Buoyed by strikes, Libyan rebels try to advance

yabits at 06:33 AM JST - 23rd March. I view our actions against Gadhafi's forces in Libya to be the best of a lot of bad choices.

Best of a lot of bad choices? Then who are the rebels we are supporting? How weak is the Gadhalfi goverment? How will Libyans react to western bombing campaign? Why should we think a no-fly zone will protect civilians when they never have in the past?

The people who organize coaltions are pretending that all the parties are sharing the burden. In reality, only the U.S. can do many of the tasks. If the other nations falter, U.S. will have to leap in and assume the entire burden. Multilateral campaigns are organized by elites, and propelled by calculation, not patriotism. The coaltion efforts are marked by opaque decision making and strategic vagueness. It is hard to get leaders from different nations with different values to agree on a common course of action. When diplomats do achieve this, it is usually because they have arrived at artful fudges that allow leaders from different countries to read the same words in a U.N. resolution and understand in a different ways. Coations should not pretend that they have found a superior way to fight the war because they have not.

It makes me sick to see F15-E strike fighters targeting civilians in an attempt to help the Al-Qaeda in Eastern Libya. Supreme Dictator Obama should stop these CIA/British insurgents immediately.

@thorgrimfile:

You've made a lot of astute observations and have asked insightful questions. A lot of food for thought in a great post.

I am not one who criticizes my country for not "doing enough" in the problems in Iran, and I view our actions against Gadhafi's forces in Libya to be the best of a lot of bad choices.

The single reason why US forces are stretching themselves so thinly that involvement in Syria may be out of the question has to do with the extremely unwise waste that was the invasion of Iraq.

By the way, Steven Metz has written a very insightful article in The New Republic on what likely lies ahead for Libya: a long and brutal insurgency. One that the United States would do well to prepare for.

It is amazing how you can have on one hand a hard-core lefty like Kucinich claiming Obama should be impeached for going too far, and on the other hand, right-wing wannabes like Romney declaring Obama is a wimp for bothering to wait for UN/Arab League approval before dropping lead.

Well, if the nutters on either end of the extreme spectrum are unhappy, I suspect this may actually be the best course of action - out of innumerable choices that are all crappy.

BTW, critics out there, care to suggest your super wise alternative? Should the US and/or EU/NATO have started the bombing days or weeks ago, and UN/Middle East sentiments be damned? Easy to call that GW-esque shot when your favored man (or crazy Alaskan woman) isn't in the hot seat!

Or should the US and/or EU/NATO have left Ghadafi alone, free to slaughter his unhappy people at his own mercurial will?

And if that was your favored course of action, keep in mind you can thus no longer criticize the US, your hated World Cop, when it didn't "do enough" - whatever the heck "enough" is - to help the protesters in Iran, etc., overthrow the Revolutionary Guard, Basij, and other such ultra-brutal instruments of repression (that make forces like the Mubarak secret police look like friendly donut-stealers).

And don't start comparing the situation to those in Bahrain or Yemen (as the things going on there are far from done, and who knows what the US and other countries have going in in the post-Wikipedia background), or Syria.

Oh, BTW, if you out of hand hate US involvement of any sort, be happy, as due to the insanity of the Israeli/Palestinian situation, the US will almost certainly not get involved in Syria under any circumstances. You can rest at east that Bashar al-Assad can slaughter his unruly people if he so chooses, just like his father did back in the 80s. Happy?

imomofo, your comments were brilliant. I have just one objection: your forces are not for "DEFENSE," they are for show. I mean, really, anyone crazy enough to attack Canada would find itself initially embarrassedly welcomed and then annihilated by an American response.

On the other hand, Obama's delayed reaction to Libya - and the controversy it has unleashed - is a portent to the end of America's "job" as world police. There may come a time when events will be left to take their natural course, no matter how ugly.

Let us hope, though, that the US and Canada continue to partnership in rocketing some of the funniest people the universe have ever witnessed into unrelenting ubiquity. You keep providing the humor and we'll keep providing the market.

Not only Obama not have Congress' approval, even Harper joined in the fray without consulting Parliament first. Hey, Canada, wouldn't our money be better spent elsewhere, such as the war on weed? I don't care about the US intervening, it's their job as world police, but Canada trying to play with the big boys is laughable. Yeah, send in the last dozen or so again CF18 that are not yet falling out of the sky to potentially get shot down, are the Libyans gonna compensate us for that if it happens? I doubt it. Why not send the $20 mil or so to run such an op to the quake/tsunami victims in Japan? That would have been more heroic and noble. Before I get flamed that we're doing the right thing, protecting civilian, yadayada just remember how tiny our military is even compared to Singapore or Denmark, so our forces should be for DEFENSE only. We just absolutely cannot afford such trivial expenses, not in this tough economy.

Good luck rebels. Just don't shoot at any airplanes any more...

To see our leftist friends now cheering on the bombing...

Care to show me where this is happening?

Most the leftists I know are appalled at the actions of the government.

Sane people abhor war, but a man like Qaddafi telling Libyans, "I will hunt your wives and children as they hide in closets" should make a hawk out of a Quaker. Let's level the playing field to let the Qaddafi supporters know that their absence from the negotiating table could well lead to their bodies underground.

I do hope that this is where it all leads: to negotiations that minimizes death and destruction. Even a dove recognizes that force is at times justified.

"srikes... against sovereign states"

The sovereign state in this case is a despicable dictatorship.

It is disturbing though how easy it is to enforce strikes in today's world at an international level against sovereign states.

arrestpaul:

" Zero. "

LOL! Only in the mind of the new leftist war hawks.

LoveUSA - How many innocent citiznes dead from the US strike?

Zero.

From a George Casey piece:

" The Libyan strikes could be the final nail in the coffin for the anti-war Left. With Obama, the Left has been transformed from a loosely affiliated ideological movement into a cult of personality – much like what happened with George W. Bush. U.S. politics became about defending Bush rather than following a particular ideology. Similarly here, the Left is dead – only great leader Obama lives now. "

He really nails it. To see our leftist friends now cheering on the bombing of yet another muslim country is a sight to behold. But this time it is Obama, so it is OK for them...

Who appeased Gaddafi, with the return of the terrorist from a British prison (post-Lockerbie)? It is UK's war, this time, not USA.

Another war on an Arab state - do they never learn?

"How many innocent citiznes dead from the US strike?"

Probably a few dead from the combined allied strikes ( the French were the first ). Probably quite a few Gadhafi supporters though.

How many innocent citizens dead from Gadhafi supporters' attacks? Thousands.

The Congress?Presidente Obama does not need to ask the the Congress. He was community organiser.

Hope all ends well,for Libyans.

How many innocent citiznes dead from the US strike?

I smell real civil war breaking up between the different ethnic groups.

Libyans beware.

DentShop - Has Congress authorized or debated this kind of "intervention?"

No authorization or Congressional debate. Obama did this all on his own authority.

Has Congress authorized or debated this kind of "intervention?"

Hope all ends well,for Libyans.

it is U.S. policy that Gadhafi has to go

If he had added 'down' to the end of that it could have been one of the greatest one-liners in U.S history. So very close.