The best possible outcome was that Gaddafi's forces would recoil immediately in the face of Western air supremacy and force a turnover of government.
Unfortunately that's not what happened. So short of miracles, we have two options now: further escalation (we go land) or defeat (of course when we lose, it won't be spun that way).
The general public still has hope that the rebels can go it all the way with Western air support. Can we trust the rebels to win a war? Quite bluntly, no. They have no C2 and they have lawyers and accountants for soldiers. We've spent a decade training the ANA and they still have essentially no capability for directing NATO air on their own, so there is zero chance of that with the Libyans. They'd need SpecOp support at minimum and realistically more like a couple of battalions of marines.
Who would've saw this coming? Quite possibly every milblog network ever. Anyone who actually knew anything about military operations had this kind of mess predicted well before the campaign even began. By all sensible calculations, this war should not have happened.
The public is fickle though. And so is France.
Update 03/29/11: Stavridis testifies that NATO has not ruled out the possibility of ground peacekeeping forces in the future; US Congress is outraged. Shit, since it's a NATO commitment now, is our [Canada's] 3 month withdrawal timeline scrubbed? The US doesn't plan to withdraw any assets from theatre except a 688. Actually, Warthogs and Spookys are giving CAS now, it's like they're not even trying to pretend anymore. An A-10 and P-3 took out 3 Libyan patrol boats. Peculiar. Either we're seeing AirSea Battle concepts permeate in operations or the enemy is just such a piece of 3rd world rubbish that the powers that be decided anything that flies and would lob a 125lb warhead is good enough.
Update 04/02/11: WTF B1-Bs in Libya are they carpet bombing the whole damn place
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