Still hanging on to the Nobel Peace Prize.
Obama's third war
US President Barack Obama's promises that Libya would be a short war with humanitarian aims have fallen flat.
Ted Rall Last Modified: 16 Jun 2011 14:09
Republicans in the United States Senate held a hearing in early April to discuss the progress of what has since become the war in Libya. It was one month into the operation. Senator John McCain, the Arizona conservative who lost the 2008 presidential race to Barack Obama, grilled US generals: "So, right now we are facing the prospect of a stalemate," McCain asked General Carter Ham, chief of the US' Africa Command. "I would agree with that at present," Ham replied.
How would the effort to depose Colonel Gaddafi conclude? "I think it does not end militarily," Ham predicted.
That was more than two months ago.
It's a familiar ritual. Once again military operation marketed as inexpensive, short-lived and - naturally -altruistic, is dragging on, piling up bills, with no end in sight. The scope of the mission, narrowly defined initially, has radically expanded. The Libyan stalemate is threatening to become, along with Iraq and especially Afghanistan, the third quagmire for the US.
Bear in mind, of course, that the US definition of a military quagmire does not square with the one in the dictionary, namely, a conflict from which one or both parties cannot disengage. The US could pull out of Libya. But it won't. Not yet.
Indeed, President Obama would improve his chances in his upcoming reelection campaign were he to order an immediate withdrawal from all four of America's "hot wars": Libya, along with Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Yemen. When US and NATO warplanes began dropping bombs on Libyan government troops and military targets in March, only 47 per cent of Americans approved - relatively low for the start of a military action. With US voters focused on the economy in general and joblessness in particular, this jingoistic nation's typical predilection for foreign adventurism has given way to irritation to anything that distracts from efforts to reduce unemployment. Now a mere 26 per cent support the war - a figure comparable to those for the Vietnam conflict at its nadir.
Language of war
For US citizens, "quagmire" became a term of political art after Vietnam. It refers not to a conflict that one cannot quit - indeed, the US has not fought a war where its own survival was at stake since 1815 - but one that cannot be won. The longer such a war drags on, with no clear conclusion at hand, the more that US national pride - and corporate profits - are at stake. Like a commuter waiting for a late bus, the more time, dead soldiers, and material has been squandered, the harder it is to throw up one's hands and give up. So Obama will not call off his dogs - his NATO allies - regardless of the polls. Like a gambler on a losing streak, he will keep doubling down.
US ground troops in Libya? Not yet. Probably never. But don't rule them out. Obama hasn't.
It is shocking, even by the standards of Pentagon warfare, how quickly "mission creep" has imposed itself in Libya. People in the US, at war as long as they can remember, recognise the signs: more than half the electorate believes that US forces will be engaged in combat in Libya at least through 2012.
One might rightly point out: this latest US incursion into Libya began recently, in March. Isn't it premature to worry about a quagmire?
Not necessarily.
"Like an unwelcome spectre from an unhappy past, the ominous word 'quagmire' has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad," RW Apple, Jr reported in The New York Times. He was talking about Afghanistan.
Apple was prescient. He wrote his story on October 31, 2001, three weeks into what has since become the United States' longest war.
Framing the narrative
Obama never could have convinced a war-weary public to tolerate a third war in a Muslim country had he not promoted the early bombing campaign as a humanitarian effort to protect Libya's eastern-based rebels (recast as "civilians") from imminent Srebrenica-esque massacre by Gaddafi's forces. "We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi - a city nearly the size of Charlotte [North Carolina] - could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world," the president said on March 28. "It was not in our national interest to let that happen. I refused to let that happen."
Obama promised a "limited" role for the US military, which would be part of "broad coalition" to "protect civilians, stop an advancing army, prevent a massacre, and establish a no-fly zone." There would be no attempt to drive Gaddafi out of power. "Of course, there is no question that Libya - and the world - would be better off with Gaddafi out of power," he said. "I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake."
"Regime change [in Iraq]," Obama reminded, "took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya."
The specifics were fuzzy, critics complained. How would Libya retain its territorial integrity - a stated US war aim - while allowing Gaddafi to keep control of the western provinces around Tripoli?
The answer, it turned out, was essentially a replay of Bill Clinton's bombing campaign against Serbia during the 1990s. US and NATO warplanes targeted Gaddafi's troops. Bombs degraded Libyan military infrastructure: bases, radar towers, even ships. US policymakers hoped against hope that Gaddafi's generals would turn against him, either assassinating him in a coup or forcing the Libyan strongman into exile.
If Gaddafi had disappeared, Obama's goal would have been achieved: easy in, easy out. With a little luck, Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb would have little to no influence on the incoming government to be created by Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC). With more good fortune, the NTC could even be counted upon to sign over favourable oil concessions to US and European energy concerns.
But Gaddafi was no Milosevic. The dictator dug in his heels. This was at least in part due to NATO's unwillingness or inability to offer him the dictator retirement plan of Swiss accounts, gym bags full of bullion, and a swanky home on the French Riviera.
Reaching the impasse
Stalemate was the inevitable result of America's one foot in, one foot out Libya war policy - an approach that continued after control of the operation was officially turned over to NATO, specifically Britain and France. Allied jets were directed to deter attacks on Benghazi and other NTC-held positions, not to win the revolution for them. NTC forces, untrained and poorly armed, were no match for Gaddafi's professional army. On the other hand, loyalist forces were met with heavy NATO air strikes whenever they tried to advance into rebel-held territory. Libya was bifurcated. With Gaddafi still alive and in charge, this was the only way Obama administration policy could play out.
No one knows whether Gaddafi's angry bluster - the rants that prompted Western officials to attack - would have materialised in the form of a massacre. It is clear, on the other hand, that Libyans on both sides of the front are paying a high price for the US-created stalemate.
At least one million among Libya's population of six million has fled the nation or become internally displaced. There are widespread shortages of basic goods, including food and fuel. According to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, the NTC has pulled children out of schools in areas they administer and put them to work "cleaning streets, working as traffic cops and dishing up army rations to rebel soldiers".
NATO jets fly one sortie after another; the fact that they're running out of targets doesn't stop them from dropping their payloads. Each bomb risks killing more of the civilians they are ostensibly supposed to be protecting. Libyans will be living in rubble for years after the war ends.
Coalition pilots were given wide leeway in the definition of "command and control centres" that could be targeted; one air strike against the Libyan leader's home killed 29-year-old Saif al-Arab, Gaddafi's son, along with three of his grandchildren, said Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim. Gaddafi himself remained in hiding. Officially, however, NATO was not allowed to even think about trying to assassinate him.
Pentagon brass told Obama that more firepower was required to turn the tide in favour of the ragtag army of the NTC. But he couldn't do that. He was faced with a full-scale rebellion by a coalition of liberal antiwar Democrats and Republican constitutionalists in the US House of Representatives. Furious that the president had failed to request formal Congressional approval for the Libyan war within 60 days as required by the 1973 War Powers Act, they voted against a military appropriations bill for Libya.
The planes kept flying. But Congress' reticence now leaves one way to close the deal: kill Gaddafi.
As recently as May 1, after the killing of Gaddafi's son and grandchildren, NATO was still denying that it was trying to dispatch Gaddafi. "All NATO's targets are military in nature and have been clearly linked to the Gaddafi regime's systematic attacks on the Libyan population and populated areas. We do not target individuals," said Canada's Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, commanding military operations in Libya.
By June 10, CNN confirmed that NATO was targeting Libya's leader for death. "Asked by CNN whether Gaddafi was being targeted," CNN reported, "[a high-ranking] NATO official declined to give a direct answer. The [UN] resolution applies to Gaddafi because, as head of the military, he is part of the control and command structure and therefore a legitimate target, the official said."
In other words, a resolution specifically limiting the scope of the war to protecting civilians and eschewing regime change was being used to justify regime change via political assassination.
So what happens next?
First: war comes to Washington. On June 14, the House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner sent Obama a rare warning letter complaining of "a refusal to acknowledge and respect the role of Congress" in the US war against Libya and a "lack of clarity" about the mission.
"It would appear that in five days, the administration will be in violation of the War Powers Resolution unless it asks for and receives authorisation from Congress or withdraws all US troops and resources from the mission [in Libya]," Boehner wrote. "Have you ... conducted the legal analysis to justify your position?" he asked. "Given the gravity of the constitutional and statutory questions involved, I request your answer by Friday, June 17, 2011."
Next, the stalemate/quagmire continues. Britain can keep bombing Libya "as long as we choose to," said General Sir David Richards, the UK Chief of Defence Staff.
One event could change everything overnight: Gaddafi's death. Until then, NATO and the United States must accept the moral responsibility for dragging out a probable aborted uprising in eastern Libya into a protracted civil war with no military - or, contrary to NATO pronouncements, political - solution in the foreseeable future. Libya is assuming many of the characteristics of a proxy war such as in Afghanistan during the 1980s, wherein outside powers armed warring factions to rough parity but not beyond, with the effect of extending the conflict at tremendous cost of life and treasure. This time around, only one side, the NTC rebels, are receiving foreign largess - but not enough to score a decisive victory against Gaddafi by capturing Tripoli.
Libya was Obama's first true war. He aimed to show how Democrats manage international military efforts differently than neo-cons like Bush. He built an international coalition. He made the case on humanitarian grounds. He declared a short time span.
In three short months, all of Obama's plans have fallen apart. NATO itself is fracturing. There is talk about dissolving it entirely. The Libya mission is stretching out into 2011 and beyond.
People all over the world are questioning US motives in Libya and criticising the thin veneer of legality used to justify the bombings. "We strongly believe that the [UN] resolution [on Libya] is being abused for regime change, political assassinations and foreign military occupation," South African President Jacob Zuma said this week, echoing criticism of the invasion of Iraq.
Somewhere in Texas, George W Bush is smirking.
Obama's third war
US President Barack Obama's promises that Libya would be a short war with humanitarian aims have fallen flat.
Ted Rall Last Modified: 16 Jun 2011 14:09
Republicans in the United States Senate held a hearing in early April to discuss the progress of what has since become the war in Libya. It was one month into the operation. Senator John McCain, the Arizona conservative who lost the 2008 presidential race to Barack Obama, grilled US generals: "So, right now we are facing the prospect of a stalemate," McCain asked General Carter Ham, chief of the US' Africa Command. "I would agree with that at present," Ham replied.
How would the effort to depose Colonel Gaddafi conclude? "I think it does not end militarily," Ham predicted.
That was more than two months ago.
It's a familiar ritual. Once again military operation marketed as inexpensive, short-lived and - naturally -altruistic, is dragging on, piling up bills, with no end in sight. The scope of the mission, narrowly defined initially, has radically expanded. The Libyan stalemate is threatening to become, along with Iraq and especially Afghanistan, the third quagmire for the US.
Bear in mind, of course, that the US definition of a military quagmire does not square with the one in the dictionary, namely, a conflict from which one or both parties cannot disengage. The US could pull out of Libya. But it won't. Not yet.
Indeed, President Obama would improve his chances in his upcoming reelection campaign were he to order an immediate withdrawal from all four of America's "hot wars": Libya, along with Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Yemen. When US and NATO warplanes began dropping bombs on Libyan government troops and military targets in March, only 47 per cent of Americans approved - relatively low for the start of a military action. With US voters focused on the economy in general and joblessness in particular, this jingoistic nation's typical predilection for foreign adventurism has given way to irritation to anything that distracts from efforts to reduce unemployment. Now a mere 26 per cent support the war - a figure comparable to those for the Vietnam conflict at its nadir.
Language of war
For US citizens, "quagmire" became a term of political art after Vietnam. It refers not to a conflict that one cannot quit - indeed, the US has not fought a war where its own survival was at stake since 1815 - but one that cannot be won. The longer such a war drags on, with no clear conclusion at hand, the more that US national pride - and corporate profits - are at stake. Like a commuter waiting for a late bus, the more time, dead soldiers, and material has been squandered, the harder it is to throw up one's hands and give up. So Obama will not call off his dogs - his NATO allies - regardless of the polls. Like a gambler on a losing streak, he will keep doubling down.
US ground troops in Libya? Not yet. Probably never. But don't rule them out. Obama hasn't.
It is shocking, even by the standards of Pentagon warfare, how quickly "mission creep" has imposed itself in Libya. People in the US, at war as long as they can remember, recognise the signs: more than half the electorate believes that US forces will be engaged in combat in Libya at least through 2012.
One might rightly point out: this latest US incursion into Libya began recently, in March. Isn't it premature to worry about a quagmire?
Not necessarily.
"Like an unwelcome spectre from an unhappy past, the ominous word 'quagmire' has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad," RW Apple, Jr reported in The New York Times. He was talking about Afghanistan.
Apple was prescient. He wrote his story on October 31, 2001, three weeks into what has since become the United States' longest war.
Framing the narrative
Obama never could have convinced a war-weary public to tolerate a third war in a Muslim country had he not promoted the early bombing campaign as a humanitarian effort to protect Libya's eastern-based rebels (recast as "civilians") from imminent Srebrenica-esque massacre by Gaddafi's forces. "We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi - a city nearly the size of Charlotte [North Carolina] - could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world," the president said on March 28. "It was not in our national interest to let that happen. I refused to let that happen."
Obama promised a "limited" role for the US military, which would be part of "broad coalition" to "protect civilians, stop an advancing army, prevent a massacre, and establish a no-fly zone." There would be no attempt to drive Gaddafi out of power. "Of course, there is no question that Libya - and the world - would be better off with Gaddafi out of power," he said. "I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake."
"Regime change [in Iraq]," Obama reminded, "took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya."
The specifics were fuzzy, critics complained. How would Libya retain its territorial integrity - a stated US war aim - while allowing Gaddafi to keep control of the western provinces around Tripoli?
The answer, it turned out, was essentially a replay of Bill Clinton's bombing campaign against Serbia during the 1990s. US and NATO warplanes targeted Gaddafi's troops. Bombs degraded Libyan military infrastructure: bases, radar towers, even ships. US policymakers hoped against hope that Gaddafi's generals would turn against him, either assassinating him in a coup or forcing the Libyan strongman into exile.
If Gaddafi had disappeared, Obama's goal would have been achieved: easy in, easy out. With a little luck, Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb would have little to no influence on the incoming government to be created by Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC). With more good fortune, the NTC could even be counted upon to sign over favourable oil concessions to US and European energy concerns.
But Gaddafi was no Milosevic. The dictator dug in his heels. This was at least in part due to NATO's unwillingness or inability to offer him the dictator retirement plan of Swiss accounts, gym bags full of bullion, and a swanky home on the French Riviera.
Reaching the impasse
Stalemate was the inevitable result of America's one foot in, one foot out Libya war policy - an approach that continued after control of the operation was officially turned over to NATO, specifically Britain and France. Allied jets were directed to deter attacks on Benghazi and other NTC-held positions, not to win the revolution for them. NTC forces, untrained and poorly armed, were no match for Gaddafi's professional army. On the other hand, loyalist forces were met with heavy NATO air strikes whenever they tried to advance into rebel-held territory. Libya was bifurcated. With Gaddafi still alive and in charge, this was the only way Obama administration policy could play out.
No one knows whether Gaddafi's angry bluster - the rants that prompted Western officials to attack - would have materialised in the form of a massacre. It is clear, on the other hand, that Libyans on both sides of the front are paying a high price for the US-created stalemate.
At least one million among Libya's population of six million has fled the nation or become internally displaced. There are widespread shortages of basic goods, including food and fuel. According to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, the NTC has pulled children out of schools in areas they administer and put them to work "cleaning streets, working as traffic cops and dishing up army rations to rebel soldiers".
NATO jets fly one sortie after another; the fact that they're running out of targets doesn't stop them from dropping their payloads. Each bomb risks killing more of the civilians they are ostensibly supposed to be protecting. Libyans will be living in rubble for years after the war ends.
Coalition pilots were given wide leeway in the definition of "command and control centres" that could be targeted; one air strike against the Libyan leader's home killed 29-year-old Saif al-Arab, Gaddafi's son, along with three of his grandchildren, said Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim. Gaddafi himself remained in hiding. Officially, however, NATO was not allowed to even think about trying to assassinate him.
Pentagon brass told Obama that more firepower was required to turn the tide in favour of the ragtag army of the NTC. But he couldn't do that. He was faced with a full-scale rebellion by a coalition of liberal antiwar Democrats and Republican constitutionalists in the US House of Representatives. Furious that the president had failed to request formal Congressional approval for the Libyan war within 60 days as required by the 1973 War Powers Act, they voted against a military appropriations bill for Libya.
The planes kept flying. But Congress' reticence now leaves one way to close the deal: kill Gaddafi.
As recently as May 1, after the killing of Gaddafi's son and grandchildren, NATO was still denying that it was trying to dispatch Gaddafi. "All NATO's targets are military in nature and have been clearly linked to the Gaddafi regime's systematic attacks on the Libyan population and populated areas. We do not target individuals," said Canada's Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard, commanding military operations in Libya.
By June 10, CNN confirmed that NATO was targeting Libya's leader for death. "Asked by CNN whether Gaddafi was being targeted," CNN reported, "[a high-ranking] NATO official declined to give a direct answer. The [UN] resolution applies to Gaddafi because, as head of the military, he is part of the control and command structure and therefore a legitimate target, the official said."
In other words, a resolution specifically limiting the scope of the war to protecting civilians and eschewing regime change was being used to justify regime change via political assassination.
So what happens next?
First: war comes to Washington. On June 14, the House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner sent Obama a rare warning letter complaining of "a refusal to acknowledge and respect the role of Congress" in the US war against Libya and a "lack of clarity" about the mission.
"It would appear that in five days, the administration will be in violation of the War Powers Resolution unless it asks for and receives authorisation from Congress or withdraws all US troops and resources from the mission [in Libya]," Boehner wrote. "Have you ... conducted the legal analysis to justify your position?" he asked. "Given the gravity of the constitutional and statutory questions involved, I request your answer by Friday, June 17, 2011."
Next, the stalemate/quagmire continues. Britain can keep bombing Libya "as long as we choose to," said General Sir David Richards, the UK Chief of Defence Staff.
One event could change everything overnight: Gaddafi's death. Until then, NATO and the United States must accept the moral responsibility for dragging out a probable aborted uprising in eastern Libya into a protracted civil war with no military - or, contrary to NATO pronouncements, political - solution in the foreseeable future. Libya is assuming many of the characteristics of a proxy war such as in Afghanistan during the 1980s, wherein outside powers armed warring factions to rough parity but not beyond, with the effect of extending the conflict at tremendous cost of life and treasure. This time around, only one side, the NTC rebels, are receiving foreign largess - but not enough to score a decisive victory against Gaddafi by capturing Tripoli.
Libya was Obama's first true war. He aimed to show how Democrats manage international military efforts differently than neo-cons like Bush. He built an international coalition. He made the case on humanitarian grounds. He declared a short time span.
In three short months, all of Obama's plans have fallen apart. NATO itself is fracturing. There is talk about dissolving it entirely. The Libya mission is stretching out into 2011 and beyond.
People all over the world are questioning US motives in Libya and criticising the thin veneer of legality used to justify the bombings. "We strongly believe that the [UN] resolution [on Libya] is being abused for regime change, political assassinations and foreign military occupation," South African President Jacob Zuma said this week, echoing criticism of the invasion of Iraq.
Somewhere in Texas, George W Bush is smirking.
