A week ago a relatively limited intervention probably could have sealed the rebels' victory, preventing a reeling Qaddafi from fully mobilizing his heavy armaments. But where do we expect to get from this now? It's not clear to me how the best case scenario can be anything more than our maintaining a safe haven in Benghazi for the people who were about to be crushed because they'd participated in a failed rebellion. So Qaddafi reclaims his rule over all of Libya except this one city which has no government or apparent hope of anything better than permanent limbo. Where do we go with that?Strangely-enough, none of these objections really bother me much. The logic of a Bush-style war in the Arab lands makes much more sense in the under-populated but oil-rich lands of northern Africa than it ever did in the heart of densely-populated Mesopotamia, particularly if we can keep ground troops out. By creating a client regime along the northern coast of Africa, we gain leverage without much sacrifice. We also ally ourselves with the forces of Arab revolution, rather than oppose those forces, which will help later on with relations with the new Egypt.
...Second, it's difficult for me to distinguish this from an armed insurrection against a corrupt autocrat that looked to be winning and then lost. That sort of thing happens a lot. Only in very specific circumstances is there any logic for us to intervene in a situation like that. I've heard people saying well, we took too long to stop the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and we didn't lift a finger to stop the genocide in Rwanda, so let's not make the same mistake this time. But these seem like preposterous comparisons. This is ugly and it's brutal but a lot of people getting killed in a failed rebellion isn't genocide. It's not. And unlike situations where violence can destabilize the larger region, in this case our presence seems more likely to destabilize the larger region.
...Finally, the talk of exit strategies is always a bit off the mark in these situations. Sometimes the stakes are high enough that the exit strategy doesn't have to be clear. The better question is this: can you maintain the initiative in getting to your goal. In this case, we go in and then we're stuck.
...So let's review: No clear national or even humanitarian interest for military intervention. Intervening well past the point where our intervention can have a decisive effect. And finally, intervening under circumstances in which the reviled autocrat seems to hold the strategic initiative against us. This all strikes me as a very bad footing to go in on.
Domestically, what I like is that this war seems to split the interventionist neo-cons (like Bill Kristol) from the more-isolationist cons (just about everyone else).
Many people dislike this Libyan war. Maybe that is a good sign. But much depends on the course of unpredictable events, and leaving Gadhaffi free to cause trouble may be a dangerous thing to do.
Here is something about the Alert Alaskan:
The call by the Arab League for Western military intervention in an Arab state — in this case asking that a UN “no-fly zone” be imposed over Libya – is not only without precedent but it puts in formal terms what Governor Palin stated three weeks ago should have been America’s response to the political and humanitarian crisis now unfolding there.The only alert one here is Ahmed Chalabi, who must be the most-adroit geopolitical surfer in world history who has yet to meet a firing squad or permanent exile. Sarah Palin seems to think there is a war against domestic oil production, but the real problem is a lack of domestic oil. She seems to think behind every wave is a tsunami. Chalabi knows that there will be just one wave for awhile, so you have to ride it for all that it's worth. So, a Palin Doctrine would be absurd, but it might have its uses.
The former GOP vice presidential candidate was being interviewed on February 23rd on national television by Sean Hannity on a range of issues. On the Libya crisis, she proposed a no-fly zone to protect the armed and un-armed opposition to the Qaddafi regime. Mrs. Palin’s formulation had been blogged about for nearly a week when it was echoed by the man who, before the Iraq war, had led the Iraq democratic movement in exile, Ahmed Chalabi.
A long-time foe of Saddam Hussein who has emerged as a leading figure in Iraq’s democratically elected legislature. Mr Chalabi recounted in the Wall Street Journal how President George H. W. Bush’s 1991 call for a popular uprising against Saddam had been heeded by the Iraqi people, only to have Saddam then murder some 30,000 of them from helicopter gunships while the Western world stood by.
...More broadly, Mrs. Palin’s address in India will be another step in the growing outline of what might be called The Palin Doctrine. It contrasts sharply with the foreign policy being conducted, if that is the word, by President Obama, who is perplexing not only the Arab world, to which he reached out in his Cairo speech at the start of his presidency, but even his own supporters in the liberal camp, and many in between, who are upset by what might be called his propensity for inaction. It’s an inaction that suggests the Arab League won’t be the only institution that might find itself surprised by the logic of the alert Alaskan.
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