One of my first blog posts here described my own modest part as spokesperson for British policy on the night Ronald Reagan bombed Col Gaddafi back in 1986:

As news of the attacks broke, the FCO switchboard was soon swamped with callers calling to express in vigorous terms their indignation and anger at this turn of events. I spent hours politely thanking them each for their calls and urging them to contact their MPs or otherwise make their concerns known to the Government in a rather more systematic way.

Maybe I had lacked imagination previously, but this episode brought home to me for the first time that in my own rather limited and indirect way I was a non-trivial part of (and as it turned out some sort of spokesman for) an elaborate process which had led to some people far away dying violently.

That a diplomatic service career sometimes involved grim moral dilemmas. And that if that was not what I was ready to face in a job, I should get another one…

Diplomacy reaches Limits. Above all the limit of dealing with Bad Leaders who build up enough domestic power to be able with impunity to wreck their own countries and export disorder elsewhere, and who are just not open to any sort of normal fair-minded arguments.

Going after Bad Leaders in the Reagan way may not be popular. But are the alternatives really so much better in the longer run?

As we are now seeing, in 1986 the idea of worrying about Gaddafi in 2011 would have seemed like a very long run indeed.

Yet here we are.

How will our Libya moves now look in 2036, a mere 25 years (1300 weeks) from now?