Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

Ivory Coast probably deserves a different thread of its own as the election there and the refusal of the president to leave and now his arrest is not really related to either of the two threads.

Libyans rebels reject African Union ceasefire plan. The rebels don't trust the African Union because of its prior favoritism toward Gaddafi.

Which, given the AU's 'peace with no imperialist involvement' is probably sensible, as far as the rebels go.

So the Brits and French are mad at the slow pace of NATO attacks, and I read somewhere that the rebels want a certain kind of US plane, the Warthog, that can fly lower and help guide more precise attacks by other planes. Does this mean that the Brits, French, and other NATO countries don't have this type of plane, or that the current NATO leaders of the mission have a more limited notion of the meaning of the mission. Or both?

Or neither?

i don't think the French of British have the A10 or that type of aircraft

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II

http://www.juancole.com/2011/04/misratas-people-under-siege.html

Juan Cole's latest on Libya

And I think there are A-10s in Libya already, though I might be mistaken. They probably want more. It's the sort of role the Harrier could have served, until they got decomishioned, other than that I'm not sure what advantages the A-10 would have over Lightnings\Tornados supported by Apaches.

scratch lighnings, but F15-F16s are about. If you look at the 'forces committed' section on wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_military_intervention_in_Libya It seems clear that it's not the lack of any specific hardware that is the problem.

Loitering time, lethality, low-altitude survivability. An A-10 out of Sicily can stay on station over Ajdabiya for hours, whereas the NATO Air Forces generally prefer flying high and fast, dropping standoff weapons, and flying home in a hurry. The US Air Force kinda hates them, as an originally $10 million dollar plane is far more feared by adversaries than their $132 million fighter showcases, which have little use in the kinds of conflicts the US has fought for 40 years. Most A-10s are relegated to reserve units.

AIt would work better with rebel units/covert agents designating targets though.

AFAIK, there aren't any attack helicopters on the scene except maybe 4 U.S. Marine SuperCobras onboard the USS Bataan. The USS Kearsage it replaced had an all MV-22 airwing.

Yeah, that's what I was wondering - why more attack helicopters aren't in use?

I mean we are meant to have shifted ground attack over to the Typhoon, but delay after delay means we can only use 10 (don't have enough pilots - doesn't stop them buzzing around here all day)

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

(warning: lots of dead bodies)

https://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=54891&id=200260906660331

google translate says: "Photos taken from camera one of the soldiers Alqma"

Aid agencies have been struggling to reach civilians in the cities of Benghazi and Misrata, where residents and migrant workers have faced shortages of basic foodstuffs, a lack of medical supplies and sporadic water and electricity supplies.

"According to available information, mainly from the eastern parts of the country, the food that is in the country is being consumed, without being adequately replenished," the WFP said
reuters story

NATO still struggling with same issue

"To avoid civilian casualties we need very sophisticated equipment so we need a few more precision fighter ground attack aircraft for air-to-ground missions," Rasmussen said. Admitting that he did not receive "no specific pledges or promises from this meeting," he expressed confidence that member nations would soon "step up to the plate."

the double negatives in that last sentence confuse me

regarding NATO Alliance helicopters, google noted links saying this 4 days ago:

Libyan government forces shot down two U.S.-built attack helicopters being used by rebel forces in the east of the country, the deputy foreign minister said early on Sunday. ...

Just me or is anyone else thinking that a "no fly zone" doesn't amount to shit given that Gaddafi never really used his airforce in the first place...?

Do you really not remember the struggle in the early stages?

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/03/08/world/08Libya2_cnd/08Libya2_cnd-articleLarge.jpg

It's looking rough for civilians and rebels in Misrata,

NY Times says forces loyal to Gaddaffi are firing cluster bombs (banned by much of the world) into residential neighborhoods in Misrata

we in the united states, however, do not stand for the use of cluster bombs

So, now Ghadafi is bringing himself down to the level of the Israeli Defense Forces when they went into Gaza? (/cheapshotartist)

I knew someone would point that out

... because the idea so naturally suggests itself to the engaged mind.

hey guys, the mission is regime change now!

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/15/libya/index.html

lies, lii-iiii-iiiies

dowd i do remember that, but the no-fly zone was intended to protect civilians, i thought? gaddafi didn't bomb any civilians with planes iirc

o rly?

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/169372.html

UPDATE: Writing yesterday in The Boston Globe, University of Texas Professor Alan Kuperman makes a compelling case "that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya." He also argues that "US interference has prolonged Libya’s civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents." I'm not adopting all of his arguments, but they are well-argued and definitely worth reading.

and it begins

yeah history mayne there were a lot of "reportedly" bombed civilians but no journalist ever confirmed it afaik

please note this is not a defense of gaddafi, but an attempt to just use facts we know to be true in an effort to understand the rationale behind the no-fly zone

(and you know what presstv is, right?)

iirc the issue was never whether or not qaddafi had bombed civilians, it was whether not he was going to. which--again iirc--he made explicitly clear that he would, once he took benghazi.

(and you know what presstv is, right?)

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Sunday, April 17, 2011 6:32 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i used it coz it seemed your sort of thing rly.

idk, he made it clear he would chase people from "house to house" in benghazi, which would preclude bombing -- but i don't find it that much of an effort trying to find the "rationale" for stopping gadaffi's forces getting there. different strokes though.

resolution 1973 is a dog's dinner, but it doesn't limit activity to a no-fly zone.

max i hadn't heard that. it sounds sufficiently crazy. if gaddafi's troops had taken benghazi it's hard to see why they'd need to bomb anything from the air. anyway this is all maybe a small point, but i get irritated when pieces of the casus belli end up kind of... not actually having happened and everyone just forgetting about it

it seemed your sort of thing rly.

cheap

cheap

also, very much in character

iirc the issue was never whether or not qaddafi had bombed civilians, it was whether not he was going to. which--again iirc--he made explicitly clear that he would, once he took benghazi.

― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Sunday, April 17, 2011 5:52 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm not sure this is correct. gaddafi's benghazi rant, prior to the 1973 resolution, was about going "house to house" to find and kill armed rebels. he didn't say he would take benghazi and then bomb civilians.

dowd i do remember that, but the no-fly zone was intended to protect civilians, i thought? gaddafi didn't bomb any civilians with planes iirc

OK: civilians rebel, are opposed with force. Rebels defend themselves. Gaddafi bombs civilians (albeit armed), the UN stops Gaddafi from bombing these people.

I don't know - when does an uprising cease to be civilian? These were not military forces, after all. In my (admittedly ideosyncratic) opinion Gaddafi is fighting the people - the people he is attacking are the people we are meant to protect.

And as for the idea that several of the NATO countries are calling for 'regime change' - that was always the damn point. Otherwise what was the point? OK, there may have been reasons not to state it, but the intervention was always meant to prevent the rebels from losing (and I really don't think it's a stretch to say that it was to help them win). Which would mean the removal of Gaddafi, by some means. Claiming the mission was a lie only means you weren't paying attention.

To clarify my meaning: the State was bombing the people's attempt at self-defence.

Claiming the mission was a lie only means you weren't paying attention.

Not so. The publically stated, official reason was "humanitarian", so as to prevent a "massacre of civilians". The fact that it was a transparent, self-serving lie doesn't mean it wasn't a lie, but only a poorly formed lie.

what's transparent is that the aim of the intervention included gadaffi going. but yes, they also said we're not going to do regime change. this was, i guess, a forlorn attempt to not make this seem like iraq II, ie, it was a probably unwise promise not to put in ground troops. the current position is contradictory-ish; it's difficult to see how the stalemate can be broken without increased involvement, but they're promising not to go much further than they have. they're still saying they won't put boots on the ground.

it wasn't a lie to say the aim was to stop a massacre; gadaffi going was the only way of making that (not) happen. it's a lie if you think that all along obama wanted gadaffi out and was looking for an excuse, i guess. that seems unlikely to me, and as for 'self-serving'? i don't think he wanted this really.

gadaffi going was the only way of making that (not) happen

o rly

lotta fortune tellers itt!

yes, anticipating future events is 'fortune telling'

this is hair-splitting though: you're against the intervention, so it doesn't really make any difference whether the killing could have been stopped without gadaffi's departure. i don't know why you're pressing the point -- it's irrelevant to your argument. the intervention is wrong whether or not it was aimed at getting rid of gadaffi or... some alternative where gadaffi stays.

i don't really have an argument. i think the case for war was built on a flimsy foundation. i think a lot of assertions about gaddafi's actions and intentions have been thrown around, some of which have turned out not to be true (that his air force bombed civilians, for instance). so i'm suspicious of anyone who claims to know what he would have done in an alternate universe, or what would have happened to extremely ill-defined "civilians" in an alternate universe, either over time or in the space of a weekend.

please understand that i'm not interpreting any of this as a consequence of the_west wanting "an excuse" to go to war (as was so transparently clear in the case of iraq). it's probably true that obama didn't really want this. but strangely, as in iraq, "truthiness" appears to have prevailed here in the run-up to war. where in iraq you had vastly different genres of unconventional weapons all lumped together as "WMD" (and thereby upgraded to be par with a nuclear bomb), in libya you have vastly different types of violence by the gaddafi regime lumped together, and thereby all upgraded to "attacks on innocent civilians". it's worth trying to parse the different level of threat and attack - and against whom - not only to understand the US and NATO response (and possibly critique it, or identify it as wrong-headed or misguided or perfectly pitched or what have you) but just to understand what the hell is going on in the first place.

Even as journalists and historians preoccupy themselves with trying to explain why something happened, they are playing a mug's game: however creative or well-sourced, their answers will be speculative, partial, and ambiguous. It can't be otherwise.

Rather than 'why', what deserves far more attention is the question of 'how'. Here is where we find Barack Obama and George W Bush (not to mention Bill Clinton, George HW Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter) joined at the hip.

When it comes to the Islamic world, for more than three decades, Washington's answer to 'how' has been remarkably consistent: through the determined application of hard power wielded by the United States.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/2011413113026323290.html

Even as journalists and historians preoccupy themselves with trying to explain why something happened, they are playing a mug's game: however creative or well-sourced, their answers will be speculative, partial, and ambiguous. It can't be otherwise.

i reeeally have to dispute this, completely divorcing this from anything to do with libya. of course i don't believe there's a absolute, final answer to any question of history. but calling the whole thing a mug's game? that's irrational, and anyway impossible.

of course the US has used hard power against some parts of 'the islamic world' in the last three decades. but they have also had other kinds of relations with 'the islamic world', which isn't a unified thing by any stretch of the imagination. i don't know where libya fits within it. gadaffi doesn't have many friends among other (predominantly) muslim states.

it's a bit over the top but pretty accurate i think. it's good to be reminded that the "why" of any intervention is a pick n mix bag of consensus.

one thing about gaddafi is that he has been a master at exploiting power vaccums in the region, and indeed all over africa. i have to wonder - it's hard to shake this "why" instinct! - if the US and NATO saw a great danger in an unfettered gaddafi moving to fill the void in egypt and tunisia. so that the broader "humanitarian" aim of this intervention was to stop that from happening - to protect the green shoots put down in egypt and tunisia.

i think william hague has said straight up that two major concerns were oil and refugees. sounds to me that you get refugees whatever happens. but i saw that in the sunday times iirc.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/04/14/false_pretense_for_war_in_libya/?camp=misc:on:share:article

The actual prospect in Benghazi was the final defeat of the rebels. To avoid this fate, they desperately concocted an impending genocide to rally international support for “humanitarian’’ intervention that would save their rebellion.