robert malley, how much time are we talking about? >> who knows? really. the general knows far better than i. these things are much easier to get into than get out of. it may drag on longer than we want. it comes to the question you asked at the beginning. is this about protecting benghazi and the civilians there or is it going to end up being more much? as the general said if tomorrow the rebels counterattack and qaddafi forces an attack on the counterattackers what does it mean for us? do we then go africa daffy's forces because he fought back? this could get quite complicated. the first question you asked was this the right mission? was it worth it? of course if it ends up saving the civilians of benghazi people will look back and say it was the right thing to do. in the meantime we should be worrying about all the things that could go wrong and making sure they don't. >> ifill: thank you both very much. >> thank you. >> ma'am. >> lehrer: still to come on the newshour, changes to egypt's constitution; anti-government protests in yemen; brzezinski and sc

. >> simon: and then a conversation with middle east observers, rashid khalidi, robert malley, mohamad bazzi, and andrew tabler. >> i think the one message-- and it's not the u.s., it's anyone who could speak to the syrians-- is to say the threshold not to be crossed is the use of indiscriminate violence against peaceful protesters. that's the threshold. we can be very disappointed about the lack of reform and that's a judgment the syrian people are going to have to make but in terms of the use of force against peaceful protesters, that's when i speak about kinsy and that i think should be the message. >> i agree. >> simon: we conclude with a conversation charlie taped recently with linda wells, the editor in chief of "allure" magazine. >> to do the magazine in the last 20 years is better than if we picked any other time-- not that we could have-- if we pick any other time in the past 20 years. more has chked now in the past 20 years, in terms of products, attitudes, in terms of the visual name of our culture and in terms of the acceptance of beauty and in terms of all the controversy

. >> warner: and for that, we turn to robert malley, former director for near east affairs at the national security council in the clinton administration. he now heads the mid east-north africa program at the international crisis group. and michael singh, who held the same n.s.c. post in the george w. bush administration. he's now a visiting fellow at the washington institute for near east policy. welcome to you both. beginning with you, arms embargo. asset freezes. travel bans. what do you make of the international response so far? >> two things. first if you compare the international responses to others in the past it has been extraordinarily quick. that may not feel very good if you're sitting in tripoli and you have to enjoy the continued rule of qaddafi. from a comparative perspective it's been extraordinarily rapid. in part that's because ka qaddafi himself has very few friends. he is now paying the price for alienating his friends. and also because this administration in particular had staff who feel very strongly about this. the president himself and some who work for him and see i