Cops Of The World

Simultaneous War III continues. Nobody knows its goal or how or when it ends. Or who's in charge of operations. Or what a success might look like. In fact, the many questions US airstrikes on Libya have raised seem to have struck many (including me) dumb. Why? Because I just don't get it. I don't understand the point of this latest military adventure. Or what it is supposed to accomplish. Or how.

There are lots of countries in which dictatorships with varying degrees of brutality toy with the lives of the citizens, suppressing dissent, imprisoning, killing, disappearing, repressing in one way or another. These countries are not democracies. How many are there in which tyrants of one stripe or another are in charge and acting like, well, tyrants? I don't know, but you can bet that Libya isn't the only one in Africa. And, of course, all of these countries, to one degree or another, have nascent opposition groups that are involved in various kinds of opposition to the tyrant, including demonstrations, rebellions, or outright armed insurrection. But the US isn't busy lobbing $1 million missiles at these countries in support of the rebels, or flying airstrikes to blow up their military defenses, or coordinating with the allies to advance the opposition, or even threatening them to straighten up and fly right. Or else. Libya is special, probably because of oil.

And who is this utterly disorganized opposition in Libya? Yes, they are opposed to Ghaddafi. But other than their opposition to the despot, what's their plan, assuming the tyrant is toppled? Are they talking democracy? Is there a reason why they are somehow worth the potential loss of US lives and the enormous cost of this operation when other insurrections don't merit attention? I just don't understand how deposing G (or is it K) and a victory by the rebels assures democracy or any other worthy goal. And I don't understand why it matters to the US. Unless, of course, it's about the oil.

As the great sage County Joe put it many years ago, "And it's 1, 2, 3 what are we fighin for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn."

And now we have President Obama's lame effort to address some of these concerns. CNN reports:

"Our hope is that the first thing that happens once we clear this space is that the rebels start discussing how they're able to organize themselves, how they articulate their aspirations for the Libyan people," Obama said.

Is this an announcement that the rebels are still disorganized and have no plans for the future other than deposing G (or is it K)? Or does it mean that the US is now bombing in behalf of people who are leaderless and acting without any plans, forget about long term goals? And then there's this, which is very had to understand:

The president acknowledged the irony of being a Nobel Peace Prize winner who ordered the U.S. military into action on the eight anniversary of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but said the goal in this case was humanitarian.

"I'm accustomed to this contradiction of being both a commander-in-chief but also somebody who aspires to peace," Obama said, adding the Libya mission was to protect the Libyan people from Gadhafi's military.

"We're not invading a country; we are not acting alone," he said. "We are acting under a mandate issued by the U.N. Security Council."

The American people will see no contradiction between someone who believes in peace and "who wants to make sure people aren't butchered because of a dictator who wants to cling to power," Obama added.

What? I see a contradiction. A huge one. Is this a case of making war to make peace? Is this destroying Libya to save it? And is the President saying that in other nations, those who are being "butchered because of a dictator who wants to cling to power" can make a claim on US military assistance which the Peacemaker President will dutifully grant?

What a steaming hot mess. The US continues to play out Phil Oakes's song, "Cops of the World."

War Du Jour, Part III

War, endless war. Evidently, Iraq and Afghanistan, even taken together, cannot sate the US's taste for armed combat and blood. No. Not a chance. Those are insufficient. Today we learned that the US was going to get involved in yet another war, a third one, this time in Libya, again complete with ill defined purpose, the possibility of massive and uncontrolled escalation, and no exit plans. Yes, I know. No ground troops are being committed. Yet. Right now. But this intervention is a lot more than just imposing a "no fly zone". Let's call it what it is: it's an open invitation for the US to get embroiled in yet a third, simultaneous, distant ground war.

How so? Let's suppose that air power can keep Libya's air force on the ground. But let's also suppose that Libyan armor attacks Benghazi. Or Libyan mercenaries and infantry attack some other civilian center in which there is resistance to the Gaddafi government and its tanks and infantry and mercenaries. It's clear that to defend the rebels (read: the less well armed Libyan people) there would have to be at the very least an air attack on the advancing forces. And the Libyan response to that would be an escalation of some kind, and the response to that, in turn, another escalation. Have we seen this particular sequence and its consequences before? Or more to the point, haven't we seen it far too often? And hasn't it killed enough US soldiers? And enough foreign soldiers? And enough civilians?

MSNBC reports:

NATO allies meeting in Brussels were drawing up plans to enforce a United Nations resolution authorizing military action to prevent the killing of Libyan civilians Friday as Western leaders delivered an ultimatum to Moammar Gadhafi.

Fighting continued Friday in Libya despite the government's declaration of a cease-fire to comply after the U.N. resolution passed a day earlier.

President Barack Obama and other Western leaders said military response would be swift if Gadhafi forces continue attacking protesters trying to end his 42-year rule.

I think we've heard that line about "swift" elsewhere, perhaps in the different context. At least so far we've been spared the silly prediction that the Libyan people would greet US troops in the streets of Tripoli with flowers. We'll have to wait until next week or next month for that. Right now there is already video of people in the streets with Libyan flags supposedly cheering the UN/US decision to intervene. Those videos are positively Chalabi-esque.

But it's the language about "military action to prevent the killing of Libyan citizens" that's the real problem. That very phrase opens the door wide to yet another quagmire. You remember quagmires. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Now Libya. What does this phrase mean about the limits, if any, of US/UN intervention in Libya? As far as I can tell, not so very much.

And how does our present War President explain (video) why the US cannot sit this out in the peanut gallery and try to nurse it's own economy and Japan back to a modicum of health? Ah. Well. He doesn't. You have to watch the entire statement. Very nice rhetoric. Very broad. Very fierce (where has this fierceness been hiding for the past two years that it gets to show off now?). Yes, it's intolerable that Gaddafi's forces are killing civilians. Yes, Gaddafi has abused the populace for more than four decades. Yes, he's violated human rights. Yes, he's suppressed expression and the right to assembled. And worse. We've heard all that before about Mubarak, and Saddam Hussein, and [fill in the name of the dictator who is now out of favor in the US]. Yes, he's a bad, bad man. And, yes, he has oil, oil, oil. How coincidental.

You would expect a large outcry about this newest of US wars. But so far, I don't hear much. I'm amazed that committing the US's military to anything like this can happen so easily. Have we become that desensitized, that habituated to war for oil?