Uglysasquatch wrote:
gbaji wrote:
we're fighting against Khaddafi's forces, but have no intention apparently to actually defeat those forces. Which seems to me like a complete CF in waiting.
Yea, I just can't see how this is going to turn out well for you guys unless the rebels pull off a miracle on their own. Either you're in to remove him or you get out altogether.
And that's honestly my concern with this whole endeavor. I understand why Obama chose this course of action. It has the virtue of appearing to just provide humanitarian aid, while attempting to achieve an objective we'd like (toppling Khaddafi). The problem, as I stated several weeks ago, was that it came too late and missed the window when the rebels had momentum on their side. Now, the most likely result is to simple extend the warfare in that country with no clear victor emerging.
I don't think there's anyone who's honestly fooled into thinking this is really purely about humanitarian ends. It's a face saving excuse for taking action to remove Khaddafi and everyone knows it. Had it worked, that would have been fine and we'd be moving on. But it didn't work and now we're kinda "stuck" with a mission which has an official objective and methodology that isn't sufficient to achieve what everyone knows is the real objective. Which leaves us with basically three options:
1. We chuck the facade, go all in, and topple Khaddafi and deal with the consequences later.
2. We bail on Libya, let Khaddafi defeat the rebels and then attempt to apply humanitarian assistance after the fact to minimize reprisals.
3. We continue to maintain the no-fly zone and humanitarian aid/protection and hope things conclude somehow down the line.
None of those are good options. 1 and 2 could have been chosen a month ago and would have been more successful had we chosen them as a course of action from the start. The natural tendency to avoid a course of action which looks like a reversal makes these difficult choices, at best. Option 3 is just horrific since it still commits forces and material to the conflict but takes the outcome more or less completely out of our hands.
I suspect that what they'll try is option 1 while attempting to still paint it as just protecting civilians. Basically, slowly ramp up where/how you conduct air strikes so as to basically use them in more offensive ways, but continue to label them as protective strikes. I'm not sure how well that's going to go over, and it's certainly not going to fool much of anyone, but it's probably the best approach from a face saving perspective.
