I really don’t care at all what Iran and North Korea think of NATO’s military capabilities. Neither of them want to tangle with us regardless of how silly we look in Libya. But the rest of Leslie Gelb’s analysis is correct. We’re up a creek without a paddle and have no solution for getting rid of Gaddafi so long as we refuse to do the fighting ourselves. This is what I said was likely to happen. This is why I said we should not get involved despite the looming decimation of the democracy movement in Libya.
Gelb details why none of our strategies are going to work. But it boils down to one thing. The rebels are not a military force and they don’t have the ability to take over Tripoli and force Gaddafi from power. It should be added to this that the rebels are not all democrats, either, as many of them appear to be radicalized Islamists. After Gelb exhausts all other viable options, he gets to the point of what we’re actually going to do.
Thus, the option of significantly escalating air attacks doesn’t look at all likely. More likely on the military front: The West and Arab states will step up their secret deliveries of arms to the rebels, along with a bigger supply of “covert” trainers. Even this kind of arms aid will be limited, because Western leaders remain uncertain and uneasy about who many of the rebels really are—specifically whether they contain a large component of al Qaeda people. In sum, the military option offers only a long-shot hope of eliminating Gaddafi, and thus little relief for the West’s credibility problem.
Again, Gelb is obsessed with our “credibility.” I care very little about that in this context. What I care about is that arming and training the rebels is a “long-shot” to eliminate Gaddafi but a “slam-dunk” to ruin Libyan society.
I’ll keep saying it. It isn’t humanitarian to turn Libya into a war-torn hellscape just to maintain the fiction that we don’t have boots on the ground.
Hey, BooMan. Clap louder. That’s the advice you give to those of us to your left. Can’t criticize Democrats, after all. Odd that you’re not clapping louder now.
Oh, wait. Hypocritical. That’s what I meant.
Why do people like you post comments like these? If you want to post like this, head over the FDL. I come here despite disagreeing with BooMan on a lot of things because of the thoughtful commentary. This is boring.
Hey, Tom.
Think about what you’re saying. You’re saying that I argue that we can’t criticize Democrats in a post where I harshly criticize the president, and then you criticize me for criticizing the president when your point is that I don’t criticize him enough.
That’s not hypocrisy on your part, but it is disjointed to say the least.
One of the odder things I encounter is selective reading. So, in a month where I wrote about 18 anti-Libyan intervention diaries, I was told that all I do is cheerlead for the president.
I think if you care to look in the archives that I have criticized the president on almost every single issue that the rest of the blogosphere has criticized him, with only a handful of exceptions.
Exceptions that come to mind are:
Defending Geithner’s Plan as something that could get our money back, and not as a simple handout to the banks (related: defended not nationalizing the banks).
Not blaming Obama for the failure to close Gitmo (related, not having normal trials in normal courts)
And defending his approach to getting the health care bill passed (overall, not in every detail).
Areas where I have criticized the president:
Hiring Bob Gates (so far, most of my concerns have not materialized)
Escalating in Afghanistan
Failing to hold Bush administration officials accountable
Failing to restore our civil liberties to pre-Bush status
Intervening in Libya
I also called for Geithner to step down over a year ago now.
And I’d like to know how many commenters here think I discourage people from speaking freely.
it seems sometimes that the west is trying to keep khaddaffi in power, giving him time (after years of training and armaments sales) to dig in and now oops hitting places that we shouldn’t.
if for some reason khaddaffi does go down, the west can say ‘we did it, we were on the side of the angels’…
colour me paranoid about the west’s true intentions.
Any suggestion that you limit or even discourage views discordant with your own is absolute nonsense.
Your “criticisms” of Obama, however, have been very weak tea. Overall, you have been a constant cheerleader for this White House and they don’t deserve it.
That’s fine. You’re entitled to your opinion. I am much less concerned about this administration’s shortcomings than its opposition’s pathologies. That’s true. I have often found your criticisms of me, and of the administration to unduly harsh, but that’s just my opinion.
about the seriousness of the opposition’s pathologies and that’s what makes me so distressed about the weaknesses of this administration.
You and I are very much on the same team – I just have a lot less faith in our leadership.
whatever you think about Booman’s opinions on other issues, he’s been 100% consistent on this one, and 100% correct.
I know that there’s this treaty against assassinating heads of state, but don’t we have friends/surrogates who can get the job done?
I love it when I see American progressives advocating foreign policy by murder.
The one thing I don’t understand is why the urgency to protect Benghazi wasn’t then transferred to Misrata? That city’s in hell right now, and NATO has taken a shockingly laid back approach, with far more attention dedicated to the east.
Is it really that much harder a lift tactically in terms of preventing civilian casualties? Or is it because less is known about the Misrata rebels, so that lack of familiarity and coordination is hampering efforts?
Logistics is a huge issue in Misurata. There is overland access to Benghazi from Egypt. Misurata is between Tripoli and Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte, which is heavily fortified. Going overland would be difficult.
If you have a no-fly zone, you can’t exactly fly in relief supplies. So stuff has to come in by ship. And the port has only been secure enough for that to happen and to evacuate the wounded for about a week.
Indeed there were about three weeks that went by in which the only news out of Misurata was phone calls to al-Jazeera by one of the doctors in the hospital.
Another issue is that the dawdling done by the UN Security Council in passing resolution 1973 (and admittedly it did get through in a expedited fashion) allowed Gaddafi’s troops to place tanks and artillery emplacements in civilian areas throughout the city. NATO has only been able to hit those in areas that are known to be evacuated of civilians and those on the outskirts of the city.
It’s not a matter of trust, but the physical communications equipment and the means of powering it that has been the difficulty, according to most reports.
No one knows what NATO has done in Misurata because journalist first arrived there today in helmets and body armor. What was know before was the messages for help and a number of You Tubes that somehow were carried out.
Isn’t there an agreement with the Libyan government to bring aid to Misurata?
The Brits are going to send advisors. The lack of ability for the rebels to communicate with NATO is a serious problem. This is not boots on the ground.
Gadaffi has a lot of money in country and has who knows how many hired soldiers working for hi. It was never going to be easy to do this and killing Gadaffi would open the door for someone to kill our president. Funny how people in the US don’t think of that.
If you mean the Gaddafi government, there’s an oxymoron. If there is, it’s just like the Gaddafi regime’s agreement to a ceasefire.
Sea-delivered aid is getting in and the injured are being evacuated, but the foreign guest workers are not yet being evacuated and there is no indication that their home countries have an interest in repatriating them. Hope that changes.
US executive order prohibits assassination of foreign heads of state by US personnel. I do believe that law was introduced after the disclosures of the Church commission of attempts on the life of Fidel Castro, a topic that raised a flurry of interesting speculation about the assassination of President Kennedy.
Sometimes, the quickest solution is not necessary the wisest.
I heard it on Bloomberg news early this a.m. Maybe the Gadaffi forces won’t attack the people giving help. I don’t know if they’ve gone in yet. I think this is different than the effort going on now. I’ll try to find out tomorrow. In a way, there is a government in Libya. It’s hard to tell what’s going on because there aren’t a lot of reporters able to report from there.
I am not fond of anyone saying we should murder a foreign leader. It gives me the chills.
Thanks for the reminder about Church commission finding. Forgot about it.
The rebels want to put Gadaffi on trial.
This has only been a month and that’s not long when people are trying to overthrow their government.
Glad there wasn’t cable tv during the War of Independence.
“US executive order prohibits assassination of foreign heads of state by US personnel.“
But American “progressives” are creative, so they advocate hiring foreign hit men to do it instead. After all, outsourcing is in. Bad news for American hit men.
Whenever I hear something about “credibility” in the context of a foreign intervention, it brings back dim echoes of the rhetoric around the Vietnam war: we can’t just pull out, or the US would lose “credibility”.
Well, that turned out to have about as much validity as the Domino Theory. Too bad about the ChiComs taking over Australia and banning capitalism throughout the Asia/Pacific region, at least now we know what’s at stake!
I think you’re right on target, Booman, sad to say.
Significantly escalating air attacks? Presumably Leslie Gelb has a target list that NATO has overlooked. And presumably that target list complies with the UN Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone and protection of civilians. Or is he as enamored of “shock and awe” now as he was in 2003?
One wishes these establishment “experts” would pay attention to what is going on before they pontificate. (1) There have been few “secret” deliveries of arms and no credible report of “secret” trainers. The media in Benghazi have swarmed between there and the Egyptian border looking for them. (2) The rebels in Benghazi can export oil through Tobruk and have already shipped $100 million worth. (3) New arms are appearing presumably bought with those proceeds and facilitated by Qatar selling the oil on the global market. (4) Training is facilitated by using weapons currently in the Libyan arsenal, primary Russian but a small number of French arms acquired since 2007; Libyan has had a requirement for universal military training. There should be little need to train on weapons; training in battlefield discipline and tactics is a different matter. But the rub there is that the experienced soldiers among the rebels can’t train and command at the same time. Expect some trainers (probably openly) from some Gulf Arab states.
This is a Village canard based on (1) the number of Libyans captured in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo and (2) allegations by Muammar Gaddafi in his speeches. Western press are swarming all over Benghazi; there have been no al Quaeda sightings there that I know of being reported.
Translation: The military option offers only a long-shot hope of the West getting the credit for eliminating Gaddafi.
And what is the credibility problem that Mr. Gung-Ho Gelb thinks the West has in this situation.
If there were half as much hand-wringing from these guys when Bush decided that al Quaeda was a military, not a criminal justice problem, and when we just had to get rid of Saddam Hussein, we would not have lost 4000-5000 troops.
And I’ll keep saying it. If Libya is turned into a war-torn hellscape, it will be mostly because of Gaddafi’s saturation shelling of rebel-held cities (well those are the only ones we currently know about).
Boots on the ground complicate things immensely. Instead of just defending civilians, you have to also defend your own boots on the ground. And the moment that there are Western boots on the ground in Libya in a significant way, the rebels and the Gaddafi regime get united–to drive out the occupiers.
There is only one meaning to “credibility” in national security terms–when you threaten military action, the person receiving the threat considered it serious enough to deter his military action. The credibility gap in this situation is with the UN Security Council. Over 66 years, it has not developed the credibility to have a head of state behave without creating an implementing force of Blue Helmets or some other coalition.
The fact that you have civilian authorities running the administration in Benghazi and have an open political process creating policy is more than was present in either Afghanistan or Iraq when the US toppled a regime.
There is nothing about what is going on the Middle East right now, even Tunisia or Egypt, that is a “slam-dunk” and no one should expect it to be. The successor government in Libya is a whole lot clearer than the successor government in, say, Bahrain or Yemen.
I interpret a lot of the Village anxieties as having to do with Barack Obama and with the notion that the US is not going in there gangbusters with flags waving (although our military did bigfoot the PR when it started, which is why the US had to dial it back). Tell me the last battlefield briefing you have seen since the US turned it over to NATO. And the last time you were told that this is a “representation” of Gaddafi’s air defense system at [location]. Talk about a briefer haunted by the ghost of Colin Powell! I’m glad the US does not have prime authority on this mission.
Decision: the ghost of Rawanda. The conventional wisdom has become that we should have done “something” to stop the massacre there. If you push the thread, some of this goes back to our failure in WW2 to bomb the death camps. Again, you will often read that we should have done “something”. It is hard at one level to argue against this: what person of good intentions wouldn’t want these horrors stopped.
Now in our current context this “something”, to be clear, means air power. This is because air power means little or no US casualties, which in turns means that there is little chance that this will became a major US political issue. When the body bags start coming home, the desire to do “something” becomes completely inadequate, and the country wants to know why the hell we are there.
So we are doing “something” here. It is mostly just our good intentions.
The same thinking has run through US Policy since Vietnam: if we just show up, we think, the opposition will turn tail and run out of fear. But the truth is that often the opposition doesn’t just turn tail in part because in places like Iraq or Libya is not obvious that there is a place they can run to, and in part because they are paid pretty well.
Now sometimes air power works (see Bosnia), but usually it isn’t enough by itself.
We always seem completely shocked when they don’t just surrender, and seldom have a plan B for that eventuality. Moreover, once US credibility is put at risk, the option of just doing “something” goes away. What starts as our good intentions inevitably brings into focus issues like US credibility in the World. Are we really going to let Gaddafi win? What will our allies think?
And yet if what results is a bloody stalemate, you can argue you have made the situation worse.
So what begins as the need to do “something” ends in either failure (Sudan) or an escalation well beyond anything initially contemplated. In fact, that is precisely what Obama needs to do here. The Europeans aren’t going to do it – this was about their good intentions too. Either commit the forces to win overwhelmingly, or admit that we failed.
This was not a well thought out policy, though I believe it was done with the best intentions.
But in the real world good intentions aren’t enough.
One because I think after a month it is too early to declare this a quagmire and an unsolveable problem and two because you tend to focus on only the news out there that is re-inforcing your viewpoint. For example the opposition forces have managed to set up a political entity that could grow into a legitimiate successor to Qadaffi. They have also managed to enact some trade with Qatar.
I also think your analysis is incomplete because you don’t discuss where this situation would be and what the UN and US reputation in the middle east would be if we refused intervention. I mean how would the tenuous movements in Tunisia and Egypt handle thousands of refugees pouring into their countries. What about fragile European economies.
have radicalized Islams in them. Those pushing for reform in Egypt did. Same with Tunisia. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t support those pushing for freedom because a few actually want the respective country to become another Iran. It just means that we have to realize that we may not agree with the ideals of every protester out there.
If you recall that was one of the reasons people were hesitant about Mubarek leaving. What kind of leadership would replace him. It was a valid concern but we were still right to push for change behind the scenes.
The so-called “radical Islams” (sic) who were part of the Egyptian revolution do not want Egypt to become “another Iran”. To the best of my knowledge neither do the so-called “radical Islams” who were part of the Tunisian revolution.
In any case, how the population of another country decides to set up its government is not a valid concern of the United States.
Another question I have is what immediate precedent does Libya serve?
Syria is clearly jumping bad. And if things further escalate, all the math for the Assad regime says to crack down hard. They’ve already killed hundreds, what’s another thousand or so? Because what are the UN and NATO going to do? Open a fourth war front in the Arab world? Where are they going to get the forces and the arms to do so?
But under R2P, why should Syrian lives be worth less than Libyan ones?