My point was primarily to look at the political dynamics of the conflict. Yes there are plenty of other reasons not to get involved. Western governments don't like Qadafi for a number of reasons, but his role in the Lockerbie bombing is the obvious one that comes up. Qadafi's problem is primarily a lack of friends and allies internationally. However I do not think that even with this form of intervention that it will cause him to lose control of Libya. What we will see instead is a protracted civil war.

"Western governments don't like Qadafi for a number of reasons," but those reasons have not been significant enough during the past, say, twenty years to seriously do anything about the guy. Again, that's because regardless of all of the bad things any single nation could say about the Gadfly is that, so far as "leading" Libya's various tribal factions, he's been effective. My central point -- and I think you'd agree, we both may be circling this from different perspectives -- is that there is a tremendous likelihood that whoever comes next (if we assume that the current campaign could lead to his eventual ouster) is extremely plausible to be just as bad if not worse than the Gadfly.  He has plenty of friends and associates internationally if we're considering terrorist organizations that would be only too happy to take up, by proxy, any anti-Western campaign he'd want to see waged against either Europe or the United States, by extension.  The truth is that any who support him -- at this time -- are probably not wanting their names known because we'd be seeing how many terrorist organizations strongly support what he presently stands for.  This is precisely why Obama (and quite probably the U.N.) wanted the man cut off from his money; this way, we could limit his ability to wage legitimate or illegitimate (terrorism) war by paying surrogates to do his bidding.  I think you may slightly underestimate the Gadfly's potential influence in the Muslim part of the world; there are plenty of organizations willing to take up this rogue's cause -- just read any of STRATFOR's latest releases regarding Gadfly's sway in the Middle East.  It's just none of them come cheap.

That said, I agree with you entirely is that what we're bound to see is some kind of protracted civil war.  Libya is overrun with various tribal factions, and -- as we're seeing to some extent playing out in the situation regarding Yemen and Saudi Arabia -- these factions are bound to always remain in conflict.  They are, simply, far older than we (in the Western world) can seriously imagine.  These kinds of strife and animosity run very deep, and that's why I'd argue that the greatest possible risk associated to the U.S. and NATO's involvement with respect to Libya is, "What happens after the Gadfly is gone?"  I think the resulting 'devil' may be greater than the 'devil' we're currently trying to control.

Lockerbie remains a bit of a mystery to me.  The Gadfly's role in it is pretty clear if you look at the evidence, but I think that using this reason to justify the current conflict is a bit of a farce because we're talking about something that's over two decades old.  I think the U.S. loses a lot of "street cred" with some of our international players when we agreed to jump aboard this "humanitarian not-war" by citing our right to defend ourselves against something that happened so long ago, especially given the fact that the Gadfly's largely been seen as a "soft ally" during the War on Terror.  If Lockerbie ever needed to be dealt with, then it needed to be dealt with 15 years ago.  Citing it now just seems like, "Well, we really didn't have any other reason -- besides not liking the man -- to go after Qadafi today with our international partners BUT he did kill some U.S. citizens two decades ago, so what the hell, we're in!"

However, I think you're still making solid points.  I just don't always agree with the analysis. I do agree with your conclusion -- that we're not getting out of this either (a) quickly or (b) cleanly.  There just ain't no way.  Not gonna happen.