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.