Here we go again! It's Iraqi-style shock and awe for Libya.
With deep déjà vu we see US cruise missiles being launched, Libyan AA firing helplessly into the night sky, and the burning wreckage of armor and vehicles on desert roads.
As with the Iraq, the assault on Libya was preceded by a huge barrage of anti-Gaddafi propaganda and steaming moral outrage by western media and politicians. American TV crews rushed to Libya to witness the wicked colonel get his comeuppance. None went to Bahrain or Yemen.
The attack was led by France. President Nicholas Sarkozy just suffered his own bout of shock and awe when polls showed his conservative party trailing the hard right National Front of Marine LePen. Blasting Arabs is a sure-fire way to win back the hearts of France's rightwing voters. So "aux armes, citoyens!"
Bien sure, the French attack had nothing, nothing at all to do with unsubstantiated claims by Gadaffi's number one son, Saif, that Libya has secretly financed Sarkozy's last election campaign.
The ever-bumbling Arab League had first given a tepid OK to a no fly zone to stop Gaddafi bombing rebels civilians, but then recoiled as western warplanes began attacking Libyan ground targets and civilians -- including Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli.
The fireworks were most impressive. To no surprise, Libya proved a total pushover. Its feeble military was routed. But the nasty question then surfaced: what is the objective of this operation?
Wars are waged to attain political objectives. Killing enemy forces is merely the means to this objective. The UN mandate is only to protect civilians, not to remove the Gaddafi regime. The US is targeting Gaddafi but claims -- wink, nudge -- that it is only after command and control targets.
But Gaddafi has been through such attacks before. In 1987, he took me by the hand and led me through the ruins of his residence which had been demolished a year earlier by a US bomb that killed his two-year old daughter.
For the moment, the most likely scenario is that Libya will end up split into warring western and eastern camps. The western powers -- minus Germany and Turkey who wisely refused to join the Libya attack -- are likely to arm and support the Benghazi rebels. It's also noteworthy that the African Union failed to endorse the anti-Gaddafi operation.
Gaddafi still retains some support in western Libya and from important tribes. So welcome to a Libyan civil war. Shades of Afghanistan and Iraq, where the US intervened to support rebelling minorities and ended up stuck in the middle of maddeningly complex civil wars.
Little is known about the rag-tag Benghazi rebels, now adopted by the western powers. Britain's MI6 intelligence service has maintained some links with them for over a decade. But the rebels have no organize military power -- which suggests western special forces and intelligence agents will soon become involved. This writer has reported their presence in Libya for many weeks.
It is possible that the Senoussi tribe will emerge from Benghazi's chaos and reassert its historic overlordship of eastern Libya. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Senoussi were a powerful force that spread an Islamic revivalist movement from the Egyptian border to Morocco, and across much of the northern and middle Sahara.
The Grand Senoussi was one of the first authentic Arab national rulers and opponents of European colonialism of the modern era. Gaddafi overthrew the last Senoussi, the doddering Ibn Idris, in 1969. I met a number of the senior Senoussi clan in Tripoli and have no doubt they would be ready to assume leadership of anti-Gaddafi forces.
But what then? Are we to see a Libya riven by civil war? How long can a very expensive no-fly zone be maintained? Is the west ready to risk getting sucked into another conflict in the Muslim world? Are not Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan enough?
Interestingly, the Libya operation is being run by Washington's new Africa Command, a harbinger of growing US military involvement in oil-rich Africa. Yet here in Washington there seems to be no clear plan for an endgame in Libya, not even a notion of what to expect. Even normally hawkish Republicans are expressing concern.
There's another big problem with Libya. Everyone hates the prolix Gaddafi, particularly Arab despots who he routinely blasts as "old women in robes," "Zionist lackeys," and "cowards and thieves." But the Arab world grows restive as it sees US-backed despotic regimes in Bahrain and Yemen gunning down protestors. Or watching reports of US air strikes killing large numbers of Pakistani and Afghan civilians. And, of course, seeing Israel using heavy weapons against Palestinian civilians.
America's glaring double standard in the Mideast and Muslim world is a major reason for growing hatred of our nation.
Events in Libya may end up further enflaming such feelings.
America would be hailed as genuine liberator of long-suffering Libyans if it also intervened in Bahrain and Yemen -- and perhaps Saudi Arabia -- to protect civilians from the ferocity of their despotic governments and promote real democracy.
But it's only oil-rich Libya that is getting the "humanitarian" treatment from the US and oil-hungry western European former colonial powers.
A fractured Libya will not only curtail oil exports, it will open the gates to a flood of African emigration to southern Europe. Gaddafi has long been cooperating with France, Italy and Spain to halt the flow of such economic refugees. He now threatens to open the flood gates. There is also a risk that the Libyan conflict could spread into neighboring Mali, Chad, Niger and Sudan.
Turkey has been proposing sensible diplomatic solutions but no one is yet listening to peaceful plans. Once again, the west is gripped by that old crusading fever, a combination of moral outrage at the wickedness of the unspeakable Saracens, combined with a pulsating lust for their riches.
The question President Obama should be asking himself is: given our $1.4 trillion deficit, can we really afford another little war whose rational is unclear and outcome uncertain?
copyright Eric S. Margolis 2011
Follow Eric Margolis on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@ericmargolis
No matter. President Obama will be doing his part by keeping us informed - as he's pushed to rid the area of every last muslim government that Clinton and her oil-thirsty, crusading handlers view as a challenge to Western and Israli domination in the region.
Altogether now; "Onward Christian soldiers, marching off to war." You too, OBOMBMA.
I'll take a wiiilllldddd guess and say there will be some other place to bomb - shortly.
What President Obama should be asking himself is "Is this the right thing to do?" Maybe it's "Is it in the interests of America and the world?" Perhaps even "Are we saving lives?"
The question of whether we can afford it is pointless. It's what wimps use when they can't say "This is wrong." The US's actions in regards to Libya are moral and justified. Complaining that they're expensive is like saying we shouldn't have fought (pick a war... Revolutionary to Iraq) because it was too expensive. We shouldn't have fought the Iraq war or Vietnam, because they were misguided and contrived, not because they were too expensive.
America has to be bombing somewhere in the world.
Sicko country.
I am so sorry that the struggles for freedoms [which we take for granted] by peoples
around the world and under the feet of dictators bores you so much. I'm sure Mr.
Gaddafi was a top-notch gracious host when "he took [you] by the hand and led [you]"
during your chummy visit with him. After all, you were going to present your view of
him to the rest of the world, were you not?
Your casting of the freedom fighter in smirky terms as they struggle against a tyrant
belies your true concerns.
Perhaps the next skirmish the U.S. becomes involved in by whoever is President at the
time will summon you and run the skirmish to your satisfaction, budget and all.
I'm sure that President will avert his eyes from whatever skirmish the media is pushing
to the world [you're familiar with their point of view, are you not?] and concentrate on
what you think deserves top priority.
And I'm sure the media will become less opinioned and more investigative.
And then again, maybe we're both wrong.
Btw I was not personally attacking you,but those who some how imply that these rebels are dangerous people.
The West has had it in mind to bring down Gaddafi for decades. Echoing Iraq, we will find out in a few years that the planners have been working on this one for a while, and the no-fly was a fait accompli from the first day we heard it mentioned, despite appearances of waffling here and there.
The goal here is not democracy, never was (see Eric's comments on Yemen etc). It is to chop each Arab country into little harmless pieces that don't challenge/balance the "Only Democracy in the Mideast" (tm), with bad guys in one piece, and CIA stooges and - surprise- oil, in the other. viz: future Kurdistan, south Sudan, Yemen, and eventually Saudi.
Less and less of our oil comes from there (hello Canada, we'll take oil now, water later) so the strategic interest is less clear. For us, that is.
"cocorico" for the bombing but they are not leading the operations right now. The US is like always. France could never lead any operation like this one with one aircraft carrier. This operation was not well sold to the american public and we are going to end up killing more civilians than Gaddafi did in the last 4 weeks of this conflict. The whole purpose of the mission was to protect civilians and we end up killing more. Very sad for America. We should have let the Europeans lead this one. They have enough resources to do it. I know they always claim they don't but they do.
The list goes back centuries. I doubt Gaddafi comes close. And you should look up Luis Posada Carriles if you are so worried about bringing airliner bombers to justice.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/21/2126942/cuban-militant-posada-is-heard.html
In the very old days the winner of a war took all they could haul and went home, maybe that was a good plan.