Slate

It's clear now to even the wildest-eyed optimist that the recent Middle Eastern uprisings might not augur a spree of democratic revolution. Where they will lead is uncharted territory, but one thing they seem to signify, for now, is a further breakdown of the world order, a fracturing of global power into still more jutting and jagged shards, another round of the unraveling that started when the Cold War ended.

As Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget outlined the problem: It's never going to pass in a Congress in which Democrats control the Senate. "The national discussion has moved beyond just finding a plan with sufficient ...

It's worth noting, four days into the air campaign against Libya, that we're just four days into the air campaign against Libya.

On cable news, four days seems an eternity. Hence the vein-popping impatience for Qaddafi to crumble, the outrage that Obama isn't doing something more quickly (just what isn't quite clear), the heaving sighs over the coalition's failure (after hours of meetings) to work out the precise procedures of command and control.

Is President Obama dithering over Libya?

In the past week or so, a diverse array of commentators—Republican hawks, the usual neocons, and some normally gun-shy Democrats, including Sen. John Kerry—has called on Obama to take action now. Some have charged Obama with queasiness or lack of principles for not charging the ramparts from the get-go. But one can imagine several very good reasons for the president's … let's call it caution.

And so it seems, Robert Gates really will be leaving the Pentagon soon.

He's been going around to the military academies—West Point last week, the Air Force Academy today, Annapolis sometime soon—bidding farewell to the cadets, pointedly noting at the start of each speech that it will be his "final" address to them as secretary of defense. But Gates is not indulging in valedictory bromides. He's using the occasions to lay out his vision of what each branch—and each future officer—of the U.S. armed forces must do, and not do, to meet the threats of the 21st century.

Earlier this year, the $21.7 billion Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria was forced to retract or suspend millions of dollars in aid after rampant corruption was discovered. An audit of a modest portion of selected programs found staggering percentages of money misspent or unaccounted for: 67 percent in Mauritania; 36 percent in Mali; and 30 percent in Djibouti. There were also serious concerns involving millions of dollars sent to Zambia.

It's a no-brainer that President Barack Obama should do something to help the Libyan protesters bring down the monstrous regime of Muammar Qaddafi. The tough question is what.

To elaborate on this point: What actions would help, what actions might hurt, and, perhaps most important, what actions can be effectively sustained? Qaddafi, after all, has hung on to power for 42 years; he might not tumble with one quick push.

In 2010, 118 drone strikes pounded Pakistan's tribal regions, according to a study by the New America Foundation—that's roughly one bombing every three days, double the number of strikes the year before. Drone attacks are touted as one of America's ...

Will this be the year that Congress takes after the defense budget, seeing it not as holy writ laid down by an unchallengeable priesthood but rather as a political document hammered out by competing bureaucracies, each with long-standing vested interests?

It's a bubbling brew out there, the Tea Party Republicans keen to slash any and all federal programs, joined in a potential alliance of convenience with liberal Democrats seeking to kill big-ticket weapons slammed as pork-barrel waste or Cold War antiques.

So Hosni Mubarak's not stepping down after all.

What's next? A coup? A widening revolution? A massive crackdown? Who knows? Egypt has plunged into uncharted waters for the past two weeks, and they just got several fathoms deeper.