On March 3, I said:
Until we see WMDs and/or death tolls with a couple of extra zeroes on them, we shouldn't be responding to the killing of a few Libyans by killing a lot of Libyans. Right now it appears the people who we want to win are winning so for at least the time-being, we should let them win. What we did in Kosovo was a good thing, but it was a much bigger humanitarian problem and we were prepared (and did) back it up with ground troops. Are we really ready for ground troops in Libya?
A no-fly-zone here is not a simple thing. Once you do it, you're all in and we're not ready to be all-in. It's not big enough yet for that to be worth it.
What has changed since then is that the rebels are now losing and more of them are dying. But information still seems sketchy to me:
1. How many are dying?
2. Are they acually civilians or are they armed rebels?
The answer to those questions determines whether there is a moral/humanitarian mandate to help and without a clear answer it is tough to decide. But that may be irrelevant: The other thing that has changed is international support for action even from African nations is increasing.
So I'm not opposed to going in, but I think if we do it has to be with the goal of removing Gadhafi regardless of what is required to do it. That means:
1. A month of a "no fly zone" with the associated SEAD. That alone may envigorate the rebels and help them win. If it doesn't:
2. Airstrikes against the Libyan government a la Yugoslavia. If that doesn't do it after about a month:
3. Ground troops to capture Tripoli followed by a peacekeeping force. That's a commitment of several tens of thousands of troops and a virtual guarantee of dead Americans, but I don't think we can do step 1 without acceping that we may need to do 2 and 3. To stop at step 1 after a month if it doesn't work just makes things worse.
A CNN op ed on this issue that troll title aside makes a few good points...while I think being wrong in its overall thesis:
Has the Obama administration decided it wants the Gadhafi regime to survive?
That hypothesis is the only way to make sense of the administration's actions toward Libya.
On March 3, President Obama announced that Col. Moammar Gadhafi "must go."
Gadhafi did not listen. Instead, the Libyan dictator has brutally quelled the uprising with rockets, air strikes and attacks on civilian population centers.
And the U.S. reaction? The more brutally Gadhafi acts, the more slowly the U.S. responds. France and the United Kingdom are pressing for a no-fly zone inside Libya. Some military experts in U.S. have suggested arming the insurgents. The administration has said it is considering all these options, but that any final decision must await a NATO meeting on Tuesday.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/03/14/frum.obama.libya/index.html?hpt=T2
My opinion is probably predictable: It isn't that Obama wants Gadhafi to stay (I believe him when he says he wants him to go), it's that Obama is a staunch liberal and therefore by nature a staunch pacifist. He isn't capable of making a decision that takes us into a war. We may eventually get there, but only after international bodies like the UN or NATO make the decision for him and he follows them.
The writer considers a similar hypothesis but rejects it, instead opting to believe that Obama believes Gadhafi isn't that bad of a dictator and so would prefer he win and continue the status quo. Much as I would love to believe that Obama's moral cowardace runs that deep, I don't.
He was never the same after that.
