Posted by
ApolloSpeaks on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 2:27:54 PM
Marc Ginsberg: "Memo to President Obama: Don't Stand in Sarkozy's Way in Libya."
If there's any lesson that this country should have learned from the French it's this: DON'T FOLLOW THEM INTO WAR. The last time we did we got the long, losing military Odyssey called Vietnam and spent years at enormous cost in lives and treasure trying to clean up their mess. And here we go again with history repeating itself in a different part of the world with the French spearheading a war* against the despot of a former European colony, and the US blindly following suit.
* An anonymous blogger wrote:"Since the Libyan crisis began last month, France has repeatedly jumped into the lead: first to recognize the Libyan opposition, first to launch fighter jets over Benghazi, first to call for an international conference about Libya’s future, first to destroy a Libyan warplane in motion."
In a piece written for Huffington Post former Moroccan Ambassador Marc Ginsberg (born in New York and raised in the Middle East), who at the start of the Obama regime waxed ecstatic about the blessings that engagement, diplomacy and soft power would bring to the Middle East and world (see ), is gung ho about French President Sarkozy's hawkishness on Libya; and is hoping that he'll take the bold step and send the once great French Foreign Legion into Tripoli to aid rebel forces in toppling Kaddafy (see). For success in Libya can only be defined as Kaddafy's demise. "In the name of French honor and humanity [and to save his embattled presidency] Sarkozy must act with or without the US," says Ginsberg. And when the great day comes when Sarkozy is ready to rock and roll Ginsburg begs Obama not to stand in his way; for Ginsberg is confident that La President will prevail over Kaddafy, and in doing so bail Obama out of his Libya jam. "After all," says Ginsberg, "the White House could declare victory under UN Security Council Resolution 1973 by having prevented a humanitarian disaster in Benghazi and let Britain and France worry about how to fulfill Obama's goal of seeing Gaddafi gone." Britain and France? Don't make me laugh. Like most European states, and unlike the US, these two countries have lost the warrior ethos and spirit*. And there is nothing of the warrior in our weak, unmanly, man-child President-who, by the way, wants to Europeanize and castrate America.
*See Bing West's "The Wrong War."
That this is a prescription for a Vietnam like disaster where the US would follow the French into a military and political quagmire is ominously signified by the following sign:
UN Resolution 1973 authorizing the no-fly zone over Libya (Sarkozy took the lead in enforcing this) is indicative of the year when the US ended the Vietnam War-which France had started 26 years before. This was accomplished in France with the Paris Peace Accords. Astonishigly, amazingly and perhaps Providentially as a warning the Accords were signed with North Vietnam and the war brought to an end on January 27, 1973 at midnight 12 AM GMT-which was January 28 8 AM Saigon time. What is amazing, extraordinary and ominous about this is that January 28, 1973, the day that America ended the long war that France began, was Nicholas Sarkozy's 18th birthday (see)*.
*It is interesting to note that 10,000 Vietnamese workers were evacuated from Libya beacuse of the war (see).
Other signs warning us against a ground war in Libya (or a US/NATO security-peacekeeping firce when Kaddafy is gone-are as follows:
1). Hugo Chavez, perhaps the first to use the Vietnam analogy for Libya, was born just seven days after the signing of the Geneva Accords* between France and Hanoi. This ended the First Indochina War and divided Vietnam into North and South (see ).
*The Geneva Accords were signed July 21, 1954. Chavez was born July 28, 1954.
2). Barack Obama was born in the same year that the US began its military intervention in Vietnam*. This started on December 11, 1961 when President Kennedy sent a large shipment of arms, military choppers and personel to Saigon. Obama was born just four months before on August 4.
3). Obama defeated Vietnam war hero John McCain (a hawk like Sarkozy on Libya) for the presidency. And as Obama's unlucky victory was on November 4th it fell on the 29th anniversary of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. This augered that democratic revolutions in the Middle East during his watch would be taken over by Islamists and cause his political downfall-just as it was for Jimmy Carter with Iran, the first Islamist revolution in the region.
4). Thomas Gates, father of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, was President Eisenhower's Under Secretary of the Navy when the French were defeated in Vietnam and US military advisors were sent to the South. Moreover, in 1959, when Gates became Secretary of Defense, Ho Chi Minh declared war on South Vietnam, thus setting the stage for US military intervention.
5). Influential Vietnam War era figures Robert MacNamara (LBJ's SOD and architect of defeat in Vietnam) and Walter Cronkite (who turned the TET Offensive into a demoralizing US defeat) died under Obama's watch. Not only were they both born in 1916 but they died 11 days apart in July 2009. In a piece that I wrote on their deaths I warned that the sixties-born Obama could do an "LBJ in the Middle East and start a new land war there (see)." We are close to such a war in Libya.
6). Another portentious sign was yesterday March 29 which was the 38th anniversary of the last US combat troops to leave Vietnam. For yesterday Kaddafy's army which had been retreating for ten days since the establishment of the no-fly zone did a 180 degree turn and went on the offensive putting rebel forces to flight. This has caused the kinetic coalition to consider arming the rebels regardless of who they are.
7). And lastly, Obama (president 44) is the next president after Harry Truman (president 33) to have a doublet presidency number. It was Truman who started the disastrous and politically ruinous ground war in Korea.
Vietnam, which was divided into North and South just as Libya is now splitting into East and West, is a symbol of defeat for France and the US. And Vietnam (as well as Iraq) as we saw above is written as a warning all over this war. It's bad enough that Kaddafy may outlast the no-fly zone and keep the rebels at bay. A NATO ground war in Libya (with the US committing most of the resourses and troops) would be a disaster even if Kaddafy is driven from power. Like Vietnam the conflict in Libya is a civil war and the better part of wisdom says let it be.
Is Libya on its way to being the next Somalia?
Postscript: Somalia
Our last humanitarian military mission to the Middle East was to Somalia under George H. W. Bush. This ended tragically with Black Hawk Down and US forces fleeing the country. Interestingly Obama and Bush are the only two US presidents who defeated opponents that were born during the Great Depression*. Moreover their oppenents' VP running mates, Lloyd Bensten and Sarah Palin, were born on the same day in February**.
*Dukakis was born November 3, 1933. McCain August 29, 1936.
**Lloyd Benson was born February 11, 1921; Sarah Palin February 11, 1964.