Rag tag Libyan rebels say they can't turn the war around and defeat Kaddafy without US/NATO ground support.
Obama assured both the Congress and the American people this week that Operation Odyssey Dawn will not become a ground war involving US troops. Fine. Unless Kaddafy launches a successful terrorist attack against us as he did with Pan Am 103 the war weary American people would be opposed to such a war; American soldiers fighting and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq are enough for them. But when we follow Obama's logic as to why we're at war with Kaddafy the conclusion is inescapable that we're headed toward a full scale ground war if the rebels fail to defeat him and drive him from power.
Indeed, Obama said that the operation in Libya to stop Kaddafy from slaughtering civilians is in our "national interest". He said that "Left unaddressed the growing instability in Libya would ignite wider instability in the region [already exacerbated by our bombing campaign] with dangerous consequences to the national security of the US." But what if Obama's greatest fear is realized? What if the no-fly zone and bombings prove ineffective in the long run? What if six months from now Kaddafy is still in power fueling the flames of regional strife and conflict with a rebel crushing counter-insurgency, creating more refugees and a humanitarian disaster? What then? As instability in the region widens imperiling our national security and economic interests what else can we do but move beyond the failed no-fly zone and bombings (these didn't stop Saddam) and send ground troops into Libya to end Kaddafy's reign?
Indeed, every day Kaddafy defiantly stays in power shaking his fist at the world is a defeat for NATO, the UN and US. Every day he survives his prestige grows and prospers in the region as he looks more and more like the anti-Western warrior of old facing down the mighty infidel. Not only have we stupidly and needlessly alienated Kaddafy, who giving up terrorism and his WMDs became an ally against Islamism, but we may be making him a hero on the Arab Street. If he restores his lost stature (succeeding where Saddam had failed) the need for invading Libya and deposing him will grow more urgent. The promises Obama is making against a US/NATO ground war in Libya are conditional on the rebels organizing and prevailing over Kaddafy. If they fail-which they are now doing-there's no alternative to a ground war as the credibility of NATO and the US are at stake. In short, if it's a national necessity to be rid of Kaddafy as Obama says then it will be done with US/NATO boots on the ground if all else fails.
However, if the rebels with NATO air support succeed in defeating Kaddafy this civil war is likely to continue in a new form with secularists, fundamentalists and tribal heads violently turning on each other in a power struggle for control of the country. In short, chaos will likely fill the power vaccum left by Kaddafy's fall. Anyway you look at it a good outcome in post-Kaddafy Lybia is highly unlikely.
In sum, it seems that we're on our way to a full scale land war in Libya, of turning Operation Odyssey Dawn into a second Operation Iraqi Freedom to liberate the country from Kaddafy's rule; or perhaps to bring order to Lybia in the strife torn post-Kaddafy era with a NATO or international peacekeeping force.
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Postscript I: Operation Odyssey Dawn. What's in a Name?
The name of the operation may well be an oracular warning about the consequences of US/NATO ground invasion of Libya. As Tony Blankley points out (
see ) the word "Odyssey" is taken from the great Homeric poem about the ten year wanderings of the lost Greek hero Odysseus after the end of the ten year Trojan War. In other words, the word "Odyssey" may well be prophetic of a very long and painful war like the protracted conflict between Greeks and Trojans that lasted a decade before cunning Odysseus figured out how the Greeks could win.
Postscript II: Brazil
It's ironic enough that Obama gave the order to bomb Libya on the same day of his presidency that George Bush began the shocking and awing of Iraq as prelude to an invasion. But to do it from Brazil one of four countries that abstained from voting for Resolution 1973 is itself a sign that we should have been the fifth nation abstaining and stayed out of this war.
Postscript III: General Carter Ham (slightly revised)
General Carter Ham is in command of the initial military operation in Libya. That's "Carter" as in Jimmy who gave us the catastrophe of nuclear, genocidal, terrorist Iran; and "Ham" as in the meat derived from swine an animal offensive to Moslems and unlawful to eat. Awful signs of 1) Obama making things worse in Libya like Carter did in Iran when he deserted the Shah for Khomeine*; and 2) the dirty, filthy (pig-like) infidel West offending the Arab world in this conflict and turning it against us.
Postscript IV: We've Prevented a Humanitarian Catastrophe?
The president who falsely claimed that Obamanomics saved America from a second Great Depression* and is taking credit for winning the war in Iraq is now crediting himself with preventing a humanitarian catastrophe in Libya which would have seen 100,000 dead*. Oh really? How does Obama know this? Is there any precedent for this claim drawn from past experience with Kaddafy? There isn't. In fact, there was a massive anti-Kaddafy uprising in East Libya in the 1990s sparked by protests in Benghazi led by Islamists**. The uprising was violently suppressed by Kaddafy's forces killing hundreds may be even thousands; but there was nothing approaching genocidal proportions or a humanitarian nightmare. In other words, Obama's claims are speculative and unfounded, typical of this failing president whose greatest achievement to date has been his election in 2008.
* If you comb through all of President Obama's economic speeches prior to his signing of the Stimulus Bill there isn't one word mentioning that the economy was headed toward a second Great Depression which only a massive stimulus package could prevent. What he did say was that the recession was the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and that the stimulus was needed to jump start the economy and end the recession. It wasn't until the stimulus began to fail that Obama and Biden starting in on the lie that the stimulus saved millions of jobs and prevented another Depression-which Bush's TARP was supposed to have done.
**In the mid 1990's when Kaddafy gave up terrorism and closed down his terrorist training camps in Libya Islamists within his country and worldwide turned against him. In fact, Kaddafy's animosity toward Moslem radicals was so great that he supported Milosovic and the Orthodox Christian Serbs against the radical Moslem KLA in the Kosovo War. In fact, after Kaddafy gave up his nuclear weapons program in 2004 the Bush Administration took him off the terrorist list. A fact Bill O'Reilly has forgotten when he brands Kaddafy "a terrorist."
Also see: MUAMMAR KADDAFY: TERRORIST REBORN