Competing with Japan’s earthquake tsunami nuclear crisis, Libya has jumped back to the top of CNN’s “breaking news” with the beginnings of implementation of a UN approved no-fly zone (plus more) authorization. The UN resolution came not that long after the Arab League had agreed to support that no-fly zone, apparently giving Russia and China the diplomatic cover to merely abstain and not veto the UN Security Council resolution. Surely this was the culmination of a great deal of collaboration, coordination and compromise between the administrations of key countries around the world.

But it was also a source of significant criticism from both progressives and conservatives in this country that were hoping the US would have acted more quickly and decisively. I find it interesting what may lie behind those criticisms, and what the more cautious and deliberate action by the US may be indicating in terms of the greater human transition from patriarchy to partnership, from hierarchies of control to more of a circle of equals.

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