The Libyan Situation

CNN has live updates of the changing situation. The key questions right now are, where is Gaddafi, and will he accept defeat? According to reports his son, a leading spokesman for the regime, was captured Sunday and most resistance in the capital has collapsed. It looks like the rebels have won. But does Gaddafi retain enough military strength and support to continue fighting? Ideally he'll be captured, killed or flee the country and go in to exile.

If we assume that Gaddafi is finished and the rebels will be able to establish a new government, that raises more questions for the U.S. First, when will our involvement end? Will we, as usual, decide that we need to give Libya huge amounts of aid to help rebuild the country? And second, what type of government will emerge? In my opinion our intervention was unnecessary and not in the U.S. interest. However, if a decent friendly or even neutral government takes over, one that removes Libya from the column of nations we need to worry about, the operation will have achieved positive results. Although it isn't hard to do better than Gaddafi, it is unfortunately also possible that the new government will be dominated by Islamists, or be in other ways as bad or worse as the dictator it replaces. Other than just supporting the rebels, I'm not sure what exactly we are doing to try and produce a positive outcome. Right now we are in wait and see mode.

"Smart Power" Isn't Smart or Powerful

Hillary Clinton made the laughable claim that the U.S. is employing "smart power" with regard to Libya and Syria. With all the focus on President Obama's miserable handling of domestic policy, it's always worth reminding people that this administration is almost as clueless when it comes to foreign affairs. Here's Clinton on what she thinks we are doing in Libya.

Libya was a study in the use of "strategic patience," whereby the United States resisted the impulse for immediate intervention and instead helped to build support for the country's nascent opposition, which the U.S. now recognizes as Libya's legitimate government. She said the unprecedented NATO-Arab alliance protecting civilians on the ground was a key result of the tactics of smart power.

Here's what we are actually doing in Libya. Despite already being involved in two wars, fighting Islamist terrorists across the globe, and mired in an economic mess, we decided to intervene in the Libyan civil war. This intervention was completely unnecessary, particularly given that Britain and France were already going to intervene. Not only did we do so anyway, but we created a terrible precedent at the UN by signing on to a resolution that could easily be directed against America in the future. In addition, once in the war, we refused to win it by taking the obvious action of trying to eliminate Gaddafi. We are basically helping prolong a civil war, wasting money, and keeping forces tied down in yet another open-ended commitment. If that's a smart use of American power, I'd hate to see a dumb one.

In Syria, we are doing essentially nothing. In my opinion that's actually pretty smart. But it has nothing to do with exercising some sort of power. We are refusing to employ our power at all. Hillary Clinton even thinks it would be going too far if we called for Assad to step down. And then there's this gem from the Secretary of State that demonstrates yet again how Obama's foreign policy is based primarily on naivete and wishful thinking.

"I think this is smart power, where it is not just brute force, it is not just unilateralism," she said. "It is being smart enough to say you know what we want a bunch of people signing out of the same hymn book and we want them singing a song of universal freedom, human rights, democracy, everything that we have stood for and pioneered over 235 years."

Brute force is an actual application of power. It can be smart or it can be dumb. It depends how and why it is employed. Doing things unilaterally is sometimes necessary and can also be smart, and in American interests -- which aren't exactly a priority for the Obama administration. What is "universal freedom" supposed to be? Maybe it's the same thing as "a universal set of values and interests."

"The United States stands for our values, our interests and our security, but we have a very clear view that others need to be taking the same steps to enforce a universal set of values and interests,"

There is obviously no such thing as universal values or interests. But Clinton wants to "enforce" them somehow. Hopefully we can replace the Obama administration with one that at least grasps the basic fact that different states have different interests, and that values vary wildly across the globe.

International Criminal Court Continues to be a Joke

Moammar Gaddafi has been a brutal dictator for a long time. In addition to his typical repressive actions at home, he's also had extensive ties with terrorists. There are reports that he personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing. But now, after all this time, with Gaddafi fighting for the survival of his regime, the ICC has decided to issue a meaningless arrest warrant for him for supposed "crimes against humanity."

Not only has the ICC waited until his regime is embroiled in a civil war, where his ruthless attempts to crush the rebels are pretty standard tactics, but it waited until NATO was already trying to kill him. What's the point of this ridiculous indictment? The Libyan government responded by saying that the "ICC has no legitimacy whatsoever." Gaddafi isn't right about much, but he's right about that.

War Powers Act Lawsuit

The big political news of the day is that a bi-partisan group of ten congressmen have filed a lawsuit against president Obama over the Libyan intervention, claiming that his actions violate the War Powers Act. In response, the administration claims that the War Powers Act doesn't apply because U.S. involvement isn't serious enough to even warrant being covered.

We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.

Although I'm strongly opposed to the Libyan intervention because I don't think it is in the U.S. interest, I also oppose this lawsuit for the following reasons.

1. The War Powers Act itself is constitutionally dubious at best. As a general rule, I oppose its use.

2. I believe that as Commander in Chief the president should have wide latitude in the use of U.S. forces, even though I am against this particular operation. I'm not in favor of tying the president's hands when it comes to whether or not to employ the military in foreign policy situations.

3. Whether or not the president can commit troops to a foreign intervention without Congressional approval is not something that should be the subject of a lawsuit, or that a federal judge should have any authority to rule on. If Congress wants to block the Libyan operation they can just cut off funding. And if they think the president is actually breaking the law, or violating the Constitution, they can impeach him.

4. Because Congress as a whole is not willing to exercise the above remedies, this action by only 10 of its members amounts to a stunt. It is a typical minority attempt to circumvent the normal functioning of our democracy by looking for a judicial fiat.

Foolish Libyan Intervention Gets Even More Idiotic

Maybe you thought the Libyan intervention was a bad idea, that it wasn't in the U.S. interest, and just wasn't necessary. But at least a case could be made that getting rid of Gaddafi would be a positive thing, and that the intervention made his exit more likely. It made some sort of sense if you looked at it in that light. But now we find that instead of supporting the rebels, we might fight against both sides. No this isn't from Onion News Network.

Members of the NATO alliance have sternly warned the rebels in Libya not to attack civilians ... the coalition has told the rebels that the fog of war will not shield them from possible bombardment by NATO planes and missiles, just as the regime’s forces have been punished.

“We’ve been conveying a message to the rebels that we will be compelled to defend civilians, whether pro-Qaddafi or pro-opposition,” said a senior Obama administration official. “We are working very hard behind the scenes with the rebels so we don’t confront a situation where we face a decision to strike the rebels to defend civilians.”

Can this war get any more idiotic? Rather than acting rationally, supporting the rebels -- the side we chose to intervene on -- and helping them overthrow Gaddafi, we are going to pretend that we are really there to protect civilians, and are now threatening to bomb our own side. Seriously. So instead of just killing Gaddafi-supporting civilians, we'll now kill rebel civilians -- all in the name of "protecting civilians." Even the New York Times has to ask, "Who in Libya is a civilian?" The clowns running this country apparently didn't even consider that question when they signed onto a bad UN Resolution. Anyone with the slightest clue about what happens during rebellions and civil wars knows how difficult is is to separate civilians from combatants. I wrote about this issue before.

Why U.S. Intervention in Libya Was Unnecessary

I was going to respond directly to Obama's speech, but it is so long that I thought I'd focus instead on someone who agrees with the president: Marc Lynch at foreignpolicy.com. He has a post up called, "Why Obama Had to Act in Libya."

had the international community not acted when it did, thousands would have been slaughtered as the world watched.

First of all, it is always useful to point out that there never has been, and still isn't an "international community." And this mythical beast did not intervene in Libya. The U.S., Britain, and France did, along with some token support. There are major powers such as China who opposed intervention.

Second, I'm skeptical of the worst case scenario of mass slaughter in Benghazi. Lynch is merely repeating an assertion without much evidence behind it.

The effects of that decision would have been felt across the Middle East, where America would have been deemed to have abandoned the people struggling for freedom in the Arab world.

America is going to be blamed by those who want to blame it for something, regardless of what we do. And it is far from clear exactly what Libyan rebels are fighting for other than getting rid of Gaddafi.

And it would have quite simply been wrong.

Another unfounded assumption. Libya is in no way our responsibility. There would have been nothing wrong with recognizing that and choosing not to intervene in its civil war.

My conversations with administration officials, including but not limited to the one recounted by the indefatigable Laura Rozen, convinced me that they believed that a failure to act when and how they did would have led to a horrific slaughter in Benghazi and then across Libya.

Lynch is easily taken in by administration propaganda. Obviously administration officials are going to stress the absolute worst-case to justify intervention.

There was no mad rush to war, and certainly no master plan to invade Libya to grab its oil.

The only people that think there was are the usual anti-American types. That charge is so ridiculous it isn't even worth a response.

The administration resisted intervening militarily until they had no choice

Of course it had a choice. It chose to intervene in a civil war where no clear American interests were at stake. It there were, why was it so difficult to define them? Why did the president wait so long to even offer up a muddled rationale in his speech last night?

And my conversations with Arab activists and intellectuals, and my monitoring of Arab media and internet traffic, have convinced me that the intervention was both important and desirable.

What Arab activists and intellectuals think should be one of the very last considerations as to why we should commit U.S. forces to intervene in someone's civil war.

The administration understood, better than their critics, that Libya had become a litmus test for American credibility and intentions, with an Arab public riveted to al-Jazeera.

Oh please. Does Lynch really think the U.S. is going to get some sort of credit for its actions in Libya?

This administration is all too aware of the dangers of mission creep, escalation, and the ticking clock on Arab and international support which so many of us have warned against. They don't want another Iraq, as Obama made clear.... even if it is not obvious that they can avoid one.

Don't make me laugh. This administration is clueless and oblivious. They can't even articulate a cohesive message or offer any sort of effective leadership. Why should we believe a foreign policy incompetent like Obama has the slightest idea about the unintended consequences of his actions?

Thanks to al-Jazeera's intense focus on Libya, literally the whole Arab world was watching, dictators and publics alike. Not acting would have been a powerful action which would have haunted America's standing in the region for a decade.

Not acting would have sent a much needed message the U.S. doesn't intervene in areas when its national interests are not at stake. Lynch has a ridiculously naive and misplaced faith in rationality of the Arab world. Again, we aren't going to get any more support because of this action.

many of the same people now denouncing the intervention would have been up in arms at America's indifference to Arab life -- it is all too easy to imagine denunciations such as "the dream of the Cairo speech died in the streets of Benghazi as Barack Obama proved that he does not care about Muslim lives."

Thanks for making my point. The same people saying one thing anti-American, would be saying something else anti-American. Our intervention or lack thereof just changes the focus of their anti-Americanism, not the substance.

The rest of the article partially undermines his own argument. These lines stand out.

The administration hasn't done a great job communicating its position, particularly on the question of whether or not Qaddafi's departure is the goal (I personally think it has to be). While I hope that today's London meeting will produce more clarity on a political path forward, I haven't seen much to suggest one yet.

Yeah, those are some big understatements.

The bottom line is that no one has put forth a convincing argument for why intervening in Libya was necessary for U.S. interests. In my opinion, the weakness of Lynch's arguments, which are based largely on exaggerating the effects of non-intervention, and wishful thinking about its supposedly positive effect on the Arab world, reinforce the case that U.S. involvement was not necessary. This action is a example of typical liberal "do-gooder" policy. It's rooted primarily in emotionalism and the idea that we have to "do something," even if that something isn't well-thought out, sets bad precedents, and risks all sorts of unintended consequences.

Amazing Foreign Policy Incompetence

When Obama was running for president, many pointed out that his qualifications for the office were minimal, that he had no executive experience, and that he clearly knew nothing about foreign policy. In my opinion foreign policy is the most important aspect of the presidency. In domestic affairs, the president can advocate policies and has all sorts of executive power to appoint unelected officials. But ultimately he needs Congress to pass bills.

Since World War II, Congress has surrendered its constitutional power to declare war to the president, essentially giving him the authority to commit the U.S. to war, whether we call the conflict one or not. This great power invested in a single individual should never have been given to a lightweight like Obama. This was evident to anyone who cared to notice before the election. But too many people preferred to go with "hope and change."

I've pointed out Obama's foreign policy cluelessness on numerous occasions, but even I'm surprised at the staggering level of incompetence on display regarding the Libyan situation. It's one thing to make a bad strategic decision. Even someone well-versed in foreign policy can do that. You can make a bad decision on intervening in a war, but handle it in an effective manner. Instead, the Obama administration is projecting incompetence and a lack of leadership. Consider the following from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates:

asked on ABC's This Week if the US military might be involved in the fighting through 2011, he said, "I don't think anybody knows the answer to that." ... Gates acknowledged that Libya is “not a vital national interest to the United States.” ... But Gates, Clinton, and Obama in his radio address Saturday insisted that the situation in Libya is important to US interests – including stability in the Middle East and northern Africa.

How is it possible that the administration can't even craft a coherent message? I know it's incompetent in foreign policy, but I thought Obama was at least an effective political operator. How do send you send your defense secretary out to answer questions about an unpopular war -- and unpopular even amongst the base of your own party -- and have him admit that the action isn't in the U.S. vital interest? Why wouldn't you just define U.S. vital interests as whatever your argument is for intervention? You say something like this:

It is in the U.S. vital interest that a brutal dictator hostile to the U.S. not be permitted to reestablish control in Libya. The stability of the Middle East as a whole is crucial to U.S. interests. After carefully evaluating the situation we came to the conclusion that intervening in Libya, in conjunction with European allies, other coalition partners, and under the authority of the U.N. resolution was in the best interests of the United States. In this case we made the judgment that sitting back and doing nothing, allowing Gaddafi to massacre his own people and regain complete control, was unacceptable.

I don't even believe that and I can come up with that sort of typical foreign policy statement. Why can't Obama and his crew? Amazing incompetence.

That Didn't Take Long

Last Friday I wrote a post arguing that we were setting a bad precedent by launching a military intervention based on a UN resolution centered around the notion of protecting civilians.

Is there the slightest doubt that the next time Israel has to launch a major military action there will be calls for international action to protect civilians?

Our nominal ally and now Islamist-led Turkey didn't even wait until the next major Israeli operation. Here's the Deputy Prime-minister.

We wish that the United Nations had made similar resolutions, and countries had taken action, in the face of incidents in Gaza, Palestine and other regions,"

I didn't expect to be proven correct quite that fast.

Now What in Libya?

The utter cluelessness and incompetence of Obama in foreign policy is on display for all to see, yet again.

Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the outcome of military action from the air was "very uncertain" and made it clear that Washington did not see the goal of Operation Odyssey Dawn as removing the Libyan leader from power.

So we're intevening in a foreign civil war against a long-time enemy of the U.S., but we aren't planning on actually doing anything particularly useful. So why are we there?

"The goals are limited. It's not about seeing him go. It's about supporting the United Nations resolution which talked about eliminating his ability to kill his own people."

Is the administration really that stupid? I have to believe that Admiral Mullen must have been fighting the urge to gag when he repeated that nonsense. He's serving complete fools who think it's a good idea to turn the U.S. military into the air and sea equivalent of UN peacekeepers, who sort of intervene in conflicts, but not too much.

Intervening in this civil war was a bad idea, but what makes a positive outcome the most likely? I can think of one thing and one thing only: the quick death of Moammar Gaddafi. The best case scenario is that the death of Gaddafi will cause the quick collapse of the regime and its supporting forces. A new government will form, and the reason for intervention will no longer exist. I realize this is a best case scenario, and that the death of Gaddafi might not end the war. But it's worth a shot. Instead of continuing to bleat our ridiculous mantra about protecting civilians, and pretending that the UN resolution has any real meaning except as an excuse for intervention, we should direct our efforts at killing Gaddafi, his relatives, and any other potential leaders who might take over in his absence.

Setting a Bad Precedent With Libya

I'm opposed to U.S. intervention in Libya because I don't see it as necessary for U.S. interests, or necessary at all. France & Britain, which are gung-ho to act against Gaddafi, can easily turn the tide in favor of the rebels without U.S. assistance. But the UN resolution for intervention also sets a bad precedent that could harm U.S. interests in the future. The justification is based on protecting civilians. If you read the resolution, you will note that the words "to protect civilians" appear repeatedly.

If protecting civilians is a good justification for war, then it justifies any intervention in a foreign conflict. Civilians die in all modern wars. Sometimes they are targeted deliberately, but many times they are killed by accident. And sometimes they are killed because even though they are civilians, they are taking part in hostilities. Any government attempting to put down a rebellion has to kill civilians. Rebels usually don't have their own military, at least not in the initial stages. Armed rebels mingle with and hide amongst unarmed civilians. Even belligerents that care whether or not they kill civilians are going to have to kill some in order to fight at all. It should be obvious, since we have ongoing wars, that counterinsurgency operations require that some numbers of civilians die, no matter what extreme measures are taken to limit casualties.

Anti-American types at home and abroad are constantly condemning the U.S. for killing civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. At some time in the future, will the U.S. face a U.N. led effort to intervene against us, justified by the supposed need to protect civilians? Is there the slightest doubt that the next time Israel has to launch a major military action there will be calls for international action to protect civilians?

What we are doing by signing on to this foolish UN resolution is handing our enemies a club to beat us with in the future. But as usual, our government never looks at the unintended consequences of its actions when it feels the urge to "do something."

Fall of Middle Eastern Dictators Equals Victory for Al Qaeda?

That's the argument of former CIA man Michael Scheuer, who dismisses Western cheerleading and happy talk about the Middle Eastern revolutions as "self-defeating applause from the Facebook-obsessed, Twitter-addled West." He points out that along with the destroying Israel,

Since bin Laden declared war against the United States in 1996, al-Qaeda's main goals have included the destruction of the Arab world's tyrannies

The falls of these dictators, particularly in Egypt "amounts to an enormous strategic step forward for al-Qaeda," that comes with "virtually no investment of manpower or money by the terrorist network." As I've pointed out myself, the idea that these tyrannies are going to be replaced by liberal democracies is based primarily on wishful thinking.

the role of Islamist groups will become larger - and over time perhaps dominant - if only because the populations in play are almost entirely Muslim and because Islamist groups have the most effective nationwide infrastructures to replace the old guard. ... it will be easier for media-savvy Islamist groups - whether peaceful or militant - to proselytize, publish and foment without immediate threat of arrest and incarceration. ...

Scheuer also notes that large numbers of militant Islamists have now been released from prison.

In Egypt alone, the news media are reporting that at least 17,000 prisoners have been freed. Many of those released are not thieves and murderers, but Islamist firebrands that the regimes had jailed to protect their internal security ... al-Qaeda and like-minded groups are now being replenished by a steady flow of pious, veteran mujaheddin, each of whom will never forget that U.S. and other Western funds helped keep them jailed by Arab tyrants.

Scheuer's argument is much more convincing and grounded in reality than the naivete and wishful thinking that prevails across most of the political spectrum in the West. I largely agree with him particularly in the case of Egypt. He is correct that these tyrants were doing much of our dirty work for us, killing and imprisoning radical Islamists while keeing a lid tamped down on broad-based popular Islamism. Where his argument is weakest, in my opinion, is that he generalizes across multiple countries. Egypt, Libya and Tunisia are not the same, and sharply different conditions prevail. Ultimately though, his analysis is just another prediction that we will have to wait on events to confirm or falsify. Hopefully he's wrong. But I fear he will be more accurate than not.

Belated Comments on Libya

I posted several times on Egypt because, among other things, it is a U.S. ally and the recipient of large amounts of our aid money. Radical changes there are more likely than not to be a net minus for U.S. interests. But Libya is a far different case.

Unlike our client Mubarak, Gaddafi [I'm going to use what seems like the most popular current spelling] has long been an enemy of the U.S. It is possible that a new regime might be worse for U.S. interests, but it isn't going to be much worse. In my opinion, the odds are actually better that a new regime would be an improvement from the U.S. perspective -- because it wouldn't take much to be better than Gaddafi. Whereas in the Egyptian situation I personally sympathized with the protesters, yet supported Mubarak (and continued rule by the military) for policy reasons, in the case of Libya personal and policy reasons both favor the anti-government forces.

As to the calls for some kind of intervention... Libya is a prime example of the type of situation that is not our problem, in which we should take no action that results in our involvement beyond rescuing and protecting U.S. citizens. It would be nice if Gaddafi were removed, but it appears that he's already been crippled. He's not a big enough problem to warrant direct U.S. intervention. If a new or competing government forms and directly requests U.S. assistance, we should consider it based on the situation at the time, and whether and how it would benefit U.S. interests. Until that time we should watch events play out, while cheering for Gaddafi's demise.

There's a mixed blessing in having a president as utterly clueless about foreign policy as Barack Obama. His instincts toward appeasement, empty talk and wishful thinking can be bad when strong decisive leadership is needed, but those same failings also make him reluctant to step into a foreign policy mess. Dithering and hesitancy can be a good thing when the action under consideration is a bad idea.

Libyan Envoy to Iran Comments on My Proposal

In a previous post I advocated striking at radical Islam through the its own religion, in order to "foment conflict within Islamic communities where terrorist recruiting takes place." Libyan envoy Saad Mujbe met today with the Iranian chairman of the "Expediency Council, a clerical body advising the supreme leader." Given what I wrote, a couple of the reported remarks caught my attention.  

Enemies seek to sow religious discord in order to counter Islamic states

That sounds like a good idea. The two officials agreed that

Iran and Libya must cooperate to ensure their common enemies do not propagate religious friction as a weapon against Islamic states

"Religious friction" as a weapon. We should look into it.

Disgracing Scotland

As everyone probably knows by now, the Scottish government released the Lockerbie bomber, who returned home to a hero's welcome from his fellow terrorist-loving Libyans. Al Megrahi should have been executed years ago, and his release makes a travesty of the claim that life in prison is an acceptable substitute for the death penalty. Even many in the UK recognize that releasing such a terrorist is insane. Conservative Party leader David Cameron described the action as"a product of some completely nonsensical thinking."

Here in the U.S. we've seen repeated misuse of the phrase"rule of law," to the point where it has become almost meaningless. Scotland is doing its part to destroy the meaning of "due process." Here's Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill, talking about U.S. opposition to the release,

"But I think they recognise that we followed due process, we listened to their representations and listened to the feelings of their relatives as well as listened to the feelings of relatives here."

Apparently due process means arbitrarily releasing convicted terrorists who are supposed to be serving life sentences.