Congressman Peter Welch (D-VT) has written a letter to Barack Obama asking him to ensure that the oil-rich nation of Libya reimburses the United States for its significant role in the NATO operation to remove Gaddafi.

I couldn’t agree more, and in fact myself and other conservatives have said the same thing. We’ll intervene with our military resources, sure. Just so long as American lives aren’t necessarily at stake. But we’ll need reimbursement upon mission completion.

Libya is not a poor country, and reports today indicate Gaddafi may have been hoarding as much as $200 billion — with a “b” — in private accounts. The intervention, which had no bearing on American national security, cost us upwards of about $2 billion. We didn’t have that money but we intervened anyway.

So now it’s time for reimbursement. The oil-rich country with its recently-deposed mega-billionaire dictator can fork over some cash to help with the bills. Especially since we had no national security interest in the operation from the beginning, and in fact we were fighting alongside people who hate us in order to depose a dictator who was fighting Al Qaeda.

Pay up.