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Jewish World Review May 17, 2011 / 13 Iyar, 5771 A strategy more politically correct than militarily sound is chiefly to blame By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
As the war in Libya enters its third month, NATO seems no closer to ousting Libyan dictator Muammar Ghadafy than when it first intervened in what had been a civil war.
NATO stepped up air attacks on Mr. Ghadafy's compound in Tripoli last week, but there were signs the alliance's resolve is flagging.
"There can be no solely military solution to the crisis in Libya," NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said last Wednesday (5/11).
She appeared to be backing off the statement made April 15 by President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that "Ghadafy must go and go for good."
Ms. Romero was responding to the call that day by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon for an "immediate, verifiable cease fire."
"Of course we agree with the UN Secretary General," Ms. Romero said. "NATO would like to see an immediate end to the violence since our mandate is to protect civilians."
Mr. Moon thinks an immediate cease fire is required to prevent a humanitarian disaster in the Western port city of Misrata, retaken by the rebels last weekend after weeks of see saw fighting. Inhabitants there are short of food, fuel and water.
President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military to intervene March 20 to keep Mr. Ghadafy from taking brutal revenge on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi in eastern Libya, he said in a speech nine days later.
"We knew that if we had waited one more day, Benghazi... could have suffered a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world," the president said.
Experts doubt there would have been a massacre.
"Ghadafy did not massacre civilians in any of the other big cities he captured -- Zawiya, Misrata, Ajdabiya -- which together have a population equal to Benghazi," said University of Texas Prof. Alan Kuperman.
Fifty four people did die May 6 when a ship packed with refugees sank shortly after leaving the port of Tripoli, which heightened humanitarian concerns.
The war has gone poorly since Mr. Obama turned its conduct over to NATO, an alliance headed by the United States. One of the president's aides told Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker Mr. Obama was "leading from behind."
A strategy more politically correct than militarily sound is chiefly to blame. But absent the active participation of the United States, NATO has been nearly punchless. Our European partners lack both the combat power and the logistics base to fight by themselves even this minor war. To say nothing of the political will, which clearly has begun to flag.
A ceasefire which leaves Mr. Ghadafy in power would be a humiliation for NATO, for the UN (at whose behest NATO claims to be acting), and for the United States.
A larger question is why is NATO, an alliance whose purpose is to protect Western Europe from invasion, intervening in a civil war in North Africa? Mr. Ghadafy is an evil mean nasty rotten guy, but he isn't a threat to Europe.
There was a good reason why the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in 1949. The Soviet Union and her satellites were threatening to invade Western Europe.
NATO did its job. There was no war in Europe.
That job is long since over. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Most of its former satellites now align with the West. Russia's once formidable conventional military forces have shrunk dramatically.
Our politicians, diplomats and generals seem not to have noticed. NATO's floundering in Libya should make them notice.
When they're running for office, politicians talk incessantly about the future. But government's gaze usually is fixed on the past. Generals are accused -- often accurately -- of fighting the last war. The State Department is for the status quo, no matter what the status quo is, and no matter how much State opposed the status quo before it became the status quo.
And though politicians talk about the future, in practice they defend the present political and economic arrangements, because it is the people who are prospering under those arrangements who fund their campaigns.
We have as much need for NATO today as for cavalry forts in the West to protect against Indian raids. NATO's mission has long since passed into history. It's time for the alliance itself to follow.
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2009, Jack Kelly |
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