Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

altho as I've said before: in Libya, as in Kosov, this would all be brought to a much tidier resolution if we could execute a little targeted decapitation of the leaders in question. The Bosnian conflict wouldn't have gotten nearly so bad if Milosevic had been killed earlier, and Libya would similarly have benefited from Kaddaffey being iced earlier in this flare-up.

(and before anyone jumps on me yes I am perfectly aware of why this strategy - while most likely very effective - is also completely illegal, dangerous, and not really possible to implement)

'they can't be this simple-minded, there must be some other calculation'

yeah well no

it's plausible that all they really want to do is protect the anti-gaddafi fighters, sure. but it really is a measure of those fighters' ineptitude that close air support for their operations is being billed as "humanitarian intervention"

The "humanitarian" aspects of this are bogus. Qaddafi was just a run of the mill bad guy dictator until a small fraction of the population took up arms against him and he retaliated (which is of course no different than how Qaddafi himself took power, except he won). This was not genocide in progress. This was not pointless, malicious mass murdering of innocent women and children. This was a bad guy, with many decades of bad guy-ness to his name, suppressing a limited uprising.

Playing realpolitik here, since when did anyone give a shit about the Libyan people, any more than the millions of oppressed people elsewhere in the region at large we'd managed to more or less ignore until they started taking matters into their own hands a few months ago?

The "humanitarian" aspects of this are bogus. Qaddafi was just a run of the mill bad guy dictator until a small fraction of the population took up arms against him and he retaliated (which is of course no different than how Qaddafi himself took power, except he won). This was not genocide in progress. This was not pointless, malicious mass murdering of innocent women and children. This was a bad guy, with many decades of bad guy-ness to his name, suppressing a limited uprising.

Playing realpolitik here, since when did anyone give a shit about the Libyan people, any more than the millions of oppressed people elsewhere in the region at large we'd managed to more or less ignore until they started taking matters into their own hands a few months ago?

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, March 22, 2011 4:17 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

is this true? what are you basing your knowledge of the scale of this on? not saying your wrong per se, but you're contending a pretty diff picture than what id read so i was wondering if u have some info i dont

"Genocide". STOP USING THIS WORD, WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i can't wait to see what action the UN security council takes when pres. obiang takes his inevitable revenge on the people organizing protests on march 23rd in equatorial guinea

Also, this "he kills his own people" thing, how is that worse than killing anybody else?

x-post Well, here's what I mean. In Kosovo, there were people - men, women, children - targeted and killed based on their ethnicity. In Iraq, too (Kurds). In Afghanistan, no one would challenge the Taliban's active, aggressive, expansionist oppressiveness. Not saying they necessarily justified intervention, but at least there was some justification. But AFAIK, Qaddafi treated his whole country equally bad, and currently is repelling a rebellion.

Would we intervene on behalf of the Tibetan people vs. China? The Zimbabweans vs. Mugabe? Clearly Bahrain is SOL. Somalia began as a humanitarian mission, before we just held up our hands and said fuck it. What made Libya, of all the rotten or broken countries in the world, worth the potential costs of intervention?

i mean the guy's a total monster but i don't recall anything in libya over the last couple of months being as bad as those snipers killing 50 protesters in yemen the other day from the rooftops. the civil war in libya ramped up quick; it was soldier v soldier almost immediately. correct me if i'm wrong goole but it's the positions of rebel soldiers being protected here, not civilians.

Though of course, the rebels are "civilians."

are people actually claiming that qaddafi is committing genocide? or is that just something youre saying?

this really cant be said enough, but "there are dictators all over the world" isnt an argument against libyan intervention.

we give a shit about libya over bahrain or china because we feel as though we can make a positive difference at a low cost to our resources, int'l standing, money, investments, whatever

i keep hearing we have to 'prevent a genocide'

from

Tracer

ban tracer

I've heard it used in the media and by idiot politicians. I've heard all of the old Saddam cliches wheeled out... though, bizarrely, it was Gadaffi who brought up Hitler first, getting his retaliation in first I suppose

x-post Well, here's what I mean. In Kosovo, there were people - men, women, children - targeted and killed based on their ethnicity. In Iraq, too (Kurds). In Afghanistan, no one would challenge the Taliban's active, aggressive, expansionist oppressiveness. Not saying they necessarily justified intervention, but at least there was some justification. But AFAIK, Qaddafi treated his whole country equally bad, and currently is repelling a rebellion.

this really cant be said enough, but "there are dictators all over the world" isnt an argument against libyan intervention.

it's actually an argument for intervention ALL OVER THE WORLD. get ready, equatorial guinea

yes milo that's EXACTLY what everyone's saying

Um... Tracer, I'm responding to a paragraph which says exactly that. I didn't say anything about what other people believe.

Christ.

I, at least, never said Qaddafi was committing genocide. In fact, my point is that he is clearly not committing genocide, which in the recent past has been an excuse for intervention in various hot spots. As far as I know, he has not even been targeting men, women and children, specifically. He has been targeting a group of people who have undeniably taken up arms with the goal being his ouster or death. I don't support the dude one bit, but what is he supposed to do? Just die?

There are lots of reasons against Libyan intervention, but I have yet to hear a coherent pro that doesn't implicate a dozen other countries and/or failed states. To call this a cheap use of our resources both underplays the potential cost as well as the many potential damages, with the benefit being ... goodwill on behalf of some Libyans? Will they greet us as liberators?

hmm a couple benefits might be "libyan civilians dont get massacred by a dictator" and also "a brutal autocrat no longer oppresses a country"

correct me if i'm wrong goole but it's the positions of rebel soldiers being protected here, not civilians.

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, March 22, 2011 11:37 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'm not the guy you ought to be arguing with then. you keep saying there must be more to the administration thinking than 'protecting the libyan people', for all these other reasons, it just can't possibly make sense! nobody could really say that with a straight face!

i'm saying, yes, that's what they are doing, that's what they think they're doing. i get that people look askance at the idea of 'humanitarian intervention'. but i really don't get why you don't think Obama et al really believe that's what they're doing.

There was no genocide in Kosovo, Afghanistan or Iraq - the examples you used as potentially justified interventions. So I don't really know why you'd hold Qaddafi to a genocide standard here?

I'm not arguing about the correctness of your opposition to the Libyan action (or anyone's support for), but your argument seems terribly illogical to me.

xxp, of course

sorry for my tone, milo, you're right

for one thing, behind those 'positions of rebel soldiers' is a whole city full of people.

there are plenty of stories of gov't forces carrying out violent reprisals against non-combatants, and shelling into cities

The killing of innocent Libyan citizens is one thing, the targeting of innocent Libyan civilians another. This isn't one of those deals where a dictator invented a rebellion just so he can kill off a few thousand unarmed opponents. They started this! Again, what was he supposed to do? Give up his 40 year dictatorship and hand over the keys?

And re: freeing the country from the rule of a brutal autocrat, please. Qaddafi can get in line.

our "humanitarian intervention" in Kosovo simply accelerated the killing, I seem to recall

They were already killing people before the intervention, Morbz. Do you think they would have just stopped out of goodwill if NATO had done nothing?

the rebels held a city. the city liked the rebels. if gaddaffi had taken the city, all the rebel sympathizers or suspected rebel sympathizers in the city would have been killed. we know this because he kept saying it, on tv, in between charlie sheen broadcasts. and not that it's really relevant but it actually would have been way worse than 50 people in yemen. it's not about what happened "over the past couple months"; it's about what was gonna happen in like a week.

obviously there are a billion places in the world where Bad Stuff happens and "we" don't "care", and obviously using the word "genocide" here is a really regrettable linguistic error, but to outright deny that the u.n. has any humanitarian impulses at all is kinda silly.

The killing of innocent Libyan citizens is one thing, the targeting of innocent Libyan civilians another. This isn't one of those deals where a dictator invented a rebellion just so he can kill off a few thousand unarmed opponents. They started this! Again, what was he supposed to do? Give up his 40 year dictatorship and hand over the keys?

And re: freeing the country from the rule of a brutal autocrat, please. Qaddafi can get in line.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, March 22, 2011 12:57 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

waht

"guys, he was here, we should be cool to him"

The killing of innocent Libyan citizens is one thing, the targeting of innocent Libyan civilians another. This isn't one of those deals where a dictator invented a rebellion just so he can kill off a few thousand unarmed opponents. They started this! Again, what was he supposed to do? Give up his 40 year dictatorship and hand over the keys?

Uh... sorry, I don't think I can talk about this with you.

Right now the rebel counteradvance is being stalled 100 km south of Benghazi (10 km N of Sultan, identified from Al Jazeera footage) by daylight ambushes. Today's pro-Gaddafi MO is to hang back behind a low rise/berm, ambush lead rebel vehicles with large caliber MG fire at 700-1000 m. The rebels make frantic U-turns in confusion, drive back a couple of km, park and mill about on the side of the road. The pro-Gaddafi units use this time to plot an artillery solution on the congregation. A few burning vehicles and body parts are left in the rebel's hasty retreat.

I've completely changed opinions on the rebel chances over the past two weeks. All Libyan men serve 6 months conscription (enough for basic arms proficiency and indoctrination in following commands). I assumed that with high morale and numerous former officers they'd be ragtag but at least have someone collecting intel, setting objectives, running recon, organizing a LRDG-like raiding group etc. Now I pretty much agree with a colonel on the rebel side (quoted by Al Jaz) that the kids are "brave but suicidal". This was true with the Sunni insurgency in Iraq too. What eventually happens is that the suicidally brave are culled, leaving a smaller but more calculating core of guerrilas, but it takes a few years.

Assuming the UN coalition's orders are "enforce a no fly zone, and halt any pro-Gaddafi columns advancing within 100 km of Benghazi", this civil war could stagnate near this point on the map for quite some time.

so close to Godwining this with a reference to putting down the Warsaw Rebellion or something

xxxp: josh's point makes sense re: a head of state's right to put down violent military uprisings in his country. the intervention happened after gaddaffi made it clear a whole lot of civilians were going to be tortured to death.

Seriously, the goal here seems to be as noble as possible: free people from a dictator, protect the lives of innocents. I'm all for that, because how can you not be? But practically speaking, that alone, as noble and great an idealistic a goal as it is, is shaky grounds for intervention, especially in context. How long will we "care?" How long should we "care?" How long should a no-fly zone be imposed? What happens if/when the rebels lose? What then? We just shrug and leave Qaddafi to his malevolent whims?

haha goole are you suggesting that gaddafi's dudes were marching towards benghazi like "we are gonna kill all this women and children" and the rebels stepped in between them? benghazi is the rebel base - it's where most of their fighters are (setting aside the various tribes and factions within the libyan resistance and their differing agendas). if you're gonna crush a rebellion that's where you're gonna go. again, i'm not giving gaddafi credit for being some kind of good guy but the civilians killed in libya so far fit entirely under the "normal" kind of tit-for-tat retribution, collateral damage, and just plain mistakes that happen in any war. it is horrible but it's like, this is what happens when civil wars start.

so if the motivation behind the_west's military intervention were merely to save innocent lives, there are far starker humanitarian crises to blow billions of dollars on. right? so there have to be other motivations. i'm just trying to work out what those are. it's sorta weird how that seems like an offensive thing for me to be doing!

Like, I'm "for" intervention, in the abstract. But practically speaking, I'm still waiting for a clear idea of what we aim to achieve, and how we hope to achieve it.

How long will we "care?" How long should we "care?" How long should a no-fly zone be imposed? What happens if/when the rebels lose? What then? We just shrug and leave Qaddafi to his malevolent whims?

these are all good questions and i am not all that optimistic about our ability to answer them. but like i said upthread, i'm still glad gaddafi didn't enter benghazi.

yeah i think everyone's on the same page there. its just not clear that this is worse than the alternative

re: josh's quote DLH quoted

Defending Qaddafi on killing civilians because the rebels are among them is a bit too "Well, that Pashtun wedding shouldn't have looked like an al-Qaeda training camp" and "Palestinian parents should move their children so that when the Israelis blow up buildings they aren't hurt."

so if the motivation behind the_west's military intervention were merely to save innocent lives, there are far starker humanitarian crises to blow billions of dollars on. right?

sure, but not all of them have a pre-existing armed rebellion to back and a whole lot of international support including from the arab league whom we would be very excited to get some props from post-egypt. so yeah, there are Other Motives, but they're not all necessarily OIL! or whatever.

(well for the french there's probably some OIL! involved)

Do you think they would have just stopped (killing) out of goodwill if NATO had done nothing?

Based on everything I read at the time, some bombs might've helped 5 years before Clinton dropped them. Too bad Monica was still in high school then.

"there are dictators all over the world" isnt an argument against libyan intervention

oh sure it is.

Based on everything I read at the time, some bombs might've helped 5 years before Clinton dropped them. Too bad Monica was still in high school then.

― Fuck bein' hard, Dr Morbz is complicated (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, March 22, 2011 5:09 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sounds like rushing to war.