Posts by glennd
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Libya, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
From what I gather she does not intend to remain Secretary of State. A year is a long time and Obama is making many things look possible. Not certain, but possible and she seems to be laying groundwork pretty well.
-
Hard News: Libya, in reply to Steve Parks,
Actually, while being cynically correct, I think that it will work out well for Hillary rather than Obama. It was her that finally got the USA into action and if it turns out well I would be very unsurprised to see her using it as her "hard-ass international street-cred" in 2012 if Obama's other problems persist as they seem they will. If it goes tits-up (relatively speaking), then she will be nowhere to be found and Obama will carry the can.
Anyhow I don't think that the exit strategy is that simple, once you've engaged in war you can't suddenly stop with no consequence. Reagan pounded the crap out of Tripoli but failed to remove Ghaddafi and that ultimately led to Lockerbie, Machiavelli is dead right, you have to kill the king if you strike at him. Of course someone else might suffer the political consequence of that and not Obama.
However the greatest risk for Obama is that the point where such an exit can be made will pass due to his love of not making decisions until drawn into it by someone else. George W, for all his faults, at least took the decisions and stood behind them. In which case it will drag into an interminable war in all but name like Iraq through the 1990s or the Libyans will be summarily abandoned to whoever emerges from the dust. Either way, it is political gravy for Obama's opponents and rivals to add to his growing list of domestic and international "troubles".
Personally I think that "Obama" should either have gone for a full-scale operation with a unified command, a-la Bush 1990 to crush Ghadaffis forces but finished off with arresting Ghadaffi, or at least have reserved US forces until the French and British had completed establishing a no fly zone and some semblence of a coherent strategy was put in place. Domestically he should have done his level best to delay any images of US action and any hint of going to war, and certainly not at the behest of France without duly notifying the nation. As it is now, I do not believe it is going to end happily for anyone other than perhaps Hillary and whatever disciplined thugs remain when the action stops (although I would love to be wrong and see Ghadaffi slink off to some cesspit and watch Libya overcome its tribal ways and settle into domestic bliss, I just don't get that vibe though).
-
Hard News: Libya, in reply to Steve Parks,
My point was that the USA/Obama wishes to wash its hands of the business after limited engagement, however history and a reasonable expectation shows no such thing will happen (the limited engagement that is). That is Obama's error and that is what will cost him.
-
All I can say is acid house FTW! Loving the links to the old school stuff.
-
Well it is nice to see that the concern for the well-being of our fellow humans goes as far as the difficulty in liberating them. Pretty much condemns them to starvation until the whim of time brings about the fall of the ruling dynasty. That whole R2P thing really is just a matter of convenience isn't it? But still, if you wish to take Korea off the table then Syria, Iran and the general neighbourhood provide more than enough replacements.
And, if you wish to be pedantic about turns of phrase then update that to “firing off a few tomahawks, running a few strikes and attempting to wash your hands of the business”. But, as you noted, it is win-win for the USA whatever the outcome once they wash their hands so please excuse the less than precise enumeration of the action so far.
-
Hard News: Libya, in reply to chris,
And the reason that is not being picked up Chris is because it (unconsciously in many cases) leads to endorsing something akin to the Bush doctrine and there is absolutely no-one prepared to go down that road at the moment. Thus, despite "universal" ideals of protecting civilians, Libya will remain a special case with any excuse required taken to not act against others in the region, desperate avoidance of deploying ground forces and the ultimate shafting of many a Libyan.
-
Hard News: Libya, in reply to Steve Parks,
Of course North Korea is not the same. It is a million times worse, for North Koreans, but no one is about to go aiding them. Even if the North sinks Southern ships, fires on Southern islands etc. So you are correct, not the same at all.
But the comparisons are fairly made because of this new fangled R2P policy, which to many looks like "a convenient policy we can use to make war, sorry kinetic military action, on certain nations when the time is ripe but avoid any moral questions about applying the idea universally".
The risk for Obama is that he will be left carrying the can if the rest of the coalition feels like pulling back. Britain and France are well capable of suppressing Libya's air defence system by themselves. The images that will live in the Arab/African mind are the first strikes launched by US ships and attacks by western aircraft, it is just another string in the anti-western bow. If Obama had stayed out then that'd look a whole lot less convincing. And domestically he is getting in hot water, if conversations with actual Americans of many stripes are anything to go by. They already lost some hardware and narrowly avoided lost aircrew, it isn't going to be pretty for Obama if bodybags start coming home from yet another foreign venture that most on all sides rightly view as none of their business this time.
-
Hard News: Libya, in reply to BenWilson,
Fighting a war at even odds is a guarantee of maximal casualties, it is axiomatic and known since time immemorial. That is why any true warfare is fought at overwhelming odds where at all possible, it is faster, cleaner and (if the dominant side is not genocidal) going to produce less casualties in civilian and military terms. It is easier to turn an enemy to total rout and force surrender if they have no hope of winning at 10:1 odds than encouraging them to fight on when they think they have an even chance. Only boxers deliberately go into evenly matched fights and then only because they know they aren't going to die.
I'd go as far as to say that deliberately limiting a military effort, once engaged, to even odds is immoral.
If these powers *truly* want Ghadaffi to stop what he has been doing for decades then the answer is not a no fly zone, which allows him to carry on most business as usual, nor is it limited support to unknown and inexperienced "rebels" which gives Ghadaffi better than even odds of retaining power (and gaining propaganda tools to rally against the rebels and the West), it is to go in and either kill him or arrest him and totally rout his forces. It is definitely not firing off a few tomahawks and washing your hands of the business.
Sure the follow up is hard, but that must come anyway. The question is how long you want to wait and how long you want to watch the death toll grow. The current action seems almost to guarantee massacres, excess civilian casualties inflicted by both sides and no guarantee of removing the regime.
As has been noted elsewhere, if you will strike at a king, make sure to kill him.
-
Hard News: Libya, in reply to Russell Brown,
Seems to me that the African Union and the Arab League threw Ghadaffi to the wolves in order to keep the pack from their own collective doors and their insistence is no more than self-interested convenience. If the USA et al are busy for the next few years in Libya, on the outskirts of the Islamic region, they will be freer to act as they see fit with their own populations.
Add to that they (the AL and AU) get yet another free pass to condemn the USA and the West in general when their are inevitable civilian losses to such a no fly zone which always drags out the war and tends to perpetuate the power of the very man they are trying to oust.
Nope, I still don't get why Obama allowed the USA to get entangled in this mess, taking the USA to war again without even going through the motions of getting a congressional vote or appearing before the nation to state it was going to happen (which Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan... have all done in similar situations). Still, it will be up to his successor around 2014 to clean up the final mess, if history is anything to go by.
-
Hard News: Libya, in reply to Russell Brown,
Quite, and so the current coalition will clearly be going after Syria now, which is busy shooting civilians this week too.