And neither do some in the Pentagon and CENTCOM, as well as the Whitehouse.
This is totally different then say the no fly zone the US performed over northern Iraq many years back to keep the Butcher's planes from bombing the Kurds, and dropping canisters of nerve gas on them.
It will be a very involved operation. I assume you understand how air strikes are called in etc.. Lots of people on the ground. This is nothing like the US and Brits performed in Iraq. You and we had everything in place on the ground.
And perhaps the US is becoming tired of providing it's battle carrier groups to every little piss pot area of the oceans to perform some given task. It is an extremely expensive proposition.
Is Britain and France willing to put their carrier(s) into action on a Libyan around the clock no fly zone.
I assume again you followed the nfz carried out in northern Iraq during the GHB years. Average total flight time per day. Well it was around 6 hours per day.
With no on the ground targeting personnel.
This one is a totally different type of dog.
British PM Cameron has been doing the rounds of the European powers trying to build concensus for a "no-fly zone" policy. In other words, this is a European plan. My take is they are perfectly willing to do this without the US. But to reiterate, none of them will move without (at least) a nod from the US authorities. The last time Britain and France unilaterally intervened in the Middle East it didnt work well. Neither of them will risk a repeat of the Suez fiasco.
It's much harder for the Euros to implement such a thing of course, as none of them have anything like US carrier battlegroups and airbases are short in the area. I would presume neither Tunisia or Egypt will allow use of their airbases, or even airspaces. We could use the British bases on Malta but that would involve a lot of in flight refueling if anything like round the clock coverage can be achieved. And as you say, it would be an expensive business. Especially as the Libyans will shoot back.