So we’re now preparing to institute a no-fly zone in Libya — an act of war which Congress has not debated and apparently will not be given the chance to debate (although perhaps there’ll be a rubber-stamp vote after the fact).
Hey, remember when the country was broke, and couldn’t take on major new expenses? Well, forget that. We’re getting a brand new war, baby, and our credit is always good for that! We don’t have any exit strategy, other than Ann-Marie Slaughter’s whimsical supposition that we’ll put in a no-fly zone and maybe Qaddafi will give up immediately. We don’t have any coherent explanation of how a no-fly zone prevents Qaddafi from doing what he’s already doing, which is winning with his tanks and his heavy ground weaponry. We don’t have any conception of the national interest that explains why we’re morally compelled to save Libyans from Qaddafi while we won’t lift a finger (not even diplotmatically) to stop other dictators who are just as awful.
I can’t pretend to know what will happen. Maybe Slaughter is right, and a no-fly zone will put things to right and get the Arab street to see the US as a benevolent force. I certainly hope she’s right, because I suspect that Obama has already decided in favor of the no-fly zone.
But Slaughter’s optimistic scenario doesn’t seem likely to me. It’s unlikely that Qaddafi is going to give up based on a no-fly zone alone. It’s unlikely that, once we’ve committed to helping the rebels with a no-fly zone, we’ll refuse to help with troops on the ground once the no-fly zone fails to stop Qaddafi. It’s unlikely that we won’t have soon have a third war in the middle east.1 It’s unlikely that anyone in the middle east will see the US as benevolent once we start accidentally bombing weddings.
Steve Clemons writes:
…the question really should be is whether a no-fly zone gets the Opposition to a tilting point where they can succeed. The answer is no. A no-fly zone has become an emotional touch point for many who want to help the struggling and brave Libya Opposition — but it doesn’t change facts on the ground.
Slaughter is right that revolutions are messy and once the intoxication of change wears off, there are huge headaches, new conflicts, different political rivalries. But she says that if we allow Gaddafi to win and chop down young protesters, we will have been on the wrong side of things. Again, supporting a no-fly zone is emotional distraction “for us” and does little to help “them.”
She doesn’t deal with the reality that without somehow supporting the Opposition to force a “no drive zone” on Gaddafi’s tanks and arming the rebels with intel and bullets, a no-fly zone will look in retrospect like self-indulgent impotence.
What we desperately need in this country is humility. The military, contrary to what so many Americans believe, is not a magic nation-building wand. Bombing Qaddafi’s airfields won’t create democracy; it’s won’t prevent civil war; and it won’t secure admiration for us throughout the middle east.
When the no-fly zone fails to work, we’ll invade; our troops will be on the ground. Inevitably, mistakes will be made; weddings will be bombed, innocent children will be in the vehicle our helicopters machine-guns, our bad apples will be caught committing rape and torture. Slaughter’s claim that embroiling ourselves in a war in Libya will make us loved in the middle east is beyond cockeyed optimism.
As Clemons points out, we don’t actually face a choice between doing nothing and starting a war (and again, a no-fly zone is an act of war). We can provide assistance with formal recognition, with weapons, with advice, with military intelligence, with communications; but direct military participation by the US isn’t something we should do because it’ll make us feel virtuous, or because everyone’s yelling “we have to do something,” or because we think that maybe, if things work out juuuuussst right, it’ll turn out to be the right thing to do.
The folks who favor war do the same trick every time; when they argue for the benefits of war, only the benefits are discussed, and the enormously probable disastrous outcomes are ignored or waved aside. Simultaneously, all alternatives to war are painted as inevitably leading to holocausts, as if no conflict in the world has ever failed to become a holocaust if the US didn’t invade.
A no-fly zone is a road that leads towards a fuller war, and I suspect that it’s a one-way road. We could easily end up in Libya for another ten or fifteen years, at the cost of hundreds of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Libyan civilians dead, and gain nothing in exchange; no new democracy flowering, no admiration from the Arab street, no peace. If recent history is any guide, that is the most likely outcome.
War isn’t the source of democracy. We are not God, and we do not have the ability to right every wrong and prevent every evil. And war isn’t the alternative to disaster and slaughter; war itself is inherently a disaster, inherently slaughter.
We should go to war only when all other options are exhausted. And we’re not there yet.
- Unless, of course, our initial countermeasures are completely ineffectual and everyone we’re trying to rescue is slaughtered by tomorrow, making further intervention utterly pointless, a not-at-all impossible outcome, alas. [↩]
There’s already a civil war, so refraining from intervention in the hopes of forestalling a civil war would not really make any sense.
I definitely do not think we should be intervening unilaterally (and we’re not, this is a UN operation), or that we should get significantly involved in this conflict. A limited air war, on the other hand, may – I do not say will – hearten the indigenous revolutionaries sufficiently to give them the momentum they need to win.
I do think that if we’re going to do anything, the time to do it is now. (Actually, a week or two ago when the momentum was against the Libyan government.) Waiting for “all other options” to be exhausted just means waiting for the Libyan state to grind out the revolt. Having said that, I don’t see just putting a no-fly zone as being sufficient to make a difference. We should have gone to the UN and said “we’re going to make strikes against the Libyan military to make it easier for the revolutionaries to win, but we’re not going to invade or fight the war for the rebels – they have to take over by proving they have the people with them”, and then started blowing up tanks and missile batteries that make such a demonstration of popular sentiment difficult.
I don’t foresee it ending happily regardless, but I doubt we’ll be there for fifteen years or even fifteen months. Either the rebels will win, fairly soon, against a dispirited and isolated Libyan state, or the revolution will be crushed. Either should happen fairly soon.
I coulda sworn I posted something earlier. Anyway, I was just saying, “Well said.”
To Barry, that is.
But I think Robert may be right that Libya will play out these events on their own terms.
I don’t think a no-fly zone will do all that much. I think that airstrikes against Libyan heavy ordinance could do something, and I think that’s the likely next step after a no-fly zone, and I think that it is a logical stopping point. I also think that, regardless of whether the US institutes a no-fly zone or not, it is exceptionally unlikely that we’ll see many, if any, American boots on the ground.
In general, I’m a little dubious of this sort of slippery slope logic. Afghanistan we pretty much invaded straight-away — we didn’t need any in-between steps. And while we did have a no-fly zone over Iraq that predated the invasion, I don’t think anybody viewed it as even remotely causal. Other recent interventions, like the Balkans, essentially started and ended with airstrikes, without any seeming risk of a major American ground deployment presenting itself. When’s the last time we’ve had a moderate intervention that seemed to inexorably slow-cook escalate into a full-on, multi-year, on the ground commitment? Vietnam?
And finally, I also agree with Robert that it’s a little strange to talk as if there isn’t a war going on already — that we can choose not to have a war in Libya. There already is a war in Libya — there’s a question as to whether the US will participate in it or not, but that doesn’t change the existence of a war that is already sowing death and destruction. The choice isn’t between war and not-war, it’s between a war that the US is a part of and a war which we observe from the sidelines. The latter might be the right choice, but we should characterize the choice accurately.
The UN has authorised a no-fly zone over Libya:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/03/201131720311168561.html
But unfortunately I think it’s too late.Gadafi’s forces are already near Benghazi, the last town that the rebels hold.
Screw Russia and China which are guilty of delaying the resolution.
I’ll admit that I’m not a US citizen and that I’m fairly drunk from my Irish heritage on this holiest of days, but isn’t this why you guys train CIA death squads? No Qadaffhi, no problem, right?
We would do it with airplanes these days. The problem is that (a) it takes a lot of relatively innocent people out at the same time, which contributes to (b) it tends to upset the other heads of state who (c) have assassins of their own, and who needs to start that cycle of violence?
1. The UNSC resolution is broader than “no-fly.” So better and worse, they are unlikely to stop there.
2. You might remember the early Afgan war. Air power plus small amounts of ground support pushed back material resistance from the Taliban. The current attrition war is a product of losing the peace, not an inability to create temporary gains.
3. There is a clear faction willing to take power out of the vacuum. We don’t have to win the peace this time, just the war. That…happens to be what we’re good at.
All war is terrible. But what is happening already, without us, is war. We have choices about what we do in response.
our bad apples will be caught committing rape and torture.
“Bad apples”? I thought torture, although perhaps not rape, was official policy now. As far as I know, Bush’s policy of using waterboarding and other methods invoking, what was the phrase, “moderate physical distress”, have not been revoked.
We’re not starting a war; we’re joining an existing war. My understanding is that the plan is to strike against Qaddafi and make it so that the existing civil war that is going on is resolved in favor of the rebels.
I don’t think that anyone can exactly predict what the results will be. but seeing as Qaddafi is willing to slaughter–literally–his own population in order to keep control, it isn’t too far-fetched to take an “anything but him” stance.
Not incidentally, once there is a no-fly zone it also permits us (or anyone else) to enforce a “no heavy weapons” zone. Tanks, artillery, and the like tend to be extraordinarily vulnerable to air assault from planes or helicopters, but the air-to-ground attack forces can’t easily go in until the ground-to-air and air-to-air defenses are pretty much gone.
My understanding is that the plan does include a strike to disable ground forces as well as air. The authorization was specifically drafted to include any intervention short of a ground invasion.
Also, unlike standard guerrilla warfare (in which it is exceedingly difficult to hit targets without causing immense collateral damage) attacks on emplaced air defenses or on heavy armor tend to have less of a risk, because they are harder to hide and can’t use the same techniques.
Remember when the no-fly zone ended Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror? How it emboldened the dissidents to rise up and crush the regime? Yeah, that was a great triumph for the no-fly zone strategy.
We don’t have a great track record when it comes to joining civil wars in far away places. I feel pretty certain that the forces pushing for us to do something are the energy industry. They’re feeling a bit uncertain about what happens to their access to Libyan oil under a post-Qaddafi government. But, hell, why not give it a try? When has getting involved in a foreign civil war ever been at the behest of corporate interests?
We’re not starting a war; we’re joining an existing war.
And one result of our joining could be that Qaddafi goes in people’s minds from being the oppressive dictator they’re trying to overthrow to being the defender of local rule and the people trying to overthrow him become tools of the US and other outside interests. Not so good. Especially since it is often largely true: a US directed movement would be very different from a Libya directed movement and might simply end up with a different dictator in charge. It’s happened-often-in the past.
The Libyan civil war provides an excellent humanitarian pretext for establishing a Western foothold in North Africa and interjecting corporate and global strategic priorities into the wave of democratic revolutions occurring in the region. Oil is one factor, but it’s not the only one. So far this year political elites — right wing, left wing, doesn’t matter — have been confused about how to best respond to the loss of client states upon whom they relied to contain threats to their economic and security interests. They couldn’t intervene where people could peacefully oust a dictator in cooperation with a national army intent on maintaining stability. Gaddaffi’s resistance and willingness to use drastic violent responses provides an “in.”
Might be time to re-read “Disaster Capitalism.” Or for Naomi Klein to revise it with fresh material.
The Iraqi resistance wasn’t nearly as organized as was this one. They weren’t marching, occupying areas, getting the support of large factions, etc. they also didn’t have diplomatic recognition from other countries. And of course, they had an enormous army which had just invaded a neighboring country.
They also–crucially–lacked the same level of support from their neighbors.
But before I bother any more with this: What ARE the circumstances under which you would support our intervention here? What would need to change? Let’s not debate specifics unless specifics are relevant to you.
If you define the risk tolerance too stringently, then you end up concluding that we should never get involved at all in any war, because there will never really be a sufficiently small amount of risk. And that’s just a general anti-intervention stance cloaked in a lot of lengthy arguments about no-fly zones, i.e., a waste of everyone’s time.
ETA: I respect both the “no intervention” and “no war” stances. I don’t mean to imply otherwise. But I don’t want to bother discussing things which are irrelevant to the listener.
Well, whaddya know:
(from Slate)
Libya Declares Ceasefire After U.N. Approves Airstrikes
Cheers broke out in rebel-held Benghazi as the United Nations authorized “all necessary measures” to protect Libyan civilians from Col. Moammar Gaddafi’s advancing forces, reports the Washington Post. Following the Thursday vote, France signaled that it will move swiftly alongside Britain to initiate airstrikes. The U.S. is allowing other nations to take the lead—President Obama has not yet authorized the use of military assets and has not commented publicly about the U.N. decision. The 10-0 U.N. vote with five abstentions (from Russia and China, among others) came as Qaddafi vowed that his forces were “coming tonight and there will be no mercy.” On Thursday, Qaddafi said his forces would hunt down “traitors … in the alleyways, house to house, room to room” and threatened that “if the world gets crazy, we will get crazy.” But at a press conference in Tripoli that afternoon, Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa announced the “stoppage of all military operations,” saying the country would agree to a ceasefire.
DAMN that evil interventionist strategy.
G&W, this is one occasion where I’d be THRILLED to have egg on my face.
I remember Kevin’s comment from when the same logic — nearly verbatim — was being applied to cast suspicion on how post-earthquake aid was being delivered to Haiti (which was categorized as a foreign military occupation). Thus far, Haiti has not turned into a foothold for American imperialism in the Caribbean, nor has there been a major push to turn it into one.
My favorite part of this Marxist (I mean that descriptively — characterizing the primary mover of major human events as the interests of capital versus the interest of the working class) reasoning is that it appears to be unfalsifiable — if we do intervene, it’s to prop up a client state to maintain a “foothold” in North Africa (or create a new one, as whatever else Libya is, client state of the west ain’t it), if we don’t, it’s because political or structural constraints checked our rapacious nature, or because the client was of no more use to us, or because the country was too independent to be considered a client at all and needed to be punished. We prop up Qaddafi because we want him at our beck and call for oil, or we let him fall to let our corporations sweep in and take the oil in the aftermath. Any response can incorporated under the theory; it explains everything and nothing.
So we’re now preparing to institute a no-fly zone in Libya
Ah, no, actually. From what I’ve seen the U.N. declared it and the French and British are planning to institute it. We’ll probably get involved, but we’re pretty busy elsewhere. Time for someone else to carry the load.
Stefan:
Which is why going to the U.N. when there’s decisions to be made and action to be taken is essentially voting “present”. France has planes. Spain has planes. Italy has planes. Why shouldn’t they step up to the responsibility of helping these people?
Russia has planes. China has planes. Egypt has planes. Saudi Arabia has planes, for that matter, planes we’ve sold them and pilots we’ve trained. And they sat there watching a despot slaughter his subjects and did nothing. Why would anyone think that anything else would happen?
We’re talking about an organization that seated Libya, Cuba, China and Pakistan on their Human Rights Commission. Fast action to protect human rights is not going to be the hallmark of such an organization.
At the time that Quaddafi first started using his air power against his own people those people appealed to us for help. But we don’t have a decision maker in the White House, so nothing happened. The window of opportunity is now likely lost. Quaddafi’s minister has announced that they’ll cease hostilities. Why not? They’ve had two weeks to reduce the rebels to one corner of the country. Here’s my prediction. Quaddafi doesn’t fire one more bullet at civilians. He doesn’t fly one more plane one more mile. He just marches his troops to the ports and railheads in the area and tells the world that he’ll sink any boat or blow up any train that tries to enter his country. Why fight when you can just starve people to death?
Simply supporting the rebels won’t get rid of Quaddafi now. It will take an invasion, and that’s not going to happen. We’re committed elsewhere. The rest of the world won’t, either because they’ve gutted their own defense budgets and capabilities to support social programs and relied on us to defend them (and pay for it), or because they don’t have the national will for sacrificing money and lives to help others, or else because encouraging democracy isn’t in their best interests.
Kevin, you think Western interests are going to benefit from this? Sure, they might get a share, but there’ll be plenty of Chinese and Indian firms getting contracts no matter which way this goes. Just like in Iraq, which was also supposedly going to end up with the US monopolizing their oil but where Western interests are probably now in worse shape compared to Chinese, Russian and Indian interests than they were before the war.
I don’t remember my “Marxist” comments on the response to Haiti, so you’ll have to enlighten me. However, the Haitian people have received one raw deal after another for 200 years, and while I would like to believe our Western governments have broken the pattern recently, I find it troubling that the Obama administration has been rounding up Haitian immigrants and deporting them into a cholera outbreak that has killed thousands of people; that our government has consistently opposed the return of Aristide and has played a part in blocking his party from participating in Haitian elections; the U.S. has been calling the shots of administering emergency relief and security, with little regard for Haitian input — nonetheless, millions remain homeless, while food, clean water and sanitation remain exceedingly rare. Do I “blame America” (as someone will surely charge me of doing) for this problem? No. That’s too simplistic. But the U.S. government and big business have had a long history of interfering directly and indirectly with Haiti, much to its detriment, and that pattern has so far not been broken.
Also interesting: Aristide has been allowed to return to Haiti, although why he was ever considered a threat or a problem, I never understood. But Obama has registered his concerns to South Africa that Aristide better watch his ass.
Anyway, don’t wanna high-jack Amp’s post here to turn it into a debate about Haiti. To the larger point about Western interventions: The most important concern is the success of the Libyan people in achieving their revolution against the Gadaffi regime. If Western powers can help them achieve that through judicious application of military and/or economic pressures, great! Wouldn’t it be marvelous if the global strategists and corporate interests in our government (and in European gov’ts) could provide assistance without attempting to skew the results in favor of its interests? But it has a track record and it’s not so good, is it? Ask the Iraqis, ask the Afghans. The Libyans will have every reason to be wary of the quid-pro-quo demanded of them for receiving Western assistance.
As for the “unfalsifiable” theory — as per above, I feel we also have reasons to be wary when our government starts jaw-jawing for war-war, especially in light of its floundering, inconsistent response to the uprisings in the Middle East AND its history of sponsoring brutal regimes. I mean, aren’t you wary? Don’t you feel a cause for concern? As one element of the right wing screams fears of the Muslim Brotherhood, another claims that “Bush was right” and the Obama White House at first claims Mubarak as its ally then (wisely, but belatedly and only after it becomes clear he’s screwed) asks for him to step down. The only folks with any decision-making power offering a reasoned, measured, careful response is the military, because they know the difficulties, they’ll make the sacrifices, they want an end game, they are already over-burdened with overt and covert wars. My suspicions regarding a foothold derive not only from past behavior in the region, but on the erratic response that betrayed a concern primarily for the “stability” and “security” interests (as defined by economic and global strategic powers), regardless of the demands and aspirations of Egyptians, Tunisians, Bahranians, etc. The violence and difficulty in Libya gives them something they can work with; they have a hammer, they want a suitable nail.
I don’t know if Western Powers will benefit, but they are freaked out that the status quo in the Middle East has been so thoroughly disrupted. As with Iraq, intent was one thing, results were another.
Everybody’s freaked about about how the status quo has been interrupted. With Quaddafi you knew what you had. Post-Quaddafi, nobody knows if they’ll get another strong man or a Islamic facist regime or a secular democracy or what. All they know is that things will change and that they’ll have to scramble to at least keep what share of the pie they’ve got if not make good use of an opportunity to get more. They don’t know who to back or what kind of penalty they’ll suffer for backing the wrong faction. There’s nothing that singles out the West in that regard.
What quid pro quo? Freedom of religion? Women’s rights? Special deals for oil? A cessation of favoring various local families, clans and other interests? What have we demanded? And even more importantly, what have we received?
I must register my 80’s network news influenced view that Libya’s dictator has no ‘u’ in his name.
I will use the same reasoning to oppose the mysteriously substituted ‘g’ in the Libyan dictator’s name.
Anybody who grew up with 70’s or 80’s network news knows that it is spelled ‘Qadhafi’.
In the 80s they spelled it with a “K.” Clever political cartoonists went with “Kadaffy” and drew him like a duck. That’s an ironic use of the world “clever” btw.
a Islamic facist regime or a secular democracy
Or a secular facist regime or an Islamic democracy.
Didn’t we do something very similar against Milosevic? And didn’t that work out very well?