This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, March 30, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The President offered cold comfort in his speech on Libya failing to justify his actions

based on U.S. security.

Chris Preble, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, offers a glimpse of what the president should have said,

questions what precedence this might set for future uses of the US military?

For you to have been satisfied with the president's speech,

what did he need to come prepared to say?

What did he need to articulate?

Well, to be perfectly, Frank, I would have been satisfied

if he said, I made a horrible mistake.

I'm sorry, I won't do that again, which is to say send

U.S. military personnel and launch military action from U.S. planes and Ships on a mission that had no tangible connection to U.S. national

security. He obviously wasn't going to do that. I would have been at least

mollified if he had attempted to explain the military mission,

if he had clarified the end state and therefore put some parameters around the likely costs and most importantly if he had

explained why what it was about this particular intervention that made it

unique and and not a precedent for future action.

He didn't do that on any of those three counts.

First of all, he attempted last night to claim there is a national interest at stake, but the national interest is not a security interest, it is a moral interest, which presumably applies not just to the United States, but to all of of humanity when there is the risk of great harm

to civilians that not just the United States but all countries should feel an obligation to act.

As a practical matter, it doesn't work that way at all.

...