The projection of America’s abundant soft power is still wholly inadequate. Tally the scorecard in Afghanistan – you’ll see the consequence of our inadequacy in misspent treasure and tragic human sacrifice. When we fail with our soft power, we rely more heavily on hard power to achieve our goals, placing an undue, and unfair, burden on our armed forces.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates acknowledged Sunday that the unrest in Libya did not pose an immediate threat to the United States. Even so, he and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Obama administration was justified in taking military action.