Pundits either have poor memories or they don’t understand how to draw proper parallels. How did the threat of ground invasion topple Milosevic? It didn’t. It may have caused him to withdraw from Kosovo, but even if this threat played an outside role in his decision, he certainly didn’t step down for more than a year—and only then when he lost an election. So even if the parallel was valid, all we could conclude is that the threat of ground troops would guarantee that Qaddafi agree to partitioning his country. If that’s what Mr. Hirsh means, well then let’s talk about that—is it worth potentially putting our soldiers’ lives on the line to partition a north African country.

The way this reasoning is both muddled and ahistorical… you really can’t get a more textbook example of mission creep if you tried.