some good blog comments I am reposting from another blog's comment section
Posted by drew, Mar 23 2011, 6:39AM - Link
Kotz, the only way this confusing and confused war in Libya
makes any intellectual sense is in its assertion of a new
Responsibility to Protect (civilians). The person who invented
that concept as a new obligation under international law is
Samantha Power. Obama read her book and hired her as his
senior foreign policy adviser in 2005.
You may call me obsessed, but I didn't even know who she was
until she called Mrs. Clinton a "monster", in 2008, because I
don't bother with 34 year-old Irish assistant professors in the
USA on a visa who write on how American foreign policy and
military hard power should be deployed in the service of a
concept she thought up in order to get tenure. And who
happens to be married now to a certain other highly educated
ideologue who is an ideological source for much of this
administration's domestic policy, Cass Sunstein. (She is making
war policy on our NSC while retaining an Irish passport.)
The only way to intellectually justify placing American
servicemen under foreign command -- currently, we're talking
about a "political steering committee", because there is no such
thing as a multinational military authority, and I'm not making
this up, is to assert that American hard power must serve a
higher, international goal that is her own Responsibility to
Protect.
The only way to explain the immediate disposal of the stated air
supremacy mission of this war (because we immediately figured
out that you can't "protect the people" by wiping out a tin horn
airforce flying 1960s technology MiGs, which took about 5
minutes, and began targeting the ground forces), is an overriding
global responsibility to make Libya safe for western faculty to
study. Yes, we have concluded that we need to blow up the
village in order to protect it. Bono will do a charity music video
and Powers' "Inside the White House" memoir is being shopped
already.
Obama's only, and it remains ephemeral, explanation for his
about-face on the matter of running the air war against Libya,
was his comment that he had a responsibility to protect the
citizens of Benghazi.
***
So, for how many years or decades shall we protect people (and
no one can tell us who it actually is that we are protecting) in
Libya, and from whom? Shall we do it with F-15s while the
Germans and Spaniards refuse to comply with our definitions of
protection? Shall we place the Marines and Navy and Air Force
under foreign command for the first time? Are we going to
invade Italy because they don't want to sponsor our forward base
requirements? Given that there was no entrance strategy, should
anyone be concerned that there is no exit strategy? Does it
matter that over 90 countries signed up to support Iraq and
Afghan coalitions, but here we have two dozen nations who are
already arguing about who's in charge? Can anyone send me the
powerpoint slide that details the operational chain of command
that shows how "we are not leading" (Clinton, last week.) How
can France be in charge when it is not in Nato? How can Nato
be in charge if Turkey refuses to participate in bombing Libya?
Do we need a UN Military Directorate? If we create a UN Military
Directorate, will it have North Korea and Iran and Cuba as
members, because after all, the UN has a Human Rights
Commission and Cuba and Libya have been on it? Egypt has a
modern air force (we built it) and a 500,000-man land force (we
don't), and they're next door; don't they have a Responsibility to
Protect?
This is what happens when you elect a guy as president who has
never had a job or managed people, but he reads a lot, and it's
all not so very complicated. Especially if you hire people from
exactly one academic/demographic cohort, who are so much
smarter than the rest of the population, who can't be trusted to
authorize the higher purpose of subordinating international
forays by the only world superpower. And include college faculty
ingenues who have just as much insight into the use of military
force as Gates or Webb, because she wrote a book that got made
into a movie!, while chairmen of the joint chiefs ignore the most
basic insights offered by the Bay of Pigs, killing Diem, walking
away from SVN, the collapse of Iran, the failure of the Dutch in
their "responsibility to protect" Sarajevo, five years of internecine
bloodbaths in the political vacuum that became Iraq, and
spending $100B a year to sustain Karzai, who hates us. This
isn't amateur hour, this is a farce called the Revenge of the
Academics, starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, music by
Bono, executive producer George Clooney. If more Americans
die or go broke supporting this war, well, tough luck, they
should have gone to a better college.
****
A strict constitutionalist, as Don and the tanker and the jayhawk
(and I) are, is correct in calling this war illegal. But we haven't
declared war in Congress since 1942 (that one turned out badly
for Rumania and Bulgaria, alas), so no one is going to get
impeached. Perhaps, however, Congress would like to revisit
their institutional impotence, which I believe is a convenient way
for them to avoid going on the record (as they did extensively in
support of all three of the Bush 41 and 43 wars, and as they did
in passing laws in 91 and 99 making regime change in Iraq the
official policy of the USA). As we know, going on the record in
support of Bush cost the Dems the presidency in 2004, so they
are going to be slow now to take any responsibility.
Unless the CIA stuns me and has someone close enough to
Gadaffi to get him geo-located long enough to laze a 500
pounder on his head -- which would violate Obama's stated
mission of protecting the people, not implementing regime
change -- Gadaffi has won this thing, and USA is wearing a very
expensive hat that says, Paper Tiger. We got some pretty good
live fire training in, I guess, but tell me how this ends, otherwise.
Maybe when the president's vacation ends someone will tell us?
When the Arab League says, Just kidding, y'all can go home now,
dirty infidel crusaders?
I think it ends when Berlusconi, who is making rumbling sounds
that we shouldn't be using bases on his land, brokers some
weird crooked deal with Gadaffi (as he has in the past). And
Gadaffi goes about his tribal vengeance in the dark while our
president returns to pressing matters: is Old Dominion this
year's sleeper Cinderalla team?
I regret my sarcasm but this misadventure is a dangerous
absurdity in the service of a few very large, very inexperienced,
very dangerous egos.
Posted by drew, Mar 23 2011, 7:37AM - Link
Paul, a good friend of mine is president of one of the very largest
defense contractors, and is a retired one star from one of the
services. Forgive me for not being more specific because I'm not
speaking for him. He says the incredulity at American
impetuousness in Libya -- on top of the last two years of such
comments as "I'm with you" and the indeterminacy of current US
foreign policy -- being expressed by nation-clients across the
middle east is much, much greater than anything that has been
reported.
I have no idea what "I'm with you" today means. Do you? When
they were in the streets two years ago, in Iran, we weren't "with
them", we were with the Ahmadinejad government.
Because weakness by a superpower is always provocative, and we
are demonstrating Brobdingnagian impotence now in Libya,
there is the possibility that the region will just explode in flames.
We can't possibly police such a conflagration, even if it is caused
by a regional democratic impulse.
So will it? Probably not. Why not? Because every autocrat in the
region is now going to mercilessly clamp down on any voice for
openness. |
