Progress Pond

Libya Going About How I Predicted

I wanted no part of Libya’s civil war, as I made as clear as possible for weeks prior to our commitment to that clusterfuck. And now pretty much everything I feared has come to pass, with an added bonus of the administration thumbing its nose at the War Powers Resolution. That’s a nice little cherry on top.

What did I say? I said the opposition was too disorganized and weak to topple Gaddafi and that we would have to get deeply involved in training and arming them. I said that it wasn’t in our national interests to be involved in Libya and that it wouldn’t have any support from the public. I said that we didn’t know who we were dealing with or even who we’d like to see in a future government in Libya. And every single piece of that is detailed in the linked McClatchy article.

No one wants to see a bunch of innocent people get gunned down by a lunatic. But sometimes you are just not in a position to help. Another thing I said was that once we committed, we ought to go take him out of Tripoli, dead or alive, and get the thing over with. Because it isn’t humanitarian to arm a country up for a prolonged civil war that kills many more people and leaves more destruction than anything that you prevented in the first place.

What’s become an open-ended conflict, military officers and experts say, illustrates ill-defined U.S. objectives, the limits of relying solely on air power and the lack of diplomatic tools to broker an end to Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s regime. Thousands of anti-Gadhafi rebels have been killed, and some at the Pentagon worry that the mounting deaths and reduced U.S. involvement have jeopardized what President Barack Obama called a campaign to protect Libyan civilians.

“We are losing the goodwill this was supposed to create,” said one senior military officer who wasn’t authorized to be quoted by name.

Meanwhile, no one appears to give a damn about the Syrians, which at least means that we’re not bogged down in that country, too, bleeding more money and good will. Every bad thing that is happening in the world is not our responsibility. We can’t fix everything. We need to learn that.

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