Many questions about Libya By Haviland Smith

Rutland Herald & Barre Times-Argus
Perspective Section
 Mar 27, 2011
 
It’s hard to know precisely where to begin examining our recent “intervention” in Libya. However, we might start by asking how we got into this. Were we bullied by the British and French? In stressing the moral imperatives of intervention, did they shame President Obama into participation?

Why, if he ultimately decided it was right and proper to get involved, did he dither so long in making up his mind? He came very close to giving Libya back to Gadhafi.

This, in turn, questions the efficacy of running foreign policy on an internationally democratic basis, committing to coordinate our activities with the entire world. Don’t we have enough of a problem getting consensus here in America with our own people?

Given that reality, how could we expect broad international agreement on anything as provocative as the third American military intervention in an Arab country in the last nine years?

In fact, after the rush of Arab League approval of action against Libya, we find its members backing off. “We didn’t really mean that!”

They now say we went too far in the Security Council, while lambasting us for “killing civilians.” One simply has to ask here how you pull off a “no-fly zone” without killing civilians, particularly when your adversary is making sure he populates every last military target you have with his own imported civilians. All of this should have been anticipated.

In addition, we are the object of the purest worldwide schadenfreude seen in decades. Our enemies are more than enthused at our discomfort. Putin has asked if we are the new crusaders, pushing an emotional button in Islam that cannot be overestimated. The Chinese have to be delighted at this unexpected, politically suicidal turn of events. Iranians, Koreans, Cubans, Venezuelans and the Arab street see that America has taken steady aim at its own foot and pulled the trigger. None of them could believe that we Americans could have been so stupid as to get involved in this way, in this place at this time.

All of this aside, there are some truly important questions that so far have gone begging. Why are we intervening in what is clearly a civil war? Will we be doing that again elsewhere around the world? How will we decide where and when? Human misery? Oil? Will we have an “intervention scale” to tell us where and when?

Just what are our goals in Libya? One suspects that our primary goal is to depose Gadhafi, yet that is never agreed to either in the Arab League or in the Security Council. Our “coalition” already has philosophical fissures.

Then we have to ask exactly who and what our allies are. Are they simply those Libyans who have a grievance against Gadhafi? How many of the 140 tribes and tribal groupings in Libya do they represent? Like it or not, as poorly as we appear to understand them, they are our chosen allies. The fact that they are made up of dozens of hostile tribes and that they are not today close to being a decent fighting force is a fact we have chosen to live with. Who will be the boots on the ground? The new crusaders?

What are their goals, other than the removal of Gadhafi? Do we think they are all closet democrats? If we do, we are likely to be sorely disappointed. Just what kind of post-Gadhafi government are they likely to form, and how stable is that likely to be? Tribal societies do have problems with consensus and stable national governance.

What does this intervention say about Obama’s leadership style? Is his deliberate style of seeking consensus likely to survive in today’s world, or does this style take too long and ultimately come up with questionable results? Is it better or worse than Bush II?

Then we have the Republicans who seem to be uniformly critical of this Obama decision. Have they forgotten where they were after 9/11? They do appear to be wildly hypocritical in their uniform condemnation of activities that they themselves approved a scant nine years ago. It would appear that the Democrats have become the war party and the Republicans the pacifists — a quaint role reversal from the Bush era.

Finally, this looks just like the Bush invasion of Iraq in that so many in and around the government, except Bush and his neoconservative friends, knew that it would ultimately go badly because of the inherent fissures in Iraqi society. The same holds true today in Libya.

Insanity is defined as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Are we mad?



Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in eastern and western Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston.