Libya Policy Confusing
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Gary [email protected]
"This command-and-control business is complicated, and we haven't done something like this, kind of, on-the-fly before," he said.
He was talking specifically about turning over command of the operation to NATO, but I think it's a pretty good representation of the policy as a whole. Basically, I get the sense that they really don't know for sure exactly what they're doing.
President Obama says our mission is not to remove Gadhafi. But at the same time he says that Gadhafi has got to go. And at the same time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says Gadhafi has to be removed.
Further, President Obama says that ground troops will never be deployed in Libya, even though there already are reports of U.S. Special Forces units and CIA operatives on the ground identifying targets, advising the rebels.
President Obama also says our mission is to protect civilians and rebels from Gadhafi's forces. But reports indicate Gadhafi's forces are making house-to-house sweeps in Benghazi and rounding up suspected rebel sympathizers. How can it be our mission to stop that type of activity with no troops on the ground? That's just not possible.
The mission in Libya started out as a means to disable Gadhafi's air force, which, at the outset was pretty weak, and establish a no-fly zone. We pretty much accomplished that in the first few hours of our involvement in this mess.
Now, apparently, the mission has shifted to hitting targets like military airports and army bases and providing air support for the rebels.
Simultaneously, President Obama is talking about how eager he is to end our involvement.
I hope I am dead wrong when I say this, and I may well be, but it seems to me our involvement isn't close to ending.
If Gadhafi isn't taken out of power, if he hunkers down, weakened, but not out of power, we could wind up with a standoff between his forces and the rebels. That could potentially become a long, drawn-out affair.
Under an agreement struck Thursday, according to CNN.com, "NATO forces will be able to close air space to all flights except for humanitarian ones and will be able to use force in self-defense." Also, "NATO would be given more robust rules of engagement to ensure that civilians are protected."
Can we be honest about this NATO "coalition" for a moment?
Who's going to pull all this off? The French? The Brits? None of them have the capacity to run Gadhafi and his army out of Libya. Not to mention all the tribal and mercenary fighters that remain Gadhafi loyalists.
Remember, the U.S. accounts for 47 percent of the world's military spending. In second place is China, at a far distant 6 percent. We're the ones with all the bombs and planes. If you added up the military spending of all our "coalition" partners, it wouldn't reach 10 percent of ours.
Again, I don't purport to be some expert on geopolitics and military strategy, and I could be wrong. But it just seems farfetched to me that we can fire a few missiles, drop a few bombs and then hand the whole mess off to the "coalition."
And can we talk about the notion that the U.S. has to be the "world's peacekeeper." When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, I supported us pushing him back out. I recall writing a column advising the younger Bush against invading Iraq. And that was before we knew there were no weapons of mass destruction.
Comes now 2011. Have we learned nothing from our experiences in places like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan? I understand the desire to protect the oppressed, but seriously, where do you draw the line?
Right now, innocent civilians are being killed by the governments of Jordan, Yemen, Nepal, Syria, Morocco and Bahrain.
Even worse are situations in places like Ivory Coast, Darfur, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, the Congo and the Central African Republic.
I realize Gadhafi is the poster boy for nutty, ruthless dictators, but what about that Kim character with the nukes in North Korea? What about that Ahmadinijad guy in Iran? For cryin' out loud, they cut your head off for being gay in that country.[[In-content Ad]]Too many ruthless dictators, too few bombs, I guess.
Bottom line in all this is sometimes I wish our policy fell more in line with the doctrine expressed by a certain U.S. Senator in March 2007.
Back then, during an interview with the New York Times, the Senator was asked whether American troops on the ground should intervene if sectarian fighting broke out in Iraq. The whole interview was posted on hotair.com last week.
"No one wants to sit by and see mass killings, but it's going on every day. Thousand of people are dying every month in Iraq. Our presence there is not stopping it and there is no potential opportunity that I can image where it could. This is an Iraqi problem. We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves. ... You can talk to a lot of military experts and they will tell you that if the parties have not decided to stop killing each other, there's very little you can do and do we want to be basically in the middle of that, And I think the answer is no, for both miliary and political reasons."
The senator? Then presidential candidate and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Of course, that was when there was a Republican in the White House, she was campaigning for his job and the Iraq war was highly unpopular. Ironically, I agreed with her back then. But now, working for President Obama, she's different.
"Let me just underscore the key point. ... The world will not sit idly by while more innocent civilians are killed. ... We are standing with the people of Libya, and we will not waver in our efforts to protect them."
I think this might be the most troubling part of all this. It appears decisions regarding who we will save and who we won't is not so much a matter of morality or humanitarianism.
It's a matter of politics.
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"This command-and-control business is complicated, and we haven't done something like this, kind of, on-the-fly before," he said.
He was talking specifically about turning over command of the operation to NATO, but I think it's a pretty good representation of the policy as a whole. Basically, I get the sense that they really don't know for sure exactly what they're doing.
President Obama says our mission is not to remove Gadhafi. But at the same time he says that Gadhafi has got to go. And at the same time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says Gadhafi has to be removed.
Further, President Obama says that ground troops will never be deployed in Libya, even though there already are reports of U.S. Special Forces units and CIA operatives on the ground identifying targets, advising the rebels.
President Obama also says our mission is to protect civilians and rebels from Gadhafi's forces. But reports indicate Gadhafi's forces are making house-to-house sweeps in Benghazi and rounding up suspected rebel sympathizers. How can it be our mission to stop that type of activity with no troops on the ground? That's just not possible.
The mission in Libya started out as a means to disable Gadhafi's air force, which, at the outset was pretty weak, and establish a no-fly zone. We pretty much accomplished that in the first few hours of our involvement in this mess.
Now, apparently, the mission has shifted to hitting targets like military airports and army bases and providing air support for the rebels.
Simultaneously, President Obama is talking about how eager he is to end our involvement.
I hope I am dead wrong when I say this, and I may well be, but it seems to me our involvement isn't close to ending.
If Gadhafi isn't taken out of power, if he hunkers down, weakened, but not out of power, we could wind up with a standoff between his forces and the rebels. That could potentially become a long, drawn-out affair.
Under an agreement struck Thursday, according to CNN.com, "NATO forces will be able to close air space to all flights except for humanitarian ones and will be able to use force in self-defense." Also, "NATO would be given more robust rules of engagement to ensure that civilians are protected."
Can we be honest about this NATO "coalition" for a moment?
Who's going to pull all this off? The French? The Brits? None of them have the capacity to run Gadhafi and his army out of Libya. Not to mention all the tribal and mercenary fighters that remain Gadhafi loyalists.
Remember, the U.S. accounts for 47 percent of the world's military spending. In second place is China, at a far distant 6 percent. We're the ones with all the bombs and planes. If you added up the military spending of all our "coalition" partners, it wouldn't reach 10 percent of ours.
Again, I don't purport to be some expert on geopolitics and military strategy, and I could be wrong. But it just seems farfetched to me that we can fire a few missiles, drop a few bombs and then hand the whole mess off to the "coalition."
And can we talk about the notion that the U.S. has to be the "world's peacekeeper." When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, I supported us pushing him back out. I recall writing a column advising the younger Bush against invading Iraq. And that was before we knew there were no weapons of mass destruction.
Comes now 2011. Have we learned nothing from our experiences in places like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan? I understand the desire to protect the oppressed, but seriously, where do you draw the line?
Right now, innocent civilians are being killed by the governments of Jordan, Yemen, Nepal, Syria, Morocco and Bahrain.
Even worse are situations in places like Ivory Coast, Darfur, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, the Congo and the Central African Republic.
I realize Gadhafi is the poster boy for nutty, ruthless dictators, but what about that Kim character with the nukes in North Korea? What about that Ahmadinijad guy in Iran? For cryin' out loud, they cut your head off for being gay in that country.[[In-content Ad]]Too many ruthless dictators, too few bombs, I guess.
Bottom line in all this is sometimes I wish our policy fell more in line with the doctrine expressed by a certain U.S. Senator in March 2007.
Back then, during an interview with the New York Times, the Senator was asked whether American troops on the ground should intervene if sectarian fighting broke out in Iraq. The whole interview was posted on hotair.com last week.
"No one wants to sit by and see mass killings, but it's going on every day. Thousand of people are dying every month in Iraq. Our presence there is not stopping it and there is no potential opportunity that I can image where it could. This is an Iraqi problem. We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves. ... You can talk to a lot of military experts and they will tell you that if the parties have not decided to stop killing each other, there's very little you can do and do we want to be basically in the middle of that, And I think the answer is no, for both miliary and political reasons."
The senator? Then presidential candidate and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Of course, that was when there was a Republican in the White House, she was campaigning for his job and the Iraq war was highly unpopular. Ironically, I agreed with her back then. But now, working for President Obama, she's different.
"Let me just underscore the key point. ... The world will not sit idly by while more innocent civilians are killed. ... We are standing with the people of Libya, and we will not waver in our efforts to protect them."
I think this might be the most troubling part of all this. It appears decisions regarding who we will save and who we won't is not so much a matter of morality or humanitarianism.
It's a matter of politics.
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