former battalion commander during the Bosnian war now with the International Institute for Strategic Studies."I think this could be a spoiling tactic to foul up the West's plans. We heard a lot of cease-fires announced in Bosnia, but not that many were genuine."Experts said the West will still go ahead with the no-fly zone despite Gadhafi's announcement. Britain took the lead today, sending Tornado and Typhoon fighters to air bases in Italy and Cyprus. Bases in Spain, Sicily, Crete and Malta may also be used in the operation."The clock is ticking," British Prime Minister David Cameron said in Parliament today.A large naval flotilla is stationed off the Libyan coast and includes three America warships and two British frigates. Britain, France and NATO were also holding emergency meetings today about the scope of military action under the no-fly zone."We are very determined," Yves Sorokobi, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, said on Sky News today. "We mean business."But in the event of a cease-fire, rationale for a pre-emptive strike of Gadhafi's air and ground defense could evaporate despite the reports from Libya that government forces are still on the attack."With the announcement of a cease-fire, there could be less of a justification to take out his weaponry," military analyst Christian Le Miere said. "Gadhafi is a very shrewd operator, and that could be well what he wants."The high-stakes, High Noon standoff between Gadhafi and the West began to come to a head late Thursday when the United Nations Security Council voted to impose a wide-ranging no-fly zone over Libya and take "all necessary measures," including armed intervention, to prevent a humanitarian disaster.Just hours later, Gadhafi's deputy Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa told reporters at a Libya hotel that the Libyan government had begun an "immediate ceasefire and stoppage of all military operations."But Koussa's appearance in place of Gadhafi, who has not been shy about surfacing in public since the popular uprising began Feb. 17, made many very skeptical."These are part of the psychological games Gadhafi plays with Libyans and the rest of the world," said Mohamed Eljahmi, a Libyan-American activist who is contact with some of the rebels."Why was it Koussa and not Gadhafi? Could it be that Gadhafi can later say he never authorized Koussa to announce a no-fly zone? This distances Gadhafi and gives him an out. They can say Moussa Koussa went out on his own."Barry said he even wondered whether Koussa "represented some peace initiative within the Libyan government that is not in accordance with Gadhafi." ||||| Yesterday's UN Security Council vote authorizing a No-Fly Zone and more against Libya has brought the United States and its allies into another Middle Eastern war. The charge leveled by advocates of the war that Obama has been "dithering" is as silly as is the counter-argument that the West has been itching for an excuse to invade Libya to seize its oil. The administration clearly understands that military intervention in Libya is a terrible idea, and hoped for as long as possible that the Libyan opposition could prevail without outside military assistance. It only signed on to the intervention when it became clear that, as DNI James Clapper testifed to great public abuse, Qaddafi had tipped the balance and was likely to win. The prospect of Qaddafi surviving and taking his revenge on his people and the region is what forced the hand of the United States and the Security Council. 
   
   I'm conflicted about the intervention, torn between the anguished appeals from Libyans and Arabs desperate for support against Qaddafi and concerns about the many deep, unanswered and at this point largely unasked questions about what comes next -- whether Qaddafi survives or falls. Now, the hope has to be that the UN's resolution will quickly lead Qaddafi's regime to crumble and create the conditions for a rapid political process to change that regime without the actual use of military force. 
   
   The intervention is a high-stakes gamble. If it succeeds quickly, and Qaddafi's regime crumbles as key figures jump ship in the face of its certain demise, then it could reverse the flagging fortunes of the Arab uprisings. Like the first Security Council resolution on Libya, it could send a powerful message that the use of brutal repression makes regime survival less rather than more likely. It would put real meat on the bones of the "Responsibility to Protect" and help create a new international norm. And it could align the U.S. and the international community with al-Jazeera and the aspirations of the Arab protest movement. I have heard from many protest leaders from other Arab countries that success in Libya would galvanize their efforts, and failure might crush their hopes. 
   
   But if it does not succeed quickly, and the intervention degenerates into a long quagmire of air strikes, grinding street battles, and growing pressure for the introduction of outside ground forces, then the impact could be quite different. Despite the bracing scenes of Benghazi erupting into cheers at the news of the Resolution, Arab support for the intervention is not nearly as deep as it seems and will not likely survive an extended war. If Libyan civilians are killed in airstrikes, and especially if foreign troops enter Libyan territory, and images of Arabs killed by U.S. forces replace images of brave protestors battered by Qaddafi's forces on al-Jazeera, the narrative could change quickly into an Iraq-like rage against Western imperialism. What began as an indigenous peaceful Arab uprising against authoritarian rule could collapse into a spectacle of war and intervention. 
   
   The Libya intervention is also complicated by the trends in the rest of the region. There is currently a bloody crackdown going on in U.S.-backed Bahrain, with the support of Saudi Arabia and the GCC. The Yemeni regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh is currently carrying out some of its bloodiest repression yet. Will the Responsibility to Protect extend to Bahrain and Yemen? This is not a tangential point. One of the strongest reasons to intervene in Libya is the argument that the course of events there will influence the decisions of other despots about the use of force. If they realize that the international community will not allow the brutalization of their own people, and a robust new norm created, then intervention in Libya will pay off far beyond its borders. But will ignoring Bahrain and Yemen strangle that new norm in its crib? 
   
   On my flight to Beirut earlier this month, I read the new book by Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose, How Wars End. Rose warns that leaders should never go into a military intervention without thinking through the political endgame. Again and again, he warns, the United States has gone into wars focused on the urgency of the need for action without thinking through where it really wants and needs to go. War advocates prefer to focus on the urgency of action, usually minimizing the likely risks and costs of war, exaggerating the likely benefits, and discounting the viability of all non-military courses of action -- exactly the script on Libya the last few weeks. Thinking about the messy endgame would only complicate such advocacy, and so it gets set aside. 
   
   One might think that the disastrous post-war trajectories of Iraq and Afghanistan would have forever ended such an approach to military interventions, but here we are. Has anyone really seriously thought through the role the U.S. or international community might be expected to play should Qaddafi fall? Or what steps will follow should the No Fly Zone and indirect intervention not succeed in driving Qaddafi from power? No, there's no time for that... there never is. For now, I will be hoping, deeply and fervently, that the Libyan regime quickly crumbles in the face of the international community's actions. Reports that it has accepted the resolution and a ceasefire could provide the space for the kind of political settlement many of us have been advocating. Let's hope.
target: – Marc Lynch hopes "fervently" that the UN's decision on Libya causes Moammar Gadhafi's regime to fall quickly. It could "reverse the flagging fortunes of the Arab uprisings" and put both the US and international community on the right side of the protest movement, he writes in Foreign Policy. But don't underestimate the risks, he warns, especially if the "intervention degenerates into a long quagmire of air strikes, grinding street battles, and growing pressure for the introduction of outside ground forces." The problem is that "Arab support for the intervention is not nearly as deep as it seems and will not likely survive an extended war," he writes. If Libyan civilians start getting killed by foreign troops, the current anti-Gadhafi narrative "could change quickly into an Iraq-like rage against Western imperialism." Gadhafi's quick declaration of a cease-fire suggests some kind of political settlement could be in the offing. "Let's hope." (Click to read about worries that Gadhafi's move is just a ploy.)