Libya - humanitarian ineffectiveness

I continue to believe that President Obama was genuinely horrified by Gaddafi's efforts to kill all of his domestic opposition and genuinely wants to stop him for humanitarian reasons. The President did not think it through and has bungled the effort. In order to accomplish that goal, one would have to remove Gaddafi from power. Louis Farrakhan has a point when he asks President Obama "who the hell do you think you are?" A lot of folks in the international community have the same question and we need to carefully consider our answer. Does the United States have the right to decide which regime is legitimate and which is not?

Our own civil war comes to mind and I suppose that an outsider might accuse President Lincoln of having ordered the killing of far more people than Gaddafi. When is it ok for us to decide when we should intervene in the domestic affairs of another sovereign country? Our interventions in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are also relevant to this discussion. The world is not a high school debating class. Morality does not often enter into these types of decisions. The reality is that in order to effectively intervene in another country's affairs one must bring as much of the rest of the world along with you as possible. Sometimes you need specific assets and always you need moral cover. This is one of the aspects of our adventure into the Libyan desert that has not been handled well.

Another problem that faces us is that inexperienced civilian leaders that have never been in conflict do not often understand the limitations of weapons of war. Anyone who thinks that air power alone can accomplish political objectives should stop a moment and really think about our aerial campaigns in Viet Nam, Bosnia, and Iraq. I will argue that those campaigns destroyed massive amounts of equipment and infrastructure but did not change our opponents' minds. It is even worse in this case, because apparently Secretary of Defense Gates was trying to talk Obama out of this stupidity. That an inexperienced community organizer would ignore his Secretary of Defense is inexcusable, ignorant, and one more excellent reason to vote this man out of office. If, as is rumored, Secretary of State Clinton supported this stupidity, I say shame on her.

We are now entering a phase of this adventure where Gaddafi's troops are in close combat with their less well armed opponents. Reportedly, in spite of President Obama's promise not to insert Americans on the ground, we have special operations personnel in Libya trying to help the revolutionaries. (Why this is not boots on the ground I don't know.) Certainly Gaddafi knows this so why do we continue to deny it? My guess is that we fear that it would be offensive to some of our vacillating allies as well as devastating to Obama's image at home. I am sure that the brave men that have been inserted with the revolutionaries are being asked for more modern weapons to defend against Gaddafi's troops. If we say yes, that is mission creep. If we say no, are we really being true to our humanitarian instincts?

We should also ask ourselves what Gaddafi is going to do next. My guess is that he will attempt to continue the Hatfield-McCoy feud with America that has been going on for decades. He bombs a nightclub in Berlin killing a couple of Americans, we bomb Tripoli killing his adopted daughter, he bombs the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, we invade Libya. It is now his turn. My guess is that he has assets and money outside of Libya and will use them to hurt us if he possibly can. I wonder if the President factored that into his decision. If he did and did not see the necessity of physically removing this tinhorn dictator from power he made a decision that imperials American interests and probably American lives as well. If he did not think it through then this is one more reason why he is incapable of fulfilling the responsibilities inherent in the position he holds.