The principles that should guide us

There once was a president who was ready to stand by the principles that have made the US great - and to act  when it was time to act.

This excerpt from a speech that the then future president Ronald Reagan gave already in 1964 should have been shown to the G8 foreign ministers (to Herr Westerwelle, in particular), who met in Paris without being able to agree on a no-fly zone in Libya:

This is the sad reality:

Europe fiddles as Libya burns

On military intervention, there are almost as many opinions as there are EU members, and no one wants to act without the US

Disagreement between European countries over Libya has moved from the merely embarrassing to the wholly humiliating, after Germany again blocked Anglo-French no-fly zone proposals at a G8 meeting in Paris. The EU's Libya debacle is now the foreign policy equivalent of last year's eurozone meltdown, and similarly damaging to its global credibility and influence. Once again, Europe is being forced to confront an unpalatable truth: unless the US takes the lead, nothing gets done.

PS
And president Obama continues his dithering, sending out mixed signals. Maybe somebody should show the video to him, too.