The Coming Intervention

Are we getting in deeper?

Only the French intervention in its former colony has turned the tide in the battle for control of Mali, which shares its border with seven fragile African states that could easily be threatened if Mali fails to defeat its Islamic militants. Many of these fighters were once mercenaries in the pay of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. When Gadhafi's regime was toppled in a popular uprising that received significant military and financial assistance from a U.S.-led coalition, they returned to Mali, heavily armed and champing at the bit to overrun its American-backed government.

Though France has blunted that effort, it doesn't have the military resources to sustain its fight against Mali's jihadists without help from the U.S. military. For now, that amounts to the use of giant transport planes to ferry French troops into Mali, and planes to refuel French combat aircrafts that are pummeling the militants' positions.

As history has shown, such things tend to escalate...