The French and Italian governments said Wednesday that they would join Britain in sending a small number of military liaison officers to support the ragtag rebel army in Libya, offering a diplomatic boost for the insurgent leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, as he met with President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris.
After the meeting, The Associated Press reported, Mr. Sarkozy pledged to intensify French airstrikes that started in March.
The announcements came as the international community searched for a means to break a bloody battlefield deadlock that has killed hundreds in the contested cities of Misurata and Ajdabiya and left the rebels in tenuous control of a few major coastal cities in their campaign against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The decisions seemed to push the three countries closer toward the limits of the United Nations Security Council resolution in mid-March authorizing NATO airstrikes but specifically “excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.” But the promised deployments also seemed a tacit admission that almost five weeks of airstrikes have not been enough to disable Colonel Qaddafi’s troops and prevent his loyalists from threatening rebel forces and civilians.
The French government spokesman, François Baroin, told reporters on Wednesday that the number of military liaison officers would be in single digits and that their mission would be to help “organize the protection of the civilian population.” The British deployment could involve up to 20 advisers.
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said on Tuesday that the British advisers would help the makeshift rebel forces “improve their military organizational structures, communications and logistics.”
I wonder what the next step will be. And in case there are any libertarians in the audience, I really am wondering what the next step will be, because I don’t know.
Robert Sneddon
The next step will be to send support troops to protect the advisors from the other rebels who want the oil money the rebels we’re training are collecting and not spreading around as they promised they would. After that it will get a bit confusing and then we’ll find ourselves standing around in Saigon II wondering how we got here and how the hell do we get out and it will be the Americans turn to point and laugh at the stupid Europeans.
cleek
Profit!!
OzoneR
Who cares, it’s not our problem, we did our duty. Let the Europeans figure it out
I’m sure they’ll try to drag us into it.
Corner Stone
Read a report this morning that classified the Italian people as “Trainers”, but haven’t been able to locate it again.
JonF
If the Europeans want to send in the troops, go ahead. We get closer to a policy goal at the same cost as before.
Corner Stone
Also saw something on MSNBC about how no one knows who to deal with amongst the rebels. I know it sounds odd, but it seems there’s some disagreements between factions of the rebel “forces”.
mrami
The Europeans continue to send “military support” while we send in Xe employees that sure do know a lot about running an oil pump. Shortly after we’ve built up a critical mass, Qaddafi gives up and leaves the country, or “goes into hiding”, never to be seen from again. We will offer to help set up the “new government”, which will conveniently be led by an ex-BP employee.
I give this a 60% likelihood. Just a hybridization of Afghanistan/Iraq…
catclub
@OzoneR: “I’m sure they’ll try to drag us into it.”
Cause we have sure tried to drag them into _our_ shitpiles.
Linda Featheringill
This might be a good time to review our own revolution, with the lack of nearly everything, the undisciplined forces, victories few and far between, etc.
I think an uprising that is truly made up of just ordinary people might be very awkward and clumsy and not slick at all.
However, in the case of Libya, do the rebels have the luxury of time to get their stuff together? I don’t know.
If you wanted to perform a miracle, you could slip into the country and kidnap Ghaddafi [not kill him, just remove him from the picture]. Don’t know how to do that, either.
What’s next? Dunno.
Omnes Omnibus
@Linda Featheringill: We got a few “military advisors” from major military powers like Prussia and France as well.
cleek
@Corner Stone:
so, the People’s Front of Libya doesn’t trust the Libyan Popular Front, and the Libyan People’s Popular Front hates them both ?
cyntax
The French still have their paratroopers, no?
Battle of Algiers part deux.
srv
What Robert said. Also troops to protect humanitarian aid. Then a couple will get killed/captured and we will of course be unable to not escalate in order to protect their honor. Rinse and repeat.
OzoneR
@Omnes Omnibus:
Also the French fleet sitting off the Virginia coast.
Chris Gerrib
I had occasion to speak to a French citizen yesterday. He tells me that, based on what he’s hearing from back home, the French are all for this intervention.
As long as it doesn’t involve us, I say let them deal with it.
Maude
@OzoneR:
That’s right. We are not in a front row seat with this and that is for the best.
@Robert Sneddon:
I just read the AP report about the offshore wells not being plugged. The oil companies are going to have to plug them in a timely manner.
retr2327
The decisions seemed to push the three countries closer toward the limits of the United Nations Security Council resolution in mid-March authorizing NATO airstrikes but specifically “excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.”
You must be kidding. “occupation force” is a loophole you could drive a truck — or several divisions of them — right through. These aren’t occupation forces, they’re liberation forces! Done deal.
At least someone was thinking ahead . . . .
Corner Stone
@cleek: I would agree with that assessment, but unfortunately I don’t think anyone knows enough about any of the splitters to actually give them names.
piratedan
@Corner Stone: I thought the Rebels had a website with a laundry list of the civic councils that were listed in being support of the uprising. Does that no longer apply?
JonF
@OzoneR and whole french units.
Just Some Fuckhead
Geez, it seems like just yesterday the liberal hawks were telling us this thing would be over in hours, Qaddafi was going to strike a deal, we only intervene where the rebels have a good chance of winning, etc. etc.
So is there any chance the liberal hawks are discredited now?
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Some Fuckhead: Links?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Omnes Omnibus: Go back to the first Libya threads. They’re there.
Bob Loblaw
@Omnes Omnibus:
Jesus, Omnes, seriously?
It’s not like this is some unique occurrence. There’s never been a war yet on the planet that hasn’t been declared won too soon.
smacktoward
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, but they waited for us to win a couple of battles on our own to show that we were for real before they came in.
That’s my beef with the Libya intervention: not that intervention is necessarily a bad idea, but that there’s no evidence that the side we’re backing has any fight to it. They keep getting rolled over and then griping that it’s NATO’s fault for not supporting them more rather than changing their tactics or getting better organized. That’s a loser’s strategy, not a winner’s. And the worst case scenario in interventions is when you throw your weight behind the side that ends up losing.
OzoneR
@Just Some Fuckhead:
yeah, nobody said that
srv
@Just Some Fuckhead: Neocons will admit their errors before any emocon will.
srv
@OzoneR:
Derpty derp.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob Loblaw: Yes, seriously. As far as I remember the arguments regarding limited timeframes that were being made involved the amount of time during which the US would be in a leadership role in the whole thing. That seems to be playing out.
OzoneR
@srv: Well that Alex S was idiotic, any moron knew this wasn’t going to take hours, or even days, unless the rebels had a significant momentum or Gaddafi steps down.
It took a month to take down Mubarak with a much more organized opposition
Omnes Omnibus
@srv: Thank you.
Tsulagi
@cleek: Don’t forget the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition! It’s an umbrella org for some longtime Libyan opposition groups. From Wiki…
So first they organized demonstrations to protest those blasphemer Danish cartoons. Only logical to include Gadhafi. According to a page on their site at the time, he’s even worse than Allah toons. Gadhafi’s an atheist they said, the anti-
ChristProphet! Fucker.That page is no longer on their site. Since then they needed the server space to let you know they’re all about secular democracy and ending tyranny. Whack Gadhafi–do it for the children. Yeah, right.
This thing is a dog’s breakfast.
Tsulagi
@Tsulagi: Okay, that link to a Google cached page didn’t work too well. Address probably too damn long for WP.
Just Some Fuckhead
@srv:
Haha, emocon is an awesome word.
Just Some Fuckhead
@srv: Now you’ll get the “no true Scotsman” defense. Bear in mind that at no time in those original threads did our Realist Emocons correct the fanciful predictions of the Wildly Optimistic Emocons.
It was just sell sell sell.
Hawes
We all know the problem of “our oil is under their sand” but I think there is increasing concern that the Libyan standoff is keeping oil prices over $110/bl. As the guys at Bonddad’s Blog have noted, any continued rise in oil prices could create the double dip recession we’ve all feared.
http://bonddad.blogspot.com/2011/04/oil-shock-of-2011-has-begun.html
Europe gets more of its oil from Libya than we do, and it clearly has to be hurting them. Cameron and Sarkozy are just as bound by the effects of economics on their reelection as Obama is. They need this crisis resolved yesterday.
I have to say I’m surprised by the sticking power of the Ghaddafy clan. Usually these dictators talk brave for a few weeks and go nips up, like in Cote d’Ivoire.
Hawes
Which is not to say I thought this would take hours, I thought Cinco de Mayo because of the defections and the fact that Qadaffi’s army is mostly staffed with mercenaries. Without loyalty or legitimacy, troops will eventually say, “Fuck this” and go home.
Oh, and even if/when Khadafy falls, Libya will be a godawful mess for years. But thankfully not our mess for once.
HyperIon
On CSPAN this am several serious and knowledgeable people were discussing historical aspects of the current “revolts”/”uprisings”. None of the panelist were people i had ever heard talk before. But they were full of info.
Lots of details about various tribal connections in Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc. I imagine it will be re-broadcast this evening (PST).
But skip the Rumsfeld love fest at Hudson or Cato which was also on. I recognized all of those usual suspects: Feith, Pace, etc.
OzoneR
@Hawes:
The rebels are disorganized. It’s harder for them to win. Plus, I’m not so sure rebels have a strong public following, that seems to be the issue we’ve mistook, the amount of public want for Gaddafi to step down
Just Some Fuckhead
@OzoneR:
Wow, you’d think someone who pointed out the rebels lacked majority public support would look like a prophet about now.
Three-nineteen
As a couple of other people have said, I don’t care (well, I care a lot less) about what other countries are doing. What is the US still doing? Are we out/getting out/trying to get out?
Joe Beese
Why are you all bitching anyway? It’s not like Obama started another war in Libya. It’s just a “kinetic military action”.
Bob Loblaw
@Hawes:
That doesn’t sound very humanitarian.
Joe Beese
True. But the fat leasing contracts that the oil companies will sign with his replacement will make it all worthwhile in the end.
OzoneR
@Just Some Fuckhead: No, you’re still just some fuckhead who had a 50/50 chance of being right.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and much like you, is still a piece of trash.
I’m still glad we saved Benghazi. Even if the rebels end up losing, we still helped them. That’s something to be proud of.
Just Some Fuckhead
@OzoneR:
lolz
I get that a lot.
Joe Beese
@OzoneR:
Yes! Saved them from a wholesale massacre of civilians!
Like the ones that have not occurred in any of the cities Gaddafi has recaptured.
Next time a Democrat starts a war, just say that the Enemy is dumping babies out of incubators and be done with it.
Just Some Fuckhead
@OzoneR:
How many people did we kill on the pretense of a threat to Benghazi?
OzoneR
@Joe Beese:
Have you NOT been paying attention to what’s going on in Misrata?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Joe Beese: Silly Beese! Why in the world wouldn’t you take the word of Qaddafi as gospel truth?
OzoneR
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Don’t pull this “we killed civilians too” sanctimonious bullshit on me, you couldn’t give a flying rats ass about any man, woman or child in that country. NATO killed far less civilians than Gaddafi has, far less, go peddle that transparent bullshit elsewhere.
Just Some Fuckhead
@OzoneR: I’m asking a simple question. There was no massacre in Benghazi. So how many people (call them what you want, mercs, soldiers, civs, collateral) did we kill on the pretense of a threat?
Joe Beese
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Apples and oranges, my dear Fuckhead.
When we kill civilians, it’s a regrettable tragedy but in the noble cause of Freedom.
I’m sure the President, in his rare private moments, experiences deep anguish over the loss of life. No doubt, when he prays to his savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, he asks for the strength to carry the mission through.
Just Some Fuckhead
@OzoneR:
All the stuff I’m reading doesn’t indicate a wholesale slaughter of civilians. What I’m reading sez there’s a pitched battle for the third largest city in Libya between government forces and rebels.
Is this the part where you emocons start getting vague about who is doing what to whom in an effort to mitigate criticism?
OzoneR
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Not many. But nice of you to add Gaddafi forces into your question so when you do find the number, it’ll be higher (seeing as NATO killed like 5 civilians) and you can get up on your high horse like you give a shit.
I have absolutely no issue with 50,000 dead Gaddafi loyalists after what they’re doing to people in Misrata. None whatsoever.
OzoneR
@Just Some Fuckhead:
read more
Even the Christian Science Monitor is calling it “Obama’s Rwanda”
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2011/0420/Slaughter-in-Libya-s-Misurata-Is-this-Obama-s-Rwanda
Joe Beese
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Why should the Obots have any more understanding of who the actors are in this farce than the Warmonger-In-Chief does?
OzoneR
@Joe Beese:
Didn’t God take out every innocent firstborn in Egypt to protect the Jews?
PTirebiter
@cyntax: and the still have the Foreign Legion. I would guess thats where the advisors would come from. Multi-nationals that the are.
Just Some Fuckhead
@OzoneR: Qaddafi was gonna go door to door in Benghazi and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people. But in Misurata, he’s using snipers to kill only hundreds of people?
Corner Stone
@OzoneR:
He knew they were going to run the media one day. That was His plan all along.
Corner Stone
@OzoneR:
Then what about Misrata’s misery, as you have brought up? Should we allow the residents of Misrata to suffer and die when we have the capacity to stop/reduce that situation?
Corner Stone
@srv:
Personally, I’m worried about the ninjas. How are we gonna ramp up to defeat the ninjas in Libya?
Joe Beese
Barack Obama describes his communication with the Almighty:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/03/news/la-pn-obama-prayer-breakfast-20110204
I wonder why Obama didn’t get ridiculed for this the way Bush did when he also evinced belief in invisible sky deities.
Perhaps because Bush was sincere and everyone knows Obama is just pandering with lies.
OzoneR
@Joe Beese:
Who ridiculed Bush for his belief in God?
OzoneR
@Corner Stone:
WTF is this?
OzoneR
@Corner Stone:
No, which is why the British and the French are sending in more advisers.
OzoneR
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Are you really going to bring this argument down to how citizens are slaughtered? Now you’re being ridiculous. door to door, snipers, it’s the same shit. Hundreds have died in TWO days, that’s a massacre.
Bob Loblaw
@Joe Beese:
I can’t imagine why people think you’re motivated by hate and spite instead of reason and logic.
Corner Stone
@OzoneR: What? I have a good friend in the newspaper business who detailed it all for me a while back. You live in NYC and didn’t know this?
PTirebiter
@OzoneR:
More like they were wondering aloud if it might become Obama’s Rwanda. As in, “it would be irresponsible not to speculate.”
Just Some Fuckhead
@OzoneR:
Yes. There is no other way to highlight the rhetorical excesses of the war emocons. If the mere threat of the massacre of hundreds of thousands of innocent people was enough to justify killing a different few thousand then your latest faux massacre of a hundred or so doesn’t even make the radar.
Up the rhetoric, man! Babies in incubators!
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Robert Sneddon: we are already standing around in Saigon II.
Its called Kabul.
El Cid
What is happening now is very much like a number of civil wars which have raged throughout the Mid-East and Northern Africa. Death rates in Lebanon were comparable to, often higher than what we’ve seen. Particularly in the initial Israeli invasion of 1982, when tens of thousands were killed.
In fact, it’s very, very similar to the Chad civil war under the Habre regime, and maybe even more like the decades-long Libya-Chad wars, extending to the Sudan, Darfur, you name it. A situation which never truly ended. Including various OAU, French, and UN interventions.
A mess like that I think is quite likely.
Caz
I’m a libertarian, but I don’t really understand why you are asking libertarians what the next step will be. It appears that Italy, France, and Britain are considering what to do next in Libya. How that has any bearing on American politics is beyond me. As a libertarian, I think the U.S. should stay entirely out of the Libyan conflict. Libya poses no threat to the U.S., so we have no business doing anything to or about Libya.
So I guess the next step for the U.S. is doing nothing.
And I was not a supporter of Bush, but I do remember throngs of liberals calling him a war criminal. Seems to me that Obama’s decision to bomb a foreign nation without any provocation whatsoever, and without any national security interests at stake, violates international treaties on war, so is Obama not a war criminal then too?
The next step should be for this administration to make good on its promise to get U.S. troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
We have enough problems at home to be spending billions of dollars and risking the lives of American soldiers every time a foreign country experiences internal conflict.
Protect our own borders and worry about the issues inside them, rather than running around the world putting our noses in every other country’s business.
mclaren
Escalation.
The next step is always escalation.
Always.
There is no instance of Americans ever saying, “Well, those barefooted starving peasants whipped our asses, so it’s time to run away like little girls.”
Corner Stone
Well, who would’ve ever guessed?
False pretense for war in Libya?
“EVIDENCE IS now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a “bloodbath’’ in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and last rebel stronghold.
But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.
…
But intervention did not prevent genocide, because no such bloodbath was in the offing. To the contrary, by emboldening rebellion, US interference has prolonged Libya’s civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents.
The best evidence that Khadafy did not plan genocide in Benghazi is that he did not perpetrate it in the other cities he had recaptured either fully or partially — including Zawiya, Misurata, and Ajdabiya, which together have a population greater than Benghazi.”
slightly_peeved
Since the US has already de-escalated, moving to a purely support role, I don’t see how it matters to the US what happens now. Or how people can say these involvements always escalate with a straight face
Donut
I don’t wanna come off as an asshole (and certainly not feeling any schadenfreude) but all of you geniuses who went on and on about how this would be over quickly and efficiently because shut up that’s why should feel pretty fucking taken for suckers right about now. I think I said, about, oh, I dunno, 200 times that we’ll be sucked in far and deep and this will be a foreign policy for at least two or three presidents beyond Obama. Oh well. It fucking sucks to be right about that, but I still think I’m right…
El Cid
@Corner Stone: In that piece are some solid arguments which could be explored. It’s never wise to take uncritically the assertions of fact made even by forces opposing vicious tyrants.
However, I don’t think it’s necessarily the wisest to take any particular single and rough estimate of casualties in a place like Misurata as enough to make a blunt conclusion.
There are certainly other good sources of evidence, giving figures of civilian deaths much larger than the 300-odd noted by Human Rights Watch.
As for the notion of using the term genocide every time there are mass killings of any type, I’m an old fogie in the sense of only choosing to use the term “genocide” when there really is something going on along the classic definitions of genocide.
The use of the term with regard to anything happening in Libya is absurd. Although today it’s a term now used pretty loosely. Though, clearly, it’s not up to me to say how terms are to be used to discuss truly horrific acts. Apparently these days if you don’t use the term “genocide” in discussing the slaughters of hundreds or thousands of civilians or the related onslaughts growing out of state / insurgency wars, you’re somehow downplaying such crimes against humanity.
I would not, though, suggest that the US was the source of claims of imminent mass deaths faced in Benghazi: there were plenty of locals saying the same. Right or wrong. That it was used to justify US policies would be the only point in linking such arguments to the US.
For my part, I did not anticipate a directed slaughter of civilians by Qaddafi, but I did think there was a high likelihood of blowing the hell out of anything in the way to squelch any armed and/or well-organized opposition. Numerically it might not have been any different.
Corner Stone
@El Cid: It’s an op-ed that agrees with my preconceived conclusions.
So I thought I’d strike while the iron was hot.
El Cid
@Donut: Some reports held that one of the major motivations for the US foreign policy establishment to move toward military intervention in Libya was the notion that with such an air campaign it would be possible to avoid the ongoing type of civil war which so many saw as a likely outcome. Maybe.
Just as the other Northern African wars had destabilized much of the continent, so would a Libyan regional war.
Which was something I hoped wouldn’t happen but seemed to me one of the most likely outcomes. Not that I avoided wavering between a number of outcomes.
Stillwater
@Corner Stone: The best evidence that Khadafy did not plan genocide in Benghazi is that he did not perpetrate it in the other cities he had recaptured either fully or partially
That outlines the stinky odor some of us were smelling from the whole ‘save 100,000 innocents from massacre’ claim, and why the whole operation is clearly (in my view, anyway) conducted for more reasons than (merely) HI.
The article isn’t definitive, of course, but surely suggestive. Especially given that all the US ever requires (historically) for the use of force is a legitimate pretext, of whatever stripe. Even in the New Era, I (for one) never assumed it would be otherwise.
pattonbt
@slightly_peeved: But it is escalating, escalating exactly as many of said would happen. It may not be escalating for the US (yet), but it is escalating for those more directly involved. Escalating from what was originally envisioned, discussed and agreed as necessary. And dollars for doughnuts it’s going to escalate further. It’s just the nature of the conflict and the “teams” involved. One side now has to lose and “we” have chosen a side. Unfortunately, “our” side is the weaker side and will lose without support, which we can now not have happen. So that means we will have to turn the tide somehow. You can do the math from there.
How anyone could be surprised it’s escalating is beyond me. My take has been pretty much US centric considerations and for now I am pleased with the US not being sucked in too much yet and will wait and see as things unfold. As for the other players (Britain, France, Italy) this was obvious from the get go and they will have to deal with their citizens on their actions. Now I wouldn’t have gotten involved, period, but I’ve stated my reasons why before and I’m not in this for arguments sake so I’ll leave it at that.
But sufficed to say, if the US keeps pulling away on this I’ll be happy, but the conflict will grow and the other main players will have to escalate for beyond where they are now. It couldn’t be any clearer.
Medicine Man
Well, of course there are advisers going in. Good. I’m glad. I’m doubly glad that it is European countries with a real stake in the outcome who are doing the messy work for a change, rather than the US.
I can appreciate pessimism and a general lack of enthusiasm for military adventure after the events of the last decade. Here’s the thing though—it’s done. The West is involved. Doing whatever is needed to get the quickest, most desirable outcome should be the plan. If that means providing logistics, organization, and close-air support, then fuck yes, please do it.
Otherwise, look at the alternative. The stated intention of this intervention is to “prevent Gaddafi from massacring the rebels”. The threat of massacre remains as long as Gaddafi is in power. No shit regime change is the real goal and has been the whole time. Regime change is the goal unless the principles involved really want an interminable stalemate.
Not being involved or putting your thumb on the scales for the duration are the only two options really.