I said that getting involved in a civil war in Libya in support of the weaker side was a for shit idea, and I was right.
AJDABIYA, Libya — Rebel fighters fled this city Sunday after a rocket and artillery attack by government forces that were reportedly on the western outskirts.
Scores of rebel pickup trucks and other vehicles could be seen leaving the eastern approaches of Ajdabiya, headed toward the rebel capital of Benghazi, about 85 miles north. Explosions could be heard in the city.
Their flight seemed to bring to an end a claimed rebel push that had taken them to the outskirts of the oil refinery town of Brega, about another 40 miles further west of Ajdabiya.
Many of the fighters in the vehicles blamed Nato for failing to give them enough support, and also said they had insufficient heavy weapons to match the weaponry of forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
“Where are the NATO forces?” asked Absalam Hamid, who identified himself as a rebel captain. “We don’t know why they didn’t bomb them.”
This is after I had to read yesterday that our European allies are already running out of munitions.
It didn’t take a brain surgeon to foresee that this would probably turn into a giant clusterfuck before it got resolved.
shoulda listened.
Because you never consider the price the UN not intervening and instead letting Qaddafi conduct his version of Darfur.
There are complaints from rebels now. Imagine if the UN stood by while those rebels and their supporters were slaughtered despite the Africa Union asking for intervention.
Really I think it is way too early for I told you so’s. This problem wasn’t going to be solved in a month. If it is next fall and we are still at a stalemate then it might have some merit.
I consider it.
You know what I conclude?
The world might have benefited from an object lesson on the value of U.S. power and what it means when it isn’t at everyone’s beck and call.
That might have had two beneficial outcomes. One, maybe other countries would conclude that they need to spend a little money getting some capabilities. Two, maybe people would learn to value what the U.S. does that’s positive instead of focusing exclusively on our screw-ups.
Would have concluded that the US intervened in Iraq when it wasn’t wanted there but wouldn’t join in a coalition to intervene in Libya when it was wanted there and the hatred in the Arab street would only increase.
I also think that we need to stop making this about just the US. We are one of many partners, partners who have supported us in the past.
First of all, we let the whole UN intervention momentum unfold because we didn’t privately tell the right people that we weren’t getting involved. We encouraged everyone to make it easy for us to intervene, and they did a good job. So, that’s kind of a false argument.
But, secondly, what the world respects about power is its efficacy, hopefully for benevolent ends, but not necessarily. We won no respect in the Bay of Pigs or Vietnam. We’re not winning any respect in Afghanistan.
When we helped out after the huge tsunami in 2004, or we helped out in Haiti after the earthquake, or Pakistan after the floods, we got something tangible back because we were effective. Not so in Somalia. Not so in Beirut. Not so in getting rid of the goddamned Taliban.
It’s not enough to have good motives. You have to be able to accomplish your goals. And you have to actually do good. And you can’t come off looking like impotent morons who are turning a decent country into a war-torn hellscape because we (or our allies) were afraid to go get Gaddafi ourselves and hurt some people’s feelings.
When we act, it has to be in our national interests and we have to do what we set out to do. This is a mess than anyone could have predicted.
Afghanistan or Vietnam. It has been a month. Whatever the outcome is going to be it was never going to be instantaneous.
And while I agree the world respects effectiveness the world, in particular the Arab world, has plenty of reason to fear western ground troops.
This was a situation where they weren’t ideal choices. The choice to intervene or not intervene both came with high risks.
Thank you! It’s been thirty-one days.
The declaration of “clusterfuck” at this stage is profoundly silly. It’s the foreign policy equivalent of the people who declared that trying to repeal DADT through Congress was a fraud doomed to failure, and crowed about how right they’d been proven every time a trial vote was held.
Until it passed, in exactly the timeframe the supporters of the effort said it would.
First let me say that I agreed with Boo’s conclusion from the start, but for very different reasons. That’s past now.
These days, we get this or that bad news about the rebel’s control of the areas of the nation where they have little or no local support (the conflict has an inter-tribal aspect at it’s core). The rebels just aren’t going to be able to hold much of the country without doing things that would lose them most popular and external support, so they forced into cycles of advance and withdrawal. Very quagmire-esque. But not a quagmire…
I would disagree with the hand-wringing interpretation of what is happening on the ground. Obviously things can go completely sour, but I don’t see it happening this time. The rebels would definitely be better off with more help, but their general strategy (even if accidental) will be effective, especially as time wears on. Why? Those heavy weapons of Ghaddahi’s require fuel. Why is that a problem for them? Just look at a map of conrol in relation to a map of oil infrastructure (even this out dated one):
http://www.businessinsider.com/map-of-the-day-libyan-oil-infrastructure-2011-2
While the above map is old (even if it was from this morning!), one can quickly see how easy it is for the rebels to maintain what is essentially a ‘seige’ in the old sense of cutting off the ‘castle’ from supplies and essentially waiting for the King’s weapons of war to fail, if not their populace’s will to run out of stuff. The rebels have the ability to import as well as export (a little) oil products. This will keep them in the fight longer and if they are patient, will bring them victory. Especially if they avoid committing atrocity along the way.
Great comment.
It’s like no one has ever read anything about how wars in Libya work.
OMG, one side made a big territorial gain and the other withdrew! I guess that’s that, then.
OMG, now the other side has retaken the territory it lost! Stalemate, quagmire!
I considered it, and my conclusion was that a prolonged civil war kills more people.
Moreover, do you know why we’ve never done a No Fly Zone over Darfur? Because despite talking about — Biden’s long been a proponent of it — we know that it won’t solve anything.
I’m not saying that your comparison was to be interpreted that way, but it is what it is.
Let’s be honest.
A prolonged civil war doesn’t just kill more people. It destroys infrastructure. It costs more money, for everybody. It creates orphans and the institutions to care for them. It creates real lasting enmity. It turns a generation of kids into damaged veterans.
And why are we doing this this way?
We have boots on the ground. We have wings in the air. Who are we kidding? We are going to arm these kids to kill each other because we want to pretend we’re not physically in and above the country?
That’s unacceptable. I understand the desire to do things under the cloak of international law and consensus, but not at this cost.
We should have stayed out of it.
Then the consensus would be to consign folks to slaughter.
You made me quote Rush and I’m ashamed to do it out of context (and not just a bit), but here goes:
“..If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill..”
The decision to create a no fly zone certainly satisfies most requirements of ‘Just War’. Perhaps all that is mitigated by the obvious desire to maintain access to Libyan resources, but perhaps not.
Here is a bit on Just War Theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_War#Criteria_of_Just_War_theory
I don’t believe in war, but if you are going to do it, this is actually what a Just War probably looks like.
For the record, Michael Walzer opposed intervening.
And I agree with him and anyone else who would use Just War Theory or any other one to halt or reverse our continuous expansion of violent activities, but I don’t think that he is the type to seek out all just war opportunities in order to fight them, which is refreshing to say the least.
If you take the theory in a fundamentalist sense, there is almost no war that could satisfy it. I have absolutely no problem with that. There are too many intertwining motivations in any war, many which only arise after war starts.
However, this one is probably as close as we (the USA) will get, even if oil was in fact the ultimate, and perhaps morally mitigating motivation. That’s pretty sad in it’s own way, but there it is.
I think the oil is a giant distraction. For Europe, at least, and maybe for the whole world, their self-interest in their employment level and their quality of life is sufficient to justify squashing a bug like Gaddafi who threatens them through his inhumanity to his own people. So, if there is some selfish reason to be humanitarian, all the more reason to be humanitarian.
If you haven’t noticed, and I’m sure that you have, my argument has been heavily weighted by my opinion that it isn’t humanitarian to create or promote a prolonged and possibly inconclusive Civil War.
That’s not my whole point, but it’s close to it.
Unfortunately, once you start down the path of war, there is no knowing what would have happened if you did not. My presumption is that you are right. However, the idea that we created or prolonged the war is not knowable or not true. Because of the ethnic aspect and the Colonel’s own words and actions, it was unlikely that we would have limited his response to insurgency in any fashion or after any duration. Besides the oil thing, that is something the Europeans could not have watched unfold on their doorstep. If there is evidence of Euro-American promotion of the initial insurgency, then everything changes.
What we’ll soon see is evidence of a loss of ‘proportionality’, meaning the number of bleeding and parent-less children will begin to out-weight the intervention’s ‘justness’. However, I don’t think we’ll see a rebel ‘loss’ and what appears to stalemate is actually siege and will eventually (at great cost) bring down the Colonel.
Imagine the construct.
When an insane leader in another part of the world decides to punish those who challenge his power, you and me get to decide whether WE will consign those rebels to slaughter.
You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever known.
Why don’t you tell me how that works out logically.
I know there is a logic to it. I don’t dismiss the logic. But I want to see it argued rigorously.
Isn’t that exactly the same logic employed by Alan Grayson when he said that the Republicans’ plan for sick people was “Die faster?”
You applauded him for that, and you’re right to do so.
I can’t believe someone on the left would seriously argue that stepping over the homeless guy on a freezing night isn’t an act that has a moral component.
I didn’t exactly applaud him for it. I said he was reckless and he was needlessly jeopardizing his seat.
I stand corrected.
Hats off to you – you are the first person I’ve found, outside of the libertarian swamp, who has been consistent on the point.
A modern koan: when is a war that’s lasted 31 days “prolonged?”
I guess it’s how you look at it. It was pretty fucked up before we went in to prevent the impending massacre. If we saved a shitload of lives in that short period of time, then I would argue it was worth it. If you think the goal is to fix all the problems in Libya or overthrow Ghadafi, then I can understand your reaction. If we back out of the country completely at this point, are they worse off than before we came in. I don’t think so. And they would have run out of munitions anyway, even if we hadn’t helped them survive to this point. They probably would have been massacred within a few days if we hadn’t done anything and wouldn’t have needed the munitions.
I haven’t been tracking with you on this one, Booman. We are out of there now, it’s the others who are leading this one. We helped set up the no fly zone, weakened him up so the rebels might have a chance and we’re out.
Sigh.
We are most definitely not out, as you can learn by following my links.
And why think short-term when Libya will definitely still be there in two, ten, twenty, and a hundred years?
Look at this way.
Libya is a huge country but controlling it really involves controlling a strip of highway not unlike the Pacific Coast Highway or I-95 on the East Coast.
Were we to invade, we could drive Gaddafi from power with forty tanks, effective artillery, and close air support. We could probably take Gaddafi out with nothing more than this, some special forces to overrun compounds, and our Air Force. We could do it with little loss of life, minimal lasting damage to infrastructure, and not much cost (as long as we could hand off power to someone).
But we are not doing that because it wouldn’t be legal or kosher under international law. Instead, we are sending in CIA teams to evaluate and eventually arm an army of knucklehead-kids who have no training and can’t even clean the weapons we give them. Eventually, this can succeed in removing the regime from power, but who knows whether that will stop the fighting? The country will be awash with weapons and could easily begin to resemble Somalia, the Congo, or a number of other African countries that are over-weaponized and lack civil institutions or the consensus and power-sharing agreements needed to function as a peaceful, productive society.
We needed to do this to prevent the bombardment of Benghazi? Does this sound like it will help more people in the long-run?
And why is this a national priority for us?
You have to think long-term before you commit our country to a political outcome in a foreign country. And that’s what we did. Nothing is solved if Gaddafi remains in power.
It is now Day 31 of the UN operation, and the party line is that the situation has become bogged down into a quagmire.
Please.
I didn’t realize that you wanted to go all out and put boots on the ground. We are also fighting against the perception that we are trying to dictate what happens in Libya instead of it being an uprising from within the country.
I guess after reading Nicholas Kristof’s dispatch from Libya right after the “saving of Benghazi” is what convinced me that we had to help save that city, even if that is all we do there.
You are probably right that we’ve opened up a can of worms that we can’t put back in the can.
Actually, I don’t want to do that. I didn’t want to do that. I said we’d get sucked into doing that. But it’s a more humane solution than what we’ve decided to do instead.
What we’ve decided to do instead is make sure the boots are CIA boots or “not-officially acknowledged” boots or Saudi boots or Egyptian boots. And then we hand out heavy weapons and try to teach kids how to use them on their countrymen.
It’s amazing how anti-war the Village has become on Libya.
Of course precision munitions of certain types are running low. NATO never anticipated that they were going to have to take out 1500 tanks one tank at a time with precision munitions.
And the complaints from the rebel forces are precisely because the US mission is not to fly ground support for rebel military operations. Once a city has been abandoned by civilians, which Ajdabiya has on several recent occasions, the UN mandate restricts what can be done in support of the rebels. In Misrata, the coalition has been using ships and the fact that rebels still hold the port in order to evacuate civilians in part because Gaddafi has embedded heavy weapons in the neighborhoods. In addition, NATO has been striking Gaddafi’s military assets in Sirte and Tripoli, where they are easily identifiable.
Before complaining of this clusterfuck, remember that the worst case alternatives facing the UN Security Council was that it could turn into a Cambodia (massive retribution for civilians protesting anywhere), Rwanda (an inter-ethnic civil war), or Somalia (an ungovernable and violent failed state). With massive long-term refugee crises in newly transformed Egypt and Tunisia and the possibility of refugee flight to Europe creating inter-ethnic tension and the triumph of National Front movements. None of these are as imminent as they were before.
And there is another emerging issue that will restrain NATO action. As the rebels get armed with their own heavy weapons, NATO will have difficulty in telling Gaddafi heavy weapons from rebel heavy weapons. There have already been two incidents of mistaken identity. So NATO will be focusing on areas in which there are still civilians under siege and on Gaddafi’s supply lines.
The UN seems to have brought the Ivory Coast situation to a resolution after four months. The situation in Libya has gone on only for two months, and NATO has been involved only five weeks. There is lots of diplomatic maneuvering in the face of an apparent stalemate.
For the UN, the importance of the Libyan operation is whether it can in fact protect civilians who are under attack from their own government, the so-called “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine. Success in Libya would tend to deter autocrats from using scorched earth policies to deal with dissent. And will determine what militarily and diplomatically it takes to bring about a resolution. Meanwhile, the ICC rolls on, having convicted two Croatian officers of crimes against humanity in their ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Krajina. And the UN Security Council referral of Gaddafi and other named Libyan officials to the ICC means that no signatory (cough, UK) can use immunity from ICC prosecution should the investigation return charges. Of course, if the investigation shows no grounds for prosecution, the ICC will not carry the case forward.
The direction of these actions by the UN and regional security alliances make the US less indispensable as the (self-appointed or delegated) first responder to an international crisis.
Shouldn’t we of the left be cheering events like this?
Aren’t the puppets of the big oil countries being smashed?
Isn’t petro-imperialism being given a black eye?
Aren’t the indigenous people of the third world — Chadians, Mauritanians, etc, side by side with their Libyan brothers fighting back against a neo-colonial invasion?
And isn’t the UNSC being shown for what it is — a tool of Israel and the United States?
Or is every thing I learned in the 60’s and 70’s wrong?
Gaddafi after the release of the Lockerbie bomber became the puppet of big oil interests to the benefit of his family, not the Libyan people.
Petro-imperialism is being given a black eye. You just have to decide which side in a conflict is the petro-imperialist side. It ain’t that easy. Which candidate for Nigerian elections was favorable to petro-imperialism?
What has been given a black eye in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen—and possibly Syria is the idea that armed struggle or terrorism is the only way to bring down an autocrat.
Chadians and Mauritanians are being hired by the Gaddafi regime in the same way that the US hires Blackwater. Most of the Chadians and Mauritanians in Libya are guest workers working in various industries owned by the Gaddafi family and its cronies.
The UN Security Council is a tool of the five permanent members; it cannot act without their unanimous consent to at least abstain. Israel has been successful in convincing the US to veto any resolution that materially harms its position; but has allowed the US to abstain and even vote for resolutions that are pure posturing. Likewise, the UN Security Council can’t pass a resolution criical of Russia’s handling of Chechnya or other internal ethnic issues.
The problem with that advice in the 1960s and 1970s is that a lot of the “socialists” were in fact autocrats without a whole lot of ideological commitment who sought the protection of the Soviet Union. The proof of the socialism is in the political democratization. And when pushed, most of these “socialist” countries rediscovered crony capitalism. You really can’t tell the players without a program, and even then it is hard.
Just because Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega are Gaddafi allies doesn’t mean that the Jamhiriyah is in fact socialist. Or that the folks in Benghazi aren’t.
And then there is the paradox of what happens when the left wing becomes the establishment without any checks and balances. A new left wing forms in opposition to the establishment. And that is in addition to the right wing counterrevolutionary reaction.
It is too damn easy to read new situations through old lenses.
Petro-imperialism would have led us to politely avert our eyes as the cooperative petro-dictator Gadaffi slaughtered his opposition while continuing to sell us oil.
But for once, finally, thank God, we didn’t do that. Should “the left” have supported a policy like Bush’s policy towards Gadaffi, or Reagan’s policy towards Saddam, or the Bushes’ policy towards the House of Saud? Not any left I have any respect for.
Perhaps some version of the left that just reflexively sides against whatever the United States does would would recommend averting our eyes from the decimation of Benghazi (which, btw, is in fact populated by people of the third world, just like the rebel forces) while the oil kept flowing.
yeah, pretty much everything you learned appears to be wrong.
Here is a report about the Misurata evacuation.
LIBYA: Traumatized evacuees describe Misrata horror
Booman, have you ever read about the war in Libya during World War Two?
Big territorial advances and retreats mean a great deal less than meets the eye. There are very few defensive positions in the country, they are too far apart to be mutually-reinforcing, and it is very easy to outflank anyone holding ground by going around them through the desert. At the same time, every time you advance, your supply lines grow longer, while every time your enemy falls back, his grow shorter. So, the battle see-saws back and forth, but territorial gains are fleeting, and are not decisive. What determines the outcome is the attrition and ultimate decimation of one side’s material and fighting strength.
You didn’t write a post about how totally wrong you were when the rebels had advanced through Ajdabiya, Brega, Ras Lanouf, and were driving on Sirte; nor should you have, for the reasons I described above. Nor are you going to write a post about how totally wrong you were when the rebels take back Adjabiya today or tomorrow. Nor should you. And yet, here you are, treating the reversal of rebel gains as much, much more important that your treatment of those gains when they first happened. And happened again. And happened again. And will now happen again.
What matters is the destruction of one side’s forces by the other, just like in the 40s, not dramatic but indecisive territorial gains and losses. And on that front, the rebels’ material power and fighting strength is steadily growing as someone (???) is supplying them, while Gadaffi’s is steadily being eroded as NATO and the rebels strike his vehicles and they aren’t replaced.
Kids these days: everything is instant gratification.
Yes, I have read several books about Rommel and the war in Africa.
I don’t care and am not surprised that control of the coastal highway is see-sawing back and forth. The important thing is that the rebels do not have the capability to take over Tripoli or to establish control over and govern the country. In other words, we’re facing a stalemate at best. And the only way to change that is to arm the rebels and then train them to use those arms, which will lead to a much worse post-war condition for the country than if France, for example, had just gone in and kicked Gaddafi’s ass out of the country and turned it over to some transitional government.
It isn’t humanitarian to foster a civil war in a foreign country, and I don’t particularly care how the Arabs’ sensibilities are offended one way or the other. What I care about is results. Libya is not going to be better off because of our intervention if we continue to insist on doing things this way.
“The important thing is that the rebels do not have the capability to take over Tripoli or to establish control over and govern the country. In other words, we’re facing a stalemate at best.”
It’s day 31. As I wrote, the rebels are growing steadily stronger while the regime grows steadily weaker.
“It isn’t humanitarian to foster a civil war in a foreign country”:
The civil war was already happening. There is no anti-war argument to be made here. The question was whether the civil was going to end with a mass slaughter of the protester/rebels.
This rather important point – the difference between starting a war where none exists and influencing the outcome of an ongoing war – shouldn’t be glossed over.
“Libya is not going to be better off because of our intervention if we continue to insist on doing things this way. “
Would Libya have been better off with Khadaffy’s forces having their way with Benghazi?
And, once again, it’s Day 31.
Also, see below about “doing things this way.”
A situation like that in Iraq, in which a swift American drive to the capital if followed by us trying to impose order, while the regime elements get to rally the country for an insurgency against the foreign occupiers, while also including the fratricidal elements of a civil war, would be an even worse outcome.
The meaning of “foster” shouldn’t be glossed over, either.
OED- nourish, feed, encourage, promote the development of, help the growth of, encourage in a habit
I didn’t say we started it. I said we should have stayed out of it. And if we’re going to fight it by proxy, we (actually our allies) should just get it over with and let Libya destroy itself in its effort to rid itself of Moammar.
should read “not let.”
As for “thinking long-term,” it is precisely long-term thinking that prevents us from staging our own drive on Tripoli and doing to Gadaffi what we did to Saddam. Sure, we could replicate the 2003 drive on Baghdad; it would be quite a bit easier, actually, but we’d also end up replicating the post-war, too. It is precisely long-term thinking that requires us to let Libyans themselves take the lead in ousting Gadaffi, and limits our role to something comparable to the French fleet at Yorktown.
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