Dear Friends,
It seems to me that this Libyan intervention has been handled as poorly as it could have been. Without question, I cannot think of a worse way it could have been handled by the International Community, the United States government and the Arab League. There is plenty of blame to go around.
If the Actors I have mentioned wanted Moammar out, the time to have acted was in February, not in March. The high tide of the uprising is the time to act as did Obama in Egypt. Once the tide is lapping at the top of the dam it is easy to push it over but once it has receded it is much harder to fill the void again. If the International community had acted immediately Moammar would be gone.
But they didn’t, they acted exactly as a political body always acts, they dithered. That is why Republican Rome had Consuls, Aristotle claimed the best form of right government (that was practicable) was Monarchy and every country has an executive branch, to act when acting is practical. But the normal actor on the World stage is the US President. This time the president didn’t act. He waited for the committee to decide.
Then when the leviathan began to move, the “no fly zone” mandate, was done under the new doctrine of “Responsibility to act.” I wonder if any honest thinker thinks the “Responsibility to act” doctrine will be fairly meted out? Because only a fool could fall for that tripe. Let us not forget who makes up the vaunted UN, tribal tyrants (like Moammar), political tyrants (like communists), religious tyrants (like Iran), Military Juntas, Monarchs, poltroons terrified of the underclass they have created, cults of personality, and a very, very few liberal, pragmatic capitalist countries. (Less every day).
The Coalition air force immediately started engaging Moammar’s ground forces, like armored units and artillery. To save the embattled rebels, hold up in their last bastion, Benghazi. The Allies stepped in just as the rebels were about to fall. The war would have been over in probably less than 24 hours. But the intervention stopped Moammar and gave the rebels the initiative.
The foretold carnage and reprisals at Benghazi haven’t materialized yet, so the Allies have laid hold to that, as results that justify the action. The International coalition intervened in Libya March 18, 2011. Now it is April and the Civil War drags on. There is a river of blood flowing out of Libya fed by the continued fighting. It is hard to imagine how prolonging a war could possibly lower the casualty rate and especially the civilian casualty rate and actually “protect the innocent.”
But what is never remembered, is that the people who rise up at the beginning are never the ones who are alive at the end, if the fighting is too long. Warfare and fighting inevitably leads to the loss of fighters. They have to be replaced. Where are the replacements coming from in Libya? The people that were the most eager have been decimated. Not a great example for those that would join the fight.
So now in frustration with their too little too late strategy, the Allies have put “boots on the ground” although, they haven’t officially put “boots on the ground.” Al Jazeera reports that the US government has the CIA training Libyan rebels, and other countries are participating. It seems that “no fly” means whatever they tell us it means. No way that could be a bad precedent. What we are seeing, played out in front of our eyes, is the effective actions that a One World Government would practice, as promoted by the Open Society Project.
At the outset it was obvious the International Community had no idea what “Responsibility to act“ meant. Deutsche Welle had three politicians on, all had a different point of view, as to the nature of the operation. One claimed it was the ouster of Moammar, another asserted only to keep Moammar’s aircraft on the ground, another was certain it was to kill Moammar himself. The American press was just as chaotic. Everyone had a different opinion about what the UN had endorsed.
So here we are. The rebels have had 2 high tides, the second far lower than the first, the rebels are blaming the Allies for their losses, Moammar is on the move again, there is no end in sight to the even slow the river, the Coalition is still fighting over leadership, simple collateral damage to civilians has led to as many deaths as Moammar would have meted out, and, worst of all, extremist jihadists have moved in to take up the banner, replacements for the democracy fighters who are KIA.
If Moammar is in fact ousted then who will rise to the top? It is my contention that whenever there is heat sufficient to melt then it is always the dross that floats to the top. In the end, the World will have spent billions of dollars, stained it’s hands with the blood of thousands of people (needlessly killed, and set dozens of bad precedents, all to replace dross with dross. This is exactly what we can expect from any more experiments with “responsibility to act.”
As an aside, if the Libyan Rebels want people to flock to their banner, (and they really do want a democratic republic), then the way to do it is to have some Constitution they are fighting for, (there are plenty out there). People will fight for something harder than they will fight against something…
