Libya: rebels consider asking for some Leviathan
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 8:50AM 
The dream date is, of course, the UN. But Russia has already dismissed the notion of UN airstrikes, arguing that they're superfluous. Not true, unfortunately.
Centcom boss James Mattis on the Hill yesterday tried hard to spell out just what would be involved, but the bottom line is we'd be at war with another Muslim country, once again doing regime change.
I know, I know. We're NEVER going to do this because this is all in our heads and there's not actually any demand signal out there that draws us in!
But this is the gist of why I wrote "Pentagon's New Map": globalization continues to advance, and stuff like this will continue to happen. We can be involved or on the sidelines, but these instabilities are going to happen - time and again. To pretend otherwise is to bury your head in the sand.
But this is nonetheless a serious Rubicon to cross. Once you start bombing, you are committed to following through on other things. Plus, you really do make it that much harder to bargain Qaddafi out of power (here's some of your money back, and we were just kidding on war crimes charges), and there is good to be found in that path - if you can pull it off.
So, once in, you really commit yourself to the finishing.
Still, what a target this guy presents: stuck basically in the capital city.
Of course, if you do him, why not Gbagbo in Ivory Coast, etc.?
But here's where the lack of explicit rules and understanding with the Russians and Chinese haunts us. We want our free hand and so we don't limit ourselves in these things, and that creates the fear that prompts Moscow and Beijing to worry that the precedent can be used against them. If we were explicit on this subject, we might get somewhere, but we choose to keep it loose - largely for our own freedom of action - and now it comes back to complicate these events.
And that's too bad, because it's clear to everybody now that Qaddafi must go. We just don't have that explicit A-to-Z rule set for processing politically bankrupt states.
Reader Comments (9)
I think it's time for Europe to put some skin into the game. The US is kinda busy right now, and if France, Germany and especially Italy can't figure out how to deploy forces on Europe's immediate southern border (stage them from Malta - Shades of WWII!), then I'll assert the Europeans are both technically and morally bankrupt as "players". If we can't get the Europeans to play by some emerging set of rules, why would Russia or China consider participating?
(Or someone tell me why I'm wrong here...)
The images coming out of the countries in turmoil have been astonishing. No American flags being burned, no chants about the "Great Satan", no anti-American or even anti-west slogans in the crowd. So, it is obvious that the citizens of those countries see this revolution as theirs and not something of our doing.
I think we have killed enough people in that part of the world. I don't see how our killing Libyans is going to help.Libya. This is a blood feud now. Tribe against tribe and it involves men who are desperate to stay in power and avoid the firing squads or the gallows. Let them sort it out.
The Russians are not capable of putting together a proper military intervention and the Chinese are still afraid to go anywhere farther than 20 divisions of infantry can march in a day.
This will end the way it will end.
With every new development in this Libya saga, I keep thinking, wow this is an opportunity for PNM applied.
Tom for SecDef 2012. I might make that into a tshirt. Seriously though, you don't get a clearer example than this.
I agree with David. Why can't the global powers coordinate a global police force? The US can't keep this up forever, and eventually other nations will have to step up. I've always like the idea of China and Japan policing the Eastern Hemisphere while the US focuses on the Western.
I know it's easier typed then done, but still.
Just a month ago we learned that one of the Iraqi sources for WMD was lying all along. Now we are told by some in Libya that Qaddafi masterminded the Lockerbie bombing. Well, he may have but we need to proceed with caution. As well intentioned they may be, they're telling us what we want to hear on the hopes America will come thundering into Libya and take him out. I've said it before but I wonder how many experts we have on Libyan tribal politics. I definitely agree with others here, both France and Italy need to pony up. Europe, not America is the one with the messy history in North Africa.
Steve,
I think it's more correct to say that, in the end, it was Saddam himself who faked us on the question of nukes, one form of WMD. For various reasons, we took the bluff on his bait. Why did he make it? Wanted to look strong. The Curveball story gets blown out of proportion, but largely because neocons in the administration blew it out of proportion. The true nuke investigators were arguably fooled by Saddam, who screwed himself in the process, although I think we would have invaded without the preliminary findings anyway.
Saddam did have chemical weapons and used them on his people. These facts are disputed by no one. Chem is WMD.
Little argument that Qaddafi still holding substantial amounts of mustard gas. Also no doubt he ordered Lockerbie. He ponied up tens of millions in a payment to the victim relatives years after the fact - a strangely open admission of guilt. But then, he's a strange guy.
We won't and shouldn't base on intervention on Lockerbie. We will go only if he kills large numbers and we feel complicit in just standing by - the so-called "responsibility to protect" notion many champion at the UN (see Australian former foreign min Garth Evans).
All depends on which "never again" to which you ascribe: No more Rwandas or no more Iraqs.
I prefer sins of commission to sins of omission.
According to this, the UK is preparing to send "advisers" into Libya. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/mar/04/libya-uprising-continues-live-updates#block-3 Sounds like a real NATO intervention is underway, which makes sense since this really is in Europe's backyard. I can't imagine that Susan Rice wants to have another Rwanda on her resume.
Right after the US forces went into Iraq, there were reports of opened chemical suits. Now chem protective gear has a roughly 1-2 week effective life once opened to air before the chemicals that protect you become ineffective. It doesn't take a lot of intelligence training to look at barracks with opened chem gear, to be -very concerned- about the possibility, if not the likelihood, of the imminent deployment of chemical weapons. And don't forget, Saddam had already used air-delivered chemical weapons.
The various Intelligence establishments may well have been guilty of 'seeing what they were looking for', but there was more than just one agent's report that correlated to a reasonable concern/likelihood/conclusion that Saddam was both capable of (i.e. gassing the Kurds) and likely to use (i.e. due to open chem suites) chemical weapons.
All this is open source information from the commercial press, I have no knowledge of any classified reports.
And what would have been the reaction if we had ignored these indicators, and Saddam did use chemical weapons? I'm sure a lot more outcry about how incompetent US intelligence is. Frankly, I'm pretty disgusted with the whole "Bush/Blair lied about WMD" trope.
David, Tom:
I too am tired of the Bush Lied/WMD trope, but I want to stress that that wasn't the gist of my point really. In short, what we've learned about Iraq or our involvement there, and the cautionary tale it tells, we need to keep foremost in our minds as we look at Libya and the wider Middle East/North Africa unrest. If we do get actively involved, our reasons for need to be rooted on solid ground and strong facts.