Asked recent by a commenter what I would imagine a decent effort in Libya would entail, I now turn to Max Boot's piece yesterday in the WSJ entitled, "It's not too late to save libya."
The guts of the military explanation:
The Pentagon, from Defense Secretary Robert Gates on down, has reacted as if this would be a military operation on the order of D-Day. In reality, it would not be hard to ground Gadhafi's decrepit air force.
The job could probably be performed with just one American ship—the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, now in the Red Sea, which has 34 F/A-18F Super Hornets and 10 F/A-18C Hornets along with a full complement of electronic-warfare aircraft. The Enterprise strike group could also unleash a devastating array of Tomahawk cruise missiles.
And the Enterprise would not have to fight alone. It could easily be joined by numerous American, British and French aircraft flying out of Aviano and other NATO bases in Italy. A forward operations base could be established at the Gamal Abdul el-Nasser airfield, one of Libya's major air force bases (built by the British), which is located south of Tobruk and has already been captured by the rebels.
As the enforcement of no-fly zones over Bosnia and Iraq should have proved, the risks of such an operation are minimal—especially if we first neutralize Gadhafi's air defenses.
By itself, a no-fly zone might not be enough to topple Gadhafi. At the very least, however, it would dishearten Gadhafi's supporters and buy time for the rebels. We could further tilt the balance in their favor by bombing Gadhafi's installations and troops.
It may also be necessary to send arms and Special Forces trainers to support the rebels. Without committing any combat troops of our own, we could deliver the same kind of potent combined-arms punch that drove the Serbs out of Kosovo when NATO aircraft supported ground operations by the Kosovo Liberation Army.
That's pretty much what I was thinking of. I just don't know enough operationally to express as well as Boot does here.
Per the WSJ editorial on the preceding page, we are seeing how much "Arabs love the pax Americana." I remember during Abu Ghraib and everything else hearing about how America's standing in the region would take "decades" to resurrect. You knew that was bulls@&t then. When the right circumstances hit the right fan, the Arab League wants our no-fly-zone, even if Turkey's Erdogan is being too egotistical to admit it.
But of course, we now bow to the "international community," Obama's pet phrase decoded as, "I'm with chickens@$t!" Just some leadership here would be nice.
Niall Ferguson, in Newsweek, quotes some senior WH aide as saying, "[The President] keeps reminding us that the best revolutions are completely organic."
Ferguson thereupon blows that idiotic reading of history out of the water. Good God, take a peak at the American Revolution, why don't you?
It scares me to think Obama really views history that naively. Ferguson goes on to make a truly sophisticated argument on the Helsinki Accords killing the Soviet Union (whip communism . . . eventually, Jerry!). Great point. Revolutions that succeed without outside help are rare.
But hey, now Washington seems to have bought into the Beijing Consensus when it comes to non-interference. I'm sure the view on this new world order is great from Benghazi.