When the Deal Goes Down--War with Libya

For the best coverage of the various policy debates on Libya,go to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, which summarizes the flood of pros and cons about the Obama Administration's decisions about Libya. I share with Sullivan a queasiness about the whole operation because like he,I was a supporter of the war against Iraq, only to be horrified by its results and America's ineptitude at every level.

On Saturday, the New York Times published an excellent investigative report on how the decision to bomb Libya went down. The primary advocates were Hillary Clinton, Samantha Powers and Susan Rice. It was a modification of the Cinton Administration policy of humantarian intervention. (It should be pointed out that Samantha Powers' addition to the Obama Administration was widely criticized by conservatives,because she was supposed to be a leftist.)

President Obama was pummelled for the two weeks leading to the decision by neoconservatives and conservative presidential wannabes. Newt Gingrich had declared he would have implemented a No Fly Zone overnight--which shows you how out of touch with practical reality he is. The whole list of remaining neoconservatives circulated a letter to President Obama calling for an invasion. I'm glad Americans have no sense of shame. Paul Wolfowitz of all people surfaced in the Wall Street Journal to lead the call for an invasion. As if parroting from the same script, Republican Presidential aspirants said that President Obama spent time filling in his brackets for the NCAA basketball championships while President Sarkozy was taking the lead in Libya. Today "Old Walnuts" McCain, extending his Guiness Book of Records' appearances on a Sunday Talk Show, criticized President Obama for the lateness of his decision. This said with military operations underway. A real classy Sarah Palin, who seems to misunderstand the old adage of not criticizing beyond the water's edge, spoke in India about Obama dithering. (She also warned India about China.)

Since the bombing of Libya took place on the anniversary of our invasion of Iraq,it's useful to recall McCain's words then. "We have one commander in chief, and one Secretary of Defense,not 535 of them."

I find the knee-jerk desire to go to war by the Republicans frightening. Nothing has been learned and there is simply no self-reflection. On the other hand,the whole Libyan issue demonstrates that the United States can't break from its imperial patterns so cleanly and we may be stuck in a death spiral.

As for reaction time--Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq prior to 9/11. It took him almost 3 years to get there. And even when it was known to the United States he was going to war. It took him two years--the longest telegraphed punch in military history. Then, as he writes in his memoir, it took him another three years to change the policy after Iraq had become engulfed in a civil war. Three weeks by President Obama and he actually thought about this is faster than the speed of light.

Now let's recall the old "You're with us or agi'n us." policy of the last administration. One of the genuine policy accomplishments of the last administration was to persuade Libya to dismantle its nuclear program. And the Colonel threw in his cooperation on Al Qaeda. Unfortunately on the latter, some of the Al Qaeda bodies he threw to us were just dissidents. Now remember little Billy Kristol and others crowed about Qaddafhi's turning sides. In the run up to this episode, we have none of our warlords lament that we are losing our ally in the war against terror.

Richard Cohen in the Washington Post wrote a few weeks ago about all the horrible regimes in Africa that the Colonel bankrolled such as Liberia's Charles Taylor. All true. But one aspect of the regime, which has been ignored, has been its routine extermination of dissidents. They did this in the 1980s, 1990s and with our help in the 2000s and now they are just being more overt and the world knows. During all these periods,the United States and the entire Western World did absolutely nothing.

And for history buffs, remember a few weeks ago when the Colonel did his speech holding a parasol outside a burned out building. The building in question was a site bombed by Ronald Reagan and kept as a memorial to Qaddafhi daughter who died in the bombing. So here we are again. Yesterday, the regime rounded up human shields to protect the site and the Colonel's home.

Throughout the Middle East uprisings, the Obama Administration was trying to avoid several historical problems at the same time.
1. The Iranian Hostage scenario. Hence the slight delay by Obama on telling Mubarak to go. Americans had to be evacuated from Egypt, Tunisia and now Libya.
2. The fundamentalist revolution scenario.
3. The unilateral American intervention into the Middle East scenario like Bush's Iraq.
4. The Rwanda genocide scenario, which greatly influenced Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Powers.

First, let's handle the good news about the Libyan event. The Arab League, the African Union and the European Union urged a no-fly zone before the United States overtly favored it. The resolutions before the United Nations Security Council did not entail all the hassle we saw under the last administration. (P.S. The House wanted to cut the American share of dues to the United Nations.) The military operation really is being carried out with a coalition of forces. Even Norway is contributing fighter planes. The French President was the one to declare the beginning of hostilities. (Republicans have now learned to love the France, not only because of Libya but because of nuclear power. So you can have French fries now, not Freedom fries.) Also the No-Fly Zone is actually more extensive than is traditional with the French bombing Libya's ground forces.

(P.S. Gabriel Al-Islam Qaddafhi, the Colonel's son,blasted Sarkozy. He said,"We paid for his campaign. Now we want our money back."

Second,there are some worrying developments. The five abstentions on the Libyan action were Russia, China, India and Brazil, four of the most powerful countries in the world. If events go south, expect them to pick up the pieces and become vocal critics. In fact, the Arab League has already criticized the killing of civilians by the international force.

What has escaped me from the beginning of this story is the failure of the United States and the Western powers to block the regime's communications networks. This was the single biggest failure of the West during the whole Rwanda genocide. And finally, there is no real end-game, no desired scenario of the West.

Some point to Operation Odyssey Dawn as a smaller version of the Gulf War I, which was a coalition effort that was wildly successful in reversing Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and obliterating the Iraqi Republican Guard. But let's not forget the unwelcome aftermath of the Gulf War. In the United States, we had a significant portion of our foreign policy elites and the neoconservatives claim it was a failure because it did not remove Saddam Hussein. And the sequel cost $1 trillion to date and maybe $3 trillion eventually.

It would be nice if we actually had a plethora of Libyan experts who knew what they were talking about.

The Colonel is reverting to form. He condemned the United Nations' action as colonialism, threatened to kill his enemies as heretics, promised the United States would be sorry and vowed to wage a "long war" against us. All he needs now is Baghdad Bob.

Like Iraq, Libya is an artificial creation. After WWII, the allies created a monarchy except the chosen King only wanted to be the emir of one part of the country because he disliked the tribes of the other part. The division remains to this day and you can see it in the dvision of the country between pro-regime forces and revolutionary forces. This doesn't look like it would be resolved soon.

Unlike Saddam Hussein,Libya doesn't have the same hierarchical structures like a Ba'ath Party or even a traditionally organized military. You simply don't cut off the head and promote non-monsters to run the country. In Iraq,the United States made two absolutely insane moves--dissolved the Ba'ath Party, which included every technocrat in the country (thanks Wolfowitz) and unilaterally dissolved the military (thanks Paul Bremer), thus plunging the country into perpetual civil war.

The Green Revolution is far more decentralized and this provides a real policy dilemma for the future. At the same time, like Iraq, the regime has its favorite tribes, which have been rewarded with the fruits of the economy. And unlike Iraq, where Al Qaeda only showed up after the fact, Al Qaeda is in Libya and the extent of its involvement with the opposition is unknown. The cells there have gained battle experience in Iraq.

President Obama promised that no American troops will be involved on the ground. American military support so far has been naval and missile strikes as well as intelligence. The question facing the international community will be what happens when Qaddafhi holds out. How far does the international community go? For President Obama , he has promised that this operation will last days, not weeks. And frankly, the quickness of the attacks immediately after the UN Declaration 1973 suprised me.

The good news for everyone--snark alert--is that the BP contracts will be honored by both sides. So now, we have our Right, Al Qaeda and BP aligned.

The Libyan operation will raise substantial questions about when and why intervene for humanitarian purposes. We declared we are intervening to prevent the slaughter of civilians, which Qaddafhi was indeed about to embark on. But the international community has done nothing in the Ivory Coast, which has seen over 250,000 refugees created by fighting and thousands of deaths. We are seeing the Yemeni regime kill the protestors there and Bahrain crush their Shi'ite minority with the help of the Saudis. In Bahrain, there is a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two of the most loathsome regimes on the planet. How do we make the distinctions and how do we ensure that it is not a Made in America solution?

A picky last note, Americans still have not resolved how we go to war. President Obama is not about to surrender the President's imperial prerogatives of entering into combat without consulting Congress. Ushering 16 congressional leaders to the White House prior to making his statement to the press really isn't consultation. Since this has been going on since WWII, I don't expect to end any time soon.