Even now the United States military and other Western powers are deploying ships and other assets around the Med and near Libya. But posturing aside the National Review editors advocate a different kind of military strategy — do nothing. Here’s why:

We understand and share the impulse to stanch the killing. But there are two problems with the proposed no-fly zone.

One, Qaddafi’s regime doesn’t appear to be doing much of its murder from the air. If we are serious about limiting his ability to massacre his countrymen, the no-fly zone would have to become a no machine-gun zone, too — in other words an honest-to-goodness military intervention to affect events directly on the ground. Deploying our air power while Qaddafi continued to kill with impunity would make us look more ineffectual rather than less. For now (perhaps this will change if Qaddafi begins to consolidate his position on the strength of his air force), the no-fly zone seems a classic case of looking for lost keys under the streetlight; it’s the handiest way for us to intervene, not the most effective.

Two, the rebels are on the ascendancy. Absent some drastic change in the tide of events, it looks as if they will prevail. Why would we taint what would be the indigenous glory of their ouster of Qaddafi with an almost entirely symbolic Western military action? The reason that the revolts of 2011 have had a dramatic catalyzing effect across the region, when the invasion of Iraq didn’t, is that they are the handiwork of Middle Eastern populations themselves, and thus a much more appealing model of change.

This is a very interesting approach and something to be taken seriously, simply because we have used this strategy before successfully — In Poland, it was the tipping point for Communism.

As reported in Time Magazine in 1992, Reagan Republicans joined with The Vatican and Pope John Paul II, the AFL-CIO and other lefty labor movements to defeat the greater evil of Communism. One wonders if such cooperation for such a just cause and with such far-reaching consequences will ever be witnessed again.

Tons of equipment — fax machines (the first in Poland), printing presses, transmitters, telephones, shortwave radios, video cameras, photocopiers, telex machines, computers, word processors — were smuggled into Poland via channels established by priests and American agents and representatives of the AFL-CIO and European labor movements. Money for the banned union came from CIA funds, the National Endowment for Democracy, secret accounts in the Vatican and Western trade unions.

Replace the technology of the 1980s with today’s — cell phones and generators, webservers and Twitter and Facebook — but the concept is the same. (On second thought, if the illiberal regimes of the Arab world focus on blocking modern technology, what if the populations did utilize the old technologies — would the dictators see that coming before it was too late?)

Of course, we’ll never know, at least for many years to come, how much or how often our intelligence services employ asymmetrical support to the world’s enemies of freedom and liberty. I’d like to think it occurs often, but given that the only leaks of our intelligence services time and again seem to indicate a climate of inaction and risk aversion, it may be that we’ll never see the West support an Arab or Islamic “Solidarity” movement.

I don’t know which group is more unconscionable, the Wisconsin state Democrats or that state’s unions.

The former group actually fled the state rather than participate in a vote on Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s proposal to have state workers become financial participants in retirement and health care costs (something that every private sector Wisconsin citizen already does). You see, the Wisconsin Republicans have 19 of the 33 seats, but need 20 seats in order to maintain a quorum and conduct business. So the Democrats, rather than all vote against the bill in a losing effort of solidarity, simply didn’t show to work today. That’s how these “Democrats” feel about democracy and the voters of Wisconsin, that is, their constituents — there was an election, and the Wisconsin voters clearly decided that something had to be done to curb spending, growth and wasteful government.

The reply of the Wisconsin Democrats is the middle finger. So brazen are they, so unconscionable, so filled with contempt for their constituents that these Wisconsin Democrats added insult to injury by hiding in a Best Western Clock Tower Resort, which according to its website, features a hair salon, two restaurants, and “65,000 square feet of indoor water park fun at CoCo Key Water Resort and Key Quest Arcade.” All of this no doubt to be billed back to the Wisconsin taxpayer.

Next, we have the thousands of Wisconsin teachers — who called in “sick” rather than educate Wisconsin children — and other state workers who showed up in mass to protest what they call an attempt by Wisconsin Republicans to eliminate their “collective bargain rights.” This is nonsense, of course. Nobody, obviously from the mere fact that they can just up and walk away from their job for the day, is taking away their right to bargain collectively. They can bargain all they want for, say, increased salaries. No, the unions are unhappy because under the proposal they wouldn’t be able to force state workers to join a union, to pay dues. You see, they prefer anyone who happens to be in their profession — from teacher to firefighter — be forced to abide by union rules without consent or meet the wrath of union brownshirts. Who’s the fascist, again?

Instead, all that Gov. Scott Walker is proposing is that state workers of Wisconsin make financial contributions to their own retirement; that they make financial contributions to their own health care. This is somehow considered radical? That state workers should be no more exempt in contributing to the cost of their benefits than non-state workers?

President Barack Obama called the bill “an assault on unions.” Assaults are made of sterner stuff, Mr. President. The bill would nonetheless leave Wisconsin state workers in a far better financial position than that of non-state workers. I guess to Democrats “share the wealth” means have those in the private sector share their wealth with those in the public sector, but not vice versa.

Here’s Patrick McIlhernan:

The public-sector union tantrums, meant to make lawmakers wobble, have an inadvertent message for the rest of us: Voters can vote all they want. We can elect a cheapskate governor and a Legislature to match. But come the moment, unions will have the last, loudest word.

They’ll have it if takes marches. They’ll have it if it takes what amounts to an illegal strike, with so many Madison teachers calling in sick Wednesday that the district closed schools. If it takes showing up for a we-know-where-your-family-is protest on Walker’s Wauwatosa lawn while he was at work, the unions are sure they can outshout any election result.

This is exactly why Walker is right to limit the unions’ power over government spending.

Walker, remember, is not removing unions’ fundamental power to bargain for wages. He is demanding that state workers put 5.8% of their wages toward retirement and that they cover 12.6% of their health care premiums, which would still have them paying more than $100 less a month than the average schmoe. He is also proposing that elected officials determine the shape of employee benefits without having to bargain them, and this as much as the added cost has unions crying “unfair.”

They insist this is the end of unionization in government, something to which they have as much right, they say, as anyone else.

But they miss a bedrock difference. Unions in the private sector are a way of organizing private interests, those of employees, against other private interests, those of a company’s owners, for economic gain and for protection against unfairness. In government, workers are already protected against unfairness by civil service laws, and Walker has supported expanding those. Economically, government unions pit a private interest, that of employees, against the public’s interest, that of taxpayers and voters.

We see the result. Walker’s moves are prompted by the state’s vast deficit. The alternative, he says, is to lay off thousands. Nonsense, charge the marchers: Just raise taxes. Unions and allies have for years been demanding more sales taxes, new business taxes and higher taxes on other people’s incomes, all to keep the state flush and generous. We’re taxed enough already, said a voting majority in November. Not yet, insist the unions that have become the largest players in Wisconsin politics precisely to counter any such voter sentiment.

Anyway, union leaders were conceding the pension and health care premiums by this week. They said they knew they’d have to pay more eventually – so when unions in December said such payments were tantamount to slavery, it must have been just maneuvering. Bygones, say unions, as long as Walker leaves them the power to set health benefits via bargaining. Leave that, they say, and it’s peace.

Yeah? Recall how we got here. How is it that only in desperation will unions accept a deal that still leaves them better off than everyone else? How did we achieve not just next year’s $3.3 billion deficit but the decade of structural deficits before? Easy: It’s because labor costs for years have been outstripping taxpayers’ capacity. That in turn was caused by officials, elected in a union-dominated political environment, buying labor peace via benefits, where it’s harder for voters to see the costs adding up.

If the Legislature takes the 5% and 12% and doesn’t reform collective bargaining, the 5% and 12% soon will be won back by unions. Any further savings are out the window. Walker talks of moving to consumer-driven benefits, as many companies have done, to restrain medical costs. That’s anathema to unions, who will resist it contract by contract. Without bargaining reform, government costs will have taken only a pause in their ascent.

Union activists in Madison Tuesday spoke apocalyptically of “class war,” hinting wildly at general strikes and takeovers of the Capitol. They correctly see their control of the state slipping and must figure that if they bring 13,000 shouting people to Madison, they can overrule the election.

Any worried legislators should keep in mind that Walker drew about five times that many votes in Dane County alone in November.

Great commentary from the Bret Stephens:

It’s what the good people on West 40th Street like to call a “Times Classic.” On Feb. 16, 1979, the New York Times ran a lengthy op-ed by Richard Falk, a professor of international law at Princeton, under the headline “Trusting Khomeini.”

“The depiction of [Khomeini] as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false,” wrote Mr. Falk. “What is also encouraging is that his entourage of close advisers is uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals.”

After carrying on in this vein for a few paragraphs, the professor concluded: “Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a third-world country.”

Whoops.

The Times is at it again. Last week, the paper published an op-ed from Essam El-Errian, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Council, who offered this soothing take on his organization: “We aim to achieve reform and rights for all: not just for the Muslim Brotherhood, not just for Muslims, but for all Egyptians.” Concurring with that view, Times reporter Nicholas Kulish wrote on Feb. 4 that members of the Brotherhood “come across as civic-minded people of faith.”

… “We think highly of a country whose president is important, courageous and has a vision, which he presents in the U.N., in Geneva, and everywhere,” the Brotherhood’s Kamal al-Hilbawi told Iran’s Al-Alam TV earlier this month, referring to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust and 9/11 denials. “We think highly of a country . . . that confronts Western hegemony, and is scientifically and technologically advanced. Unfortunately, these characteristics can be found only in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I hope that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia will be like that.”

Nor should there be any doubt about what the Brotherhood is aiming against. “Resistance is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny,” Muhammad Badie, the Brotherhood’s supreme guide, sermonized in October. “The improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained . . . by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life.”

Such remarks may come as a rude shock to James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence who last week testified in Congress that the Brotherhood was “largely secular” (a remark his office later retracted). They may also surprise a coterie of Western analysts who are convinced that the Brotherhood is moving in a moderate direction and will only be further domesticated by participation in democratic politics. Yet the evidence for that supposition rests mainly on what the Brotherhood tells Westerners. What it says in Arabic is another story.

In 2005, candidates for the Brotherhood took 20% of the parliamentary vote. Gamal al-Banna, Hassan’s youngest brother, once told me they command as much as 40% support. Neither figure is a majority. But unless Egypt’s secular forces can coalesce into serious political parties, the people for whom Islam is the solution won’t find the fetters of democracy to be much of a problem.