Ask someone to name a country or region the United States has dealt with since shortly after the… Ask someone to name a country or region the United States has dealt with since shortly after the signing of the Constitution, and you’ll likely get in reply the usual suspects of Britain and France, with the occasional history whiz also mentioning Spain. Few will mention Libya. And yet arguably the first overseas war the United States ever fought was in what is now Libya.

The Tripolitan War, also known as the First Barbary War, was fought from 1801 to 1805. The tiny U.S. Navy was deployed against the Barbary Pirates, who had routinely harassed foreign shipping and demanded ransom money from Americans. Now, 206 years later, we find ourselves back outside Tripoli under different circumstances, with a mission that is much less clear than was the defeat of pirates.

The United States, along with numerous other countries under the aegis of U.N. Resolution 1973, is currently involved in military action over Libya. But we don’t know what form that action is supposed to take. The U.N. resolution merely authorizes “all necessary measures” to protect the civilian population of Libya, without any occupation by troops. The Arab League, however, whose support for the U.N. resolution was seen as politically critical, is complaining that the U.S. and allied militaries are actually dropping bombs.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is saying that the tyrant who has ruled Libya for 42 years, the inexplicably under-ranked Col. Moammar Gadhafi, has to go — a view echoed by the French. So as the missiles fly, there is disagreement as to what it is we are supposed to be doing.

Is our military trying to help the rebels win? Are we hoping to get lucky and kill Gadhafi, a move which has been frowned upon ever since Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11905 in 1976, banning political assassination? Are we just trying to prevent civilian casualties? Or are we simply trying to enforce a no-fly zone?

We cannot even begin to think about raising the “Mission Accomplished” banner until we know what the mission is.

Even worse than not knowing our purpose is not knowing who is in charge of defining it. Although NATO has assumed command in Libya, at least two key members of the organization, Turkey and Germany, are less than enthusiastic about the change in command. Meanwhile, the small but politically-crucial military contingents of Arab League members such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar couldn’t fall under NATO control unless the governments of those nations explicitly allowed them to. The most obvious leader in a case like this is the U.S., but President Obama is desperately trying to avoid having the U.S. even look like it’s in charge.

So to summarize, there is a varied group of countries trying to achieve different, undefined objectives at the same time, while doing so together and cooperatively. There aren’t good arrangements for assuring cooperation, and none whatsoever for resolving the conflicts between different aims. One of the countries that has been shouting for military action, the U.S., is now trying to stay just close enough to the action to get credit if things go right, but far enough away to avoid censure for anything bad that happens.

Is this not farcical? Is it not sounding awfully like a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, complete with modern major generals?

It would all be comical were it not for the serious stakes involved. My fear is that, despite all our hopes and intentions, we could end up seeing ourselves more deeply entangled in Libya than we would have liked.

The reason for entanglement lies in the answer to a vital question few are asking. What happens if Gadhafi manages a tie with the rebels and remains in power, which is a possible outcome considering the rebels aren’t advancing even with Western support? Well, unless we say we were just kidding about the reason for going to war in Libya in the first place, we will have to continue protecting Libyan civilians.

Leaving Libya now and letting Gadhafi conduct massacres wouldn’t be palatable. This means either we: 1) get rid of Gadhafi ourselves or 2) keep Gadhafi and work to protect his people. The former option means a larger up-front commitment and, very possibly, ground troops. The latter option means long-term involvement that might or might not work. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Gadhafi will be toppled by some sort of palace coup, but considering that this didn’t happen when he was on the ropes in early March, there’s little reason to think it will happen now.

Would the world be better off if Gadhafi were gone? Sure. The guy is a brutal thug who has sponsored terrorism in the past and butchered his own people. But the world is full of people like that, as we are being reminded in Syria, Iran, the Ivory Coast and elsewhere. What we need to do first is decide what exactly our objective is in Libya. Then we have to decide whether that objective is worth escalation of the war. It is highly irresponsible for Obama to pretend the current muddled military situation is a good one, and it is disingenuous at the least to say that we might not get embroiled further.

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