I fully embrace my bleeding heart liberalism with what I believe should be a non-controversial statement that all human beings have a right to live unoppressed and without fear of brutalization from their government. And while I don't particularly like the American Exceptionalism notion of being the police officer to the world, I do believe that if we can help the citizens of any country from starving or being disappeared by their government, that we have a moral responsibility as members of the human race to help.

That said, what has always troubled me about the decision to go into Libya is how disingenuous the arguments have been to justify it. There is no question that Qaddafi is a crackpot. It is also indisputable that the Libyans have been oppressed. But I can also say the same about at least a half dozen other countries. Why are we intervening in Libya and ignoring the plights of people in the Ivory Coast, Yemen, Nigeria, Bahrain, Tunisia, Syria, Guatamala, Myanmar, Ghana and on and on?

On the Meet the Press roundtable panel, Ted Koppel brings up the $64,000 question: Why Libya? Why now? And as Savannah Guthrie points out, the Obama administration really hasn't come up with a coherent answer for that.

MR. GREGORY: We've just heard this discussion, particularly the secretary of Defense saying that this campaign in Libya is not in America's vital interest. Questions laid out by Senator Lugar and criticism. Pretty high stakes for the president, who's about to address the nation about it all.

MR. TED KOPPEL: Yes, and I don't think he's going to be able to answer the central question. You asked the right question in talking about the, the national interest. The question hasn't yet been answered as to why it is that Libya, of all countries in that region, has won the humanitarian defense sweepstakes of 2011. We have seen many countries, both in that region and throughout the world, where civilian loss and civilian suffering has been much, much greater. Congo for the past 12 years, we've lost about five million people. Sudan, three million people, never any talk of military intervention. Take a look at what's going on in the Ivory Coast today. Secretary Clinton was talking about the number of refugees that might have come out of a Gadhafi attack on Benghazi. You've got 700,000 refugees in the Ivory Coast right now--close to a million, in fact. Why, why Libya? Hasn't been answered.

MR. GREGORY: Do you think, Savannah Guthrie, that the president will make the case that in many ways this was a message being sent to the rest of the Arab world, particularly the Persian Gulf, where they'd like to see more reforms more quickly after the Saudis put troops into Bahrain, that they felt that they had to take a stand here?

MS. SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: I think they felt they had to take a stand because, as senior aides will say to you, you have to put this in the context of the Arab Spring. When you look at Libya, you have to be looking at what happens to--what's going on with its neighbors. In fact, this week in South America, I asked the president point-blank, what is the national security interest of the U.S. in Libya? And he cited Egypt, Tunisia, unrest in the region. So the president's going to have to put it in that context.

What's so fascinating about his rhetoric, though, is while he's saying, "We need to do this, the U.S. will take this military action," you can see the subtext is clearly his own reluctance to do so. It's not the normal commander in chief fare, "Our cause is just, our cause is righteous. We'll see it through to the end." Instead, you hear him saying, "We'll be in and out. It's going to be limited in duration. We won't be the ones enforcing the no-fly zone. It's not going to be our ships enforcing the arms embargo." So you kind of see that reluctance shot through his rhetoric.

Unfortunately, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates isn't helping either:

Sorry, Sec. Gates and Clinton, with so much focus on austerity measures for American citizens because of budget shortfalls, spending the billions it will cost to protect European countries' vital interests just doesn't fly.

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Michael Steele went on MSNBC this morning before the health-care summit and began attacking President Obama for a "dog and pony show" -- and claimed that the president should have held this summit a year ago, when things were just getting started.

The problem with this: Obama did. On March 5 of last year. Fully televised. All that.

Republicans were so busy back then concocting plans to scuttle ANY health-care reform, though, that it kinda slipped their minds.

Kudos to Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie for calling him out for it:

STEELE: This whole dog and pony show that we're about to witness today is something that should have taken place a year ago, when the administration first came in last February and laid out its agenda for health care. This is how you should have started it - bipartisan, public forum, CSPAN, your cameras rolling to capture this and to capture, most importantly, what the American people want. And right now, they want us to start over, and I think we should.

TODD: Chairman Steele, in fairness to them, I mean, it was a year ago that they actually had a summit.

GUTHRIE: On March 5th.

TODD: And it wasn't just the legislative leaders. They brought in folks from the industry as well. And that one was televised. So...does that one not count? I'm just curious.

STEELE: Well, apparently it didn't. Because we don't have health care.

You know, you really can't blame Republicans for wanting to fire Steele as the RNC chair, when the level of incompetence is this deep.

But we progressives hope he sticks around, just for the comic relief.