Time for Your Libya Speech, Mr. President

Peggy Noonan is among those scratching their heads over the US decision to flex its muscle in Libya, and she'd like help figuring it out ... from President Obama himself. "I cannot for the life of me see how an American president can launch a serious military action without a full and formal national address in which he explains to the American people why he is doing what he is doing, why it is right, and why it is very much in the national interest," she writes in the Wall Street Journal.

Noonan spends most of the column raising question and after question about the intervention and sounds very skeptical about its chances of ending well. All the more reason for Obama to personally make his case. "He has to sit at that big desk and explain his thinking, put forward the facts as he sees them, and try to garner public support," she writes. "It's what presidents do!" (Politico says Obama is purposely avoiding such a big speech because he doesn't want to equate the Libya action with larger wars. Click for the latest developments in the fighting.)