military action against Libya

@Irishk,

I suspect they're succumbing to Got-Daffy's propaganda about civilian casualties. Whether or not, did they think you can do this sort of thing with no casualties?

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I don't think that this is a part of a pattern. This situation is farily unique (other than the invocation of the UN Charter's Chapter Seven in the case of Korea as Dys has pointed out--but that was more of an invasion than a civil war, and was predicated upon the terms of article 42, which don't apply here). I continue to assert that there is no reason to assume that American ground troops need be or will be involved.

We can't say. If the situation devolves, we will adjust our plans accordingly, and the need for ground troops will arise sooner or later.

War is like an avalanche... almost impossible to stop or predict where it's headed. Of course, I hope you are correct and that this ends up being a short conflict, one in which Qaddafi quickly succumbs to the forces around him. But I fear it will not, and yes - the same people who were pushing for armed intervention in Iraq and other places are the ones pushing for intervention now, and the same folks who are interested in the minutiae of military matters are eagerly following developments in this case, and the same media figures are breathlessly reporting the details of the conflict...

At some point, ground troops are going to be needed from SOMEWHERE to secure the area. You can only do so much from the air.

Cycloptichorn

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@Setanta,

He thinks the 'use of force was excessive', according to another report from the L.A. Times. 114 Tomahawk missiles does sound like a lot, but I'm no military expert. How many would be 'just right'?

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@Cycloptichorn,

The intent of the rebels is that they will be the ground troops. I can't accept your assertion that war "devolves," that it's an avalanche. Pappy Bush and Clinton managed to control the skies over Iraq for 12 years without resort to a ground war, and that Baby Bush suckered the nation into an invasion doesn't consitute evidence that it was inevitable. Matthew Perry simply used the threat of American fleet to force the Japanese to treat foreign ships and seamen to a certain standard, and the French and English got concessions out of them without resort to the use of ground troops. As i've already mentioned, the Royal Navy's attack on the Turkish fleet was sufficient to set the stage for an eventually successful Greek revolution without resort to ground troops.

Ground troops are only needed when someone intends to impose on someone else the terms upon which they insist, and which their opponent won't grant. As i've said, the rebels are the ground troops here. I have no reason to see this as an example of any pattern, nor to assume that we will ever be obliged to send in troops. If that ever does occur, it will be because Mr. Obama will have seriously fucked-up, and will be over-reaching. I seriousl doubt that that will happen.

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Dennis Kucinich thinks it might be an 'impeachable' offense (launching those missiles)...

Quote:

Kucinich, who wanted to bring impeachment articles against both former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over Iraq — only to be blocked by his own leadership — asked why the U.S. missile strikes aren’t impeachable offenses.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51595.html

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@Irishk,

Irishk wrote:

Dennis Kucinich thinks it might be an 'impeachable' offense (launching those missiles)...

Quote:
Kucinich, who wanted to bring impeachment articles against both former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over Iraq — only to be blocked by his own leadership — asked why the U.S. missile strikes aren’t impeachable offenses.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51595.html

Quote:

specially if “Operation Odyssey Dawn” fails to topple Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, leads to significant American casualties, or provokes a wider conflict in the troubled region of North Africa.

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@Irishk,

Either their understanding of what would take place was naïve, or they're furiously backpeddling because Got-Daffy's propaganda is successful. No nation with a modern airforce is going to risk them in the air over a nation which still possesses even recently modern air defense systems. To carry out this kind of mission, the first thing you need to do is to take out command and control (often located in a densely populated area, usually a nation's capital), radar stations, air defense artillery, surface to air missile sites--as well as the obvious targets of the enemy's military air fields and their support facilities. You're not going to get modern military organizations to take on this kind of mission without doing that first. One hudred fourteen cruise missiles actually isn't that much to accomplish those ends, given that you don't want to miss such targets, and there were very likely multiple missiles targeting each crucial target.

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@Setanta,

If a protracted ground conflict does result (and Ghadaffi is already promising one) it won't be the first time that such an outcome - and long-term dependency on external "peacekeepers" and economic aid have been the consequence. UN forces have been in Congo and other African nations for decades. It is a bit like Joel Chandler's Tar Baby in the Uncle Rhemus Tales.

While it is certainly clear that the President and the leaders of all the other participating nations currently have no intention of being drawn into such an outcome, it is by no means an impossible result. Indeed it is very clearly in Ghadaffi's interest to achieve exactly that result - he will likely bet on the lack of staying power of the intervenors, and achieving through chaos and political means what he can't do militarily. There are lots of precedence for exactly that.

Moreover it will be far easier for many (not all) of the European powers, Canada, the UAE and others to recall the handfuls of aircraft they have sent (or simply to restrict their activities as some of our "allies" do in Afghanistan) than it will be for the U.S. France or the UK to withdraw. The fact that the current military "commander" (really only a coordinator) of the operation is an American general - with no successor yet identified - should be recognized as an ominous siugn.

Alternatively, Ghadaffi's forces may simply collapse quickly and a coherent and better political regime may result. The problem for us is that we can't count on either that outcome or the continued cohesion & committment of the "International Community". We have smacked the tar baby.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Moussa is calling an emergency meeting of the 22 nations which make up the Arab League. If they withdraw their support of the no fly zone, what do you think will happen? We can't just pack up and leave now, can we? (By we, I mean all the nations participating).

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@georgeob1,

Well as i said long ago, the greatest value of this effort will be to erode the morale of the Libyan military. If they stand fast, then the effort is likely wasted. The best chance of rebels would be in the melting away of the Libyan army, and the destruction of their amored fighting vehicles and their artillery. If the coalition does nothing else, they've got to level the playing field. The struggle can then be left to the people of Libya themselves, at which point it becomes political and tribal, and we have no business anywhere near that kind of brawl.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

at which point it becomes political and tribal

such as seen in Bahrain.

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@Irishk,

The western allies are already heavily committed and their response was to a cry for help by the Libyan rebels. At the same time, they were unwilling to act until the Arab League called for the no-fly zone. I wouldn't want to say that i know what will happen if the Arab League backs out, but certainly, if the coalition stand down while the Libyan army retains their armor and artillery, the rebels are well and truly fucked.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

The struggle can then be left to the people of Libya themselves, at which point it becomes political and tribal, and we have no business anywhere near that kind of brawl.

The Americans should keep in mind that had England and France become militarily envolved in the American Civil War that they would have come in on the side of the Confederacy...There is no way we should be picking sides here, as for all we know the rebels are worse than is Gaddafi.

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@Irishk,

Irishk wrote:

Moussa is calling an emergency meeting of the 22 nations which make up the Arab League. If they withdraw their support of the no fly zone, what do you think will happen? We can't just pack up and leave now, can we? (By we, I mean all the nations participating).

Interesting point. Perhaps France, the UK, and the U.S. should make a clear public statement that the continued (indeed expanded) support of the Arab League is a precondition of our continued involvement in an event that our leaders have styled as "protecting the Libyan people". Certainly it is in our interest to reinforce the Arab Stares' accountability for their actions.

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@georgeob1,

Quote:

Certainly it is in our interest to reinforce the Arab Stares' accountability for their actions.

More interesting to me is that Obama sold this intervention plan to the Europeans largely on the claim that this is what the Arab's wanted, that this would not become yet another West/Arab military struggle. And yet the Arabs on day one are already claiming that this what is being done is not what they want.

Obama is now very far out on a Limb. With all of his other international relationship failings his selling a false bill of goods here will hurt him, if it turns out that way. It will be another lesson to the world that smart people should not follow Obama. Make no mistake, the no fly zone and picking sides here was a result of American pressure.

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@georgeob1,

More on Moussa's criticisms and our response to it. Also, Russia weighs in...

Quote:

"What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians," Egypt's official state news agency quoted Moussa as saying.

[...]

The intervention is the biggest against an Arab country since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Withdrawal of Arab support would make it much harder to pursue what some defence analysts say could in any case be a difficult, open-ended campaign with an uncertain outcome.

A senior U.S. official rebuffed Moussa's comments.

"The resolution endorsed by Arabs and UNSC (the United Nations Security Council) included 'all necessary measures' to protect civilians, which we made very clear includes, but goes beyond, a no-fly zone," the official told Reuters during a visit by President Barack Obama to Rio de Janeiro.

The U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said the no-fly zone was effectively in place. But he told CBS the endgame of military action was "very uncertain" and acknowledged it could end in a stalemate with Gaddafi.

Mullen said he had seen no reports of civilian casualties from the Western strikes. But Russia said there had been such casualties and called on Britain, France and the United States to halt the "non-selective use of force."

Link

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@hawkeye10,

And people making comparisons to the attitudes of Lord Palmerston and Napoleon III should be well enough informed to know that Lincoln was almost universally admired by their working class citizens, so there was no chance that that would ever have happened. Lord Palmerston hated the United States, and said so publicly throughout his career. He despised and loathed Lincoln and Stanton. Napoleon III had his little scheme to set up an Austrian puppet on a Mexican Imperial throne. Even Palmerston wasn't going along with that, and he, who had spent a life-time bullying small nations with the Royal Navy, responded to the Trent incident with the political equivalent of an angry letter to The Times.

Public opinion in neither England nor France would have tolerated such a move by their governments, and Palmerston and Louis Bonapart both knew it. For whatever fantasies they entertained in the matter, neither of them were that stupid.

Comparing the American civil war to this situation is just silly. Who do you propose was the moral equivalent of Kadaffi, and who do you propose was the moral equivalent of the rebels? Cynically, a lot of people have wanted to smack down Kadaffi for literally decades.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Quote:

And people making comparisons to the attitudes of Lord Palmerston and Napoleon III should be well enough informed to know that Lincoln was almost universally admired by their working class citizens, so there was no chance that that would ever have happened

The working class had no more say then then we do now, there was no groundswell of popular American public demand for us to attack Pro Kaddaffi military forces.

The ruling class of England and France, the deciders, supported the Confederacy. They also had the good sense to stay out of the struggle militarily.

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@hawkeye10,

You are absolutely wrong about that, but that's nothing new. If the "deciders" supported the Confederacy, how did Parliament pass an act to prohibit the sale or manufacture to order of weapons for the Confederate states? Admiral Bullock (an uncle of Theodore Roosevelt) had to move fast to get the ship which became the CSS Alabama out of Liverpool because agents of the government were on the train coming to seize the vessel--as she slipped out of port. Alabama was commissioned at sea off the Azores, because she was already being hunted by the Royal Navy. She was only able to escape them by having been commissioned. You really don't know what the hell you're talking about, and that's par for the course.

If you think Palmerston was the "decider" and that the working class had no say in the matter, i suspect you know nothing about the Reform Act. That wouldn't surprise me, either.

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The situations are not analogous. I notice you have failed to answer my question about which side was the moral equivalent of Kadaffi and which side was the moral equivalent of the rebels.

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military action against Libya

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