Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

A NATO decision to take charge of a no-fly zone over Libya does not include conducting air strikes against Muammar Gaddafi's ground forces, a mission that will remain in U.S. hands until a new command deal is reached, Vice Admiral Bill Gortney said on Friday.

Gortney, chief of the U.S. military's Joint Staff, said the U.N.-backed operation against Gaddafi's forces involved three different missions -- an arms embargo, a no-fly zone and protecting Libyan civilians.

He said the U.S. military initially assumed command of all three missions in order to quickly implement the U.N. resolution authorizing the action. But President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials made it clear the United States would hand off control of the operation as soon as feasible.

From MSNBC.

Also, I was reading rightwinger Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post badmouthing the "Professor Obama" decisions to get approval from others and to hand off to others (whom he also mocked). Charles says the folks rebelling want the US to lead. There are certainly flaws in the approach but I'm not ready to agree with Charles' proposed method. He apparently likes the good ol Bush ways where you make up stuff about weapons of mass destruction and go in unilaterally.

A Canadian's been put in charge: http://www.globaltvedmonton.com/Canadian+head+NATO+mission+Libya/4505412/story.html. "Odyssey Dawn," out; hello "Operation Roll Up the Rim to Win."

Krauthammer isn't looking for a solution, he's looking for cudgel to bash Obama.

xp the left has really disgraced itself in foreign policy over the last decade imo and I'm still not sure why that came to be so. There seems to have been a reluctance to view any issue other than on whether it is palatable to Bush (basically, still) and therefore evil, with its counterpart being a refusal to engage with non-westerners as independent actors. I can just about see the sense if the cold war were ongoing (historically it seems to have been ever thus which you could understand if one were picking sides and one chose international socialism; not so much if one's choosing Hizbollah or Gaddafi), but it's a fundamentally childish way of looking at the world as it is now. I don't see why leaning left on economics should require leaning like this on foreign policy.

(Obviously I'm speaking in generalities here, generally I'm with Blair on the broad approach to foreign policy etc and I still consider him to be of the left - but it isn't half hard sometimes.)

the left has really disgraced itself in foreign policy over the last decade imo

Are you talking about UK leftwing bloggers or academics or ? because the left has not had a prominent political role or a strong media role in most nations over the last decade unless you're consider the Blair govt. to be Left

I'm talking about those with the loudest voices really, which yeah you could say is mostly unrepresentative types like Galloway and Stop The War, but they did capture the media and polite opinion on those issues for a long time and gave islamists an unwelcome leg-up into the bargain (specifically Ken Livingstone, who was in a position to do more than just posture)

But yeah, where the left has been in real power it has mostly been relatively pragmatic - though as you hint this seems to disqualify them from being considered as such.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/03/201132681812362552.html

Looks like the rebels have regained momentum, retaking Ajdabiya.

When your opponents have just had the shit pounded out of them for a week, at a cost of a couple of billion dollars, regaining momentum is made rather simpler.

There seems to have been a reluctance to view any issue other than on whether it is palatable to Bush (basically, still)

i know bringing michael moore up is basically strawmanning, but i somehow managed to be surprised that all his tweets were like "JUSTIFICATION FOR GOING INTO LIBYA: THEM GOT WMDS!" and "JUSTIFICATION FOR GOING INTO LIBYA: THEY TRIED TO KILL MY PAW!" and apparently 2003-2008's flood of self-righteous snot just choked off michael moore's brain forever.

"michael moore's brain"

ha

Still want to know how much the rebels have to "win" before the_west stops bombing.

I am guessing that, for now, NATO military operations will continue until Qwodaiffffi (sp?) resigns or is killed, or until everything is so bogged down and hopeless that no one knows what should be done next.

We need to poll all the permutations of this man's name.

poll only has 50 choices?

I've been waiting to use this quote from the West Wing pilot...

LEO: Margaret. Please call the editor of the New York Times crossword and tell him that Khaddafi is spelled with an h, and two d’s, and isn’t a seven letter word for anything.
MARGARET: Is this for real? Or is this just funny?
LEO: Apparently, it’s neither.

[Later, on the phone to the New York Times]

LEO: [on phone] Seventeen across. Yes. Seventeen across is wrong. You're spelling his name wrong. What's my name? My name doesn't matter. I'm just an ordinary citizen who relies on the Times crossword for stimulation. And I'm telling you, that I've met the man twice, and I've recommended a preemptive Exocet Missile strike against his airforce. So, I think I know how to...
C.J.: [in shock] Leo!
LEO: [looking at the phone, then hanging up] They hang up on me. Every time.
C.J.: That's almost hard to believe.

sorry, I'll go away now :D

When your opponents have just had the shit pounded out of them for a week, at a cost of a couple of billion dollars, regaining momentum is made rather simpler.

Yes, that's the point.

So, when the rebels reach the Team Qaddafi towns and begin their inevitable massacre in that direction, backed by allied warplanes, we all cool with those innocent men, women and children amongst the supporters getting slaughtered?

A literal reading of the UN resolution would suggest the "allies" then start bombing the rebels, right?

So, when the rebels reach the Team Qaddafi towns and begin their inevitable massacre in that direction, backed by allied warplanes, we all cool with those innocent men, women and children amongst the supporters getting slaughtered?

What makes you think the rebels will massacre people?

The rebels will strike with surgical precision, using laser-guided weapons, to eliminate only the 52 villains soon to be depicted on a pack of custom-printed playing cards.

And anything else would be a massacre.

Casualties inflicted during battle, even upon innocent civilians, would not qualify as a massacre. However, if deadly force is deliberately used against civilians in a situation where no military resistance is expected, then "massacre" would fit. I have no idea if the rebels in Libya will do this or not. Retribution is a common sequel to successful armed uprisings.

The rebels are going to need the continuing support of the UN, which might keep them from getting over-zealous. I suspect that most of the violence will be in the character of the other revolts, or the early anti-soviet protests - the people will turn on groups like the secret police. We also don't know if the army will defend Tripoli - they're on the backfoot at the moment, presumable to try to ringfence Tripoli, but things might look hopeless by then, with defections within the army, and internal revolt within the city.

"How long must the footsteps of freedom be gravestones" is a legitimate question, but people forget that the alternative situation was that freedom took a couple of steps, faltered and stumbled, falling into a mass-grave in Benghazi. I'd take the risk of possible retaliatory violence (which I think is unlikely) over the near certain slaughter that would have followed Gaddafi's victory.

What makes a revolt worthwhile is not the success or failure of the struggle for freedom - this is no difference from the other revolutions recently except this has been met with force - what matters is that people were willing to commit to that struggle, and we should stand by them.

/drunk/flowery/sorry

also otm

a few questions

- what does this have to do with us

- isn't it extremely likely that becoming the air force of the libyan rebels will have the opposite of the declared effect, i.e. instead of buttressing the most exciting, broad-based arab uprising in literally centuries we have stomped in like a bull in a china shop and guaranteed that whoever succeeds gaddafi will be seen as an illegitimate western puppet

- most people on this thread seem to be hanging their support of this strange coalition on "civilian deaths" - that gaddafi has been egregious in this respect and must be stopped at all costs. so - if this ragtag libyan oppositon were holed up in benghazi with their backs to the wall, gaddafi's tanks and planes advancing inexorably toward them, you would NOT support airstrikes by the global north in the absence of earlier instances of civilians being killed?

- what does this have to do with us

- if a 16-year-old deathmetal fan picks up an AK and jumps in a jeep and is then killed by mortar fire, is that a "civilian death"?

- who are we fighting for? do we stand foursquare with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group LIFG, formerly backed by bin laden, then qatar, who have assassinated dozens of libyan policemen, who tried several times to assassinate gaddafi, who in 2009 supposedly renounced violence, and who sparked the initial libyan protests in mid-february (allegedly shooting and killing more than 100 libyan soldiers)? we're probably more sympatico with the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), given that they were created by israel and the CIA and subsequently backed by britain, morocca, saudi arabia, france and iraq. what do we think of the Libyan League for Human Rights, a geneva-based organization that gets heavily quoted in the media, predicting "a massacre like rwanda" in the absence of air support? how far we will go with the Libyan Constitutional Union, which wants a return to the monarchy?

- what does this have to do with us

- what does this have to do with us

some of the points are worth addressing, but posing this question three times, as if particularly perceptive and overlooked, strikes me as beyond retarded, unless you're into abandoning the UN, joining #team_pat_buchanan, etc

hackney tourist board gonna give himself an aneurysm here

isn't it extremely likely that becoming the air force of the libyan rebels will have the opposite of the declared effect, i.e. instead of buttressing the most exciting, broad-based arab uprising in literally centuries we have stomped in like a bull in a china shop and guaranteed that whoever succeeds gaddafi will be seen as an illegitimate western puppet

is it 'extremely likely'? what makes the likelihood so extreme? all of this is so crudely put -- won't it GUARANTEE THE EXACT OPPOSITE EFFECT? isn't the rebellion EXCITING whereas arab league, UN, and western intervention will make the winners PUPPETS even if they asked for help!? anyway anyway: it isn't out business to buttress or not-buttress anything because what the fuck does it have to do with us, right? why should we buttress these dudes who, you then say, are probably either islamists or agents of mossad anyway? what's so exciting, by the way, about the rebellion if it's being pushed by the islamists? what's your line here?

: it isn't out business to buttress or not-buttress anything because what the fuck does it have to do with us, right?

well, in a nutshell.

what's exciting about all this rebellions to me is that they're broad-based and largely positive; intolerance and fear are not the main weapons involved, which marks a big difference from most revolutionary and civil wars of the last couple of decades, from the balkans to rwanda to afghanistan. it makes me think that the 90s may finally be over, and that arabs are leading the way. or at least they were.

unless you're into abandoning the UN

haha yes, the united states just takes its marching orders from the UN. right.

by your own account, the revolutionaries don't all sound that positive and tolerant:

do we stand foursquare with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group LIFG, formerly backed by bin laden, then qatar, who have assassinated dozens of libyan policemen, who tried several times to assassinate gaddafi, who in 2009 supposedly renounced violence, and who sparked the initial libyan protests in mid-february (allegedly shooting and killing more than 100 libyan soldiers)? we're probably more sympatico with the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), given that they were created by israel and the CIA and subsequently backed by britain, morocca, saudi arabia, france and iraq.

and this rebellion was going to be smashed, so how the west has destroyed the momentum of the arab spring by stopping that happening is unclear to me.

xpost

the UN is such a US puppet: that's why it okayed the iraq war. i kid: obviously it is. but idk, anti-war kids used to say things like 'the iraq war lacked a UN resolution'; now they say 'the UN is a bunch of bullshit' i suppose.

not really sure you could have a UN-type outfit that wasn't dominated by the great powers. would be really interested to hear how that could work.

it makes me think that the 90s may finally be over

get one calendar

dude i just saw a guy who looked he was in a Verve video this morning. and all those tattoos will last FOREVER.

where were the UN when kulashaker were releasing records eh

regarding the makeup of the revolutionaries in libya i think yes - some of them are just thugs with a grievance who happened to have been trained by the CIA in chad. but a lot of them are idealistic young people with a grievance. sometimes those are the same people. i think it's very broad-based and very complicated. IBM should send in Watson the supercomputer to help the rebels keep track of themselves.

and this rebellion was going to be smashed, so how the west has destroyed the momentum of the arab spring by stopping that happening is unclear to me.

i was thinking more in terms of shockwaves throughout the region. i.e. the Egyptian military is supplying truckloads of arms to the Libyan rebels; will this de facto alliance with NATO eventually delegitimize the New Egypt? maybe not. who knows? kapow!

anyway i noticed that no supporters of the Libyan rebels' new air force have been interested in answering the question about whether they would still support it in the absence of civilian deaths leading up to the standoff in benghazi. if demonstrators had not been killed previously, would you have been willing to bite your lip and watch the rebel troops get killed (actually i think "slaughter" was the favored term) with the_global_north doing nothing overt to stop it?

most of these countries are part of the global north, id have thought, really, being relatively rich and technologically advanced

i don't know if they hate europe and america as much as you'd like them to, though -- it's possible, and then, yes, maybe kapow!

no-one knows what the new egypt is yet. those arms that they're giving to the libyan rebels, be they CIA-trained or pure-of-heart islamists, are probably from the old, ie US-backed, egypt. kapow!

xpost

that's a really strange hypothetical to me. are you in favour of the gadaffi family's assets being frozen? what, after all, has it to do with us?

those arms that they're giving to the libyan rebels, be they CIA-trained or pure-of-heart islamists, are probably from the old, ie US-backed, egypt. kapow!

no, those arms being delivered right now, as we type.

that's a really strange hypothetical to me.

i pose it because to me it seemed that a lot of the emotional urgency driving this new war was the image of this tiny band of rebels facing certain death at the hands of a dictator's army. yet the justifications for intervention - on this thread, in the media, and from the state department - weren't military but humanitarian.

no, those arms being delivered right now, as we type.

but the arms are, i would imagine, from existing egyptian stock? that's what im assuming. has the US cut all ties with the egyptian military now? or has it magicked up some other way of paying its way and that of the libyan rebels?

i think the justification for the war came itt from the prospect of "this tiny band of rebels AND A BUNCH OF UNARMED CIVILIAN PROTESTERS facing certain death at the hands of a dictator's army", yep. reasonably sure gaddafi would not have distinguished the CIA-backed guys (who obviously weren't that well trained over in chad since they did a pretty bad job) from the unhappy burghers of benghazi.

oh i mean there is no doubt that anyone in benghazi who so much as provided a bed for a rebel or journalist to sleep in would have been killed. but what does that have to do with us?

warning: conspiracy theorist alert: given that probably about half the factions of the National Transitional Council ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Transitional_Council ) were either created directly by western powers or funded by them over the past thirty years, could the United States (and the UK, and France, etc) not only feel a special responsibility here, but actually bear a direct responsibility?

i don't know. nothing. let em die i guess.

it's obviously crazy to have western europeans and americans involved in arab affairs, and that's why we should let the ottomans do their thing

xpost

holy shit really? putting this thread in my reahview for a bit. someone else can discuss questions of agency w/ you.

is it so so crazy to see this as yet another western-backed failed coup of gaddafi's regime, this time with the heartbreaking add-on of peaceful young demonstrators?

given its far from over, yes

no this was gonna be quick, obama said so

Or just US lead role was gonna be over quick