11th hour intervention in Libya

[don]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

Hey, they were just trying to protect civilians from the Dervish!

Another Bedouin tribe, and brother, could they whirl

[Shakespear]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

Might this be an added dimension to this conflict?

Because the Nubian Aquifer is shared among four nations, and because Libya and Egypt are now going forward with big water-pumping projects that tap the Nubian Aquifer, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), co-recipient of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, is trying to bring the countries together in a joint effort to plan for a rational shared use of the water.
Nuclear scientists are leading the way now, but sometime in the future diplomats may be signing aquifer-sharing treaties similar to those that now commonly control the sharing of surface waters. Such a treaty allots the Nile River’s flow among Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. Esmat Abdel Meguid, former secretary-general of the Arab League and Egyptian foreign minister, likes the sound of the words diplomacy and hydrology in the same sentence. “International agreements are the only way to go, especially among thirsty neighbors who live in the desert,” he says.

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issu....the.sands.htm

[don]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

Interactive Graphic of Libya: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...-in-libya.html

Shades of Rommel

Question: As we thrilled reading about Rommel and watching James Mason as the Desert Fox, were there any Libyans?

Don't recall seeing any . . . .

Ah yes, when first worlds collide.

[flintlock]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

No, I don't remember any Libyans in the movie version.

This is definitely Rommel territory. He and a handful of British and Italian generals fought all over this territory in WWII as you know.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

No, I don't remember any Libyans in the movie version.

This is definitely Rommel territory. He and a handful of British and Italian generals fought all over this territory in WWII as you know.

It was also the first birthplace of modern western special forces...SAS and LRDG would be the two best known.

And I'm sure their descendants are quite likely to be scrambling all over Libya again right now.

[flintlock]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

Yes, I heard a discussion on the TV the other day saying exactly what you had said earlier. (I think it was Gen McCafferty). That we surely have some boots on the ground regardless of what Obama says. Geraldo didn't think that possible.

[Ghent12]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

Yes, I heard a discussion on the TV the other day saying exactly what you had said earlier. (I think it was Gen McCafferty). That we surely have some boots on the ground regardless of what Obama says. Geraldo didn't think that possible.

He probably thought that because he figured nobody can keep their mouth shut about where they are. After all, he couldn't keep his mouth shut when he got the skinny on one of the 101st Airborne Division's operations in Iraq in 2003. He drew a freakin' map on TV about it and subsequently got kicked out of the country to report on the war from Kuwait.

[flintlock]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

I'm afraid there may be some truth to stories like this.

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news...-1226028543204

AL-QAEDA'S offshoot in North Africa has snatched surface-to-air missiles from an arsenal in Libya during the civil strife there, Chad's President says.
Idriss Deby Itno did not say how many surface-to-air missiles were stolen, but told the African weekly Jeune Afrique that he was "100 per cent sure" of his assertion.


Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news...#ixzz1Hoby7PzR

It would be ironic if this action in Libya led to an airliner shoot down. But then, how hard is it to buy these anyway? Thousands are floating around out there right?

I just find it kind of funny that we are fighting wars (supposedly) to stop Islamic terrorists, and may end up handing over to them a country, with all its arms, on a silver platter. This is one of those situations where you hope someone in charge knows more than we do. They couldn't be that stupid could they?

[GRG55]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

I'm afraid there may be some truth to stories like this.

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news...-1226028543204



It would be ironic if this action in Libya led to an airliner shoot down. But then, how hard is it to buy these anyway? Thousands are floating around out there right?

I just find it kind of funny that we are fighting wars (supposedly) to stop Islamic terrorists, and may end up handing over to them a country, with all its arms, on a silver platter. This is one of those situations where you hope someone in charge knows more than we do. They couldn't be that stupid could they?

Well, as we know it wouldn't be the first time Libya factored into bringing down an airliner.

The world's arms merchants would love nothing better than a prolonged war in Libya. They are selling to both sides, you can count on that.

The relative quiet in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years has taken a big bite out of their incomes. This was a godsend...

[don]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

No, I don't remember any Libyans in the movie version.

This is definitely Rommel territory. He and a handful of British and Italian generals fought all over this territory in WWII as you know.

Is this one of Rommel's parades where the Wehrmacht boyz were rerouted down main street more than once Good thing that's never done anymore

[c1ue]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

Apparently I'm not the only one saying: Tiananmen, not Tahrir square

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/pr...dafi-mistakes/

Every war is, among other things, a medium. Britain and France, who are spearheading the intervention in Libya, hope their bombs are sending a message not just to Muammar Gaddafi but to other tyrannical regimes across the region.

For a decade after 9/11, Western warfare was focused on safeguarding its interests. Now, in the wake of the spring rebellions across the Middle East, the West’s leaders hope their actions will demonstrate renewed willingness to put muscle behind their democratic values. Like all well-intentioned wars, though, this one could have a number of unintended consequences. From Saudi Arabia in the east, to Syria in the west, Middle Eastern regimes are under siege – and their rulers are considering what they need to do to avoid Gaddafi’s fate.

There’s one lesson that stands out: tyrannies with nuclear and chemical weapons don’t seem to get bombed. Libya is being attacked for shelling its own citizens, but North Korea went unpunished for starving millions and attacking a neighbour. President Barack Obama’s recent message to Iran’s people didn’t contain the slightest whiff of a threat to the regime.

Libya grasped this geopolitical reality early on. In 1970, it offered China $100 million for a nuclear bomb. Mercifully, Zhou Enlai, China’s premier, refused. Then, in 1997, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist, took up a similar offer, began supplying Libya with components for enriching uranium and provided a blueprint for a crude bomb.

In 1986, after Tripoli was bombed to punish Libya’s sponsorship of terrorism, the country also began producing chemical weapons to mount on medium-range ballistic missiles.

But in 1999, hard-hit by years of sanctions, Libya began making contacts that eventually led to these strategic assets being bargained away in return for the country’s reintegration into the global economy. From January, 2004, its nuclear and chemical stockpiles were removed. It’s safe to speculate that, looking back, Colonel Gaddafi probably feels he gave away the goods too soon.

The second lesson from Libya is this: tyrants must have the resources to kill quickly and in large numbers. Like past humanitarian interventions, the West’s attacks on Libya began some weeks after the fighting had started. Libya’s less than 100,000-strong armed forces just didn’t have the resources to carry out large-scale massacres before coalition jets intervened.

Finally, tyrants in the Middle East and elsewhere will be considering if it is worth collaborating with the West. From 1984, when the Libyan regime hanged two alleged jihadists in the grounds of the al-Fatah university in Tripoli, it became clear the country was contending with an Islamist threat. In 1995-1996, the threat flared into an insurgency. In response, Gadaffi reached out to the West, collaborating in its war against al-Qaeda.

This was no small shift: back in 1973, he had claimed the Koran rendered Galileo and Darwin redundant, and instituted laws permitting the amputation of thieves’ limbs.

For his pains, he was rewarded. In fact, not many weeks ago, President Obama’s administration had requested more than $750,000 from Congress to assist the Libyan armed forces, and it was only in February that Britain and France cut off arms sales.

Now, following the exit of a succession of pro-Western rulers, from Tunisia’s Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, others in the region will be wondering how durable rewards for assisting the West actually are.

Does this mean all wars of intervention are wrong? No. Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher, whose reign is commemorated in a beautifully preserved arch in Tripoli, would still likely have welcomed the Western intervention. “Do not hope,” he wrote, “for Plato’s Utopia, but be content to make a very small step forward and reflect that the result even of this is no trifle.” He’s right: the wars that evicted Pol Pot’s murderous regime in Kampuchea, ended the slaughter in Bosnia or led to the creation of Bangladesh, may not have had ideal outcomes, but they did prevent large-scale loss of life.

In this case, however there is a real risk that the small step forward will be mirrored by several steps backwards – unless the West explicitly states the norms it expects its regional partners to adhere to, and enforces them rigorously. Freeing Libya of Gaddafi, after all, will mean little if other despotisms in and beyond the region emerge strengthened.

Leaders from around the world will assemble in London today to discuss their next steps on Libya. Giving form to those norms, and mechanisms for enforcing them, ought to be top of their agenda.

[jpetr48]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

Could Iran be learning from US- never let a crisis go to waste?

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/201...ahdi-is-Near-/

[Prazak]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

Doesn't appear to be an uncommon outcome for nations born from revolution...

True that. Just wish we could all own up to it. Better self-awareness and all that.

[don]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya



Colonel Gaddafi goes Mao
Victor Kotsev

Muammar Gaddafi's purported Long March from Benghazi to Tripoli, which began on Friday, was cut short on Tuesday as his army routed and then - almost as if carried by inertia alone - chased the rebels back across a few small towns along the Mediterranean coast. The opposition performed so poorly in its advance on his town of birth, Sirte (which it claimed - falsely - to have captured on Monday), that Gaddafi did not even get to use the full gamut of asymmetric warfare tactics he had in store.

As he struggles to hide his considerable forces from increasingly powerful coalition air attacks but nevertheless holds sway on the ground, the Libyan leader is very likely to be spicing up the long hours of hiding by brushing up on legendary Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong's experiences in using mobile warfare against the Kuomintang and the Japanese.

''Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,'' a famous Chinese proverb goes. Even without testimonies, the opposition advance that began on Friday resembled much too much the initial phase of the rebellion that captured much of Libya before crumbling under the strikes of Gaddafi's forces. As first-hand accounts started to emerge from the rebels themselves, this suspicion deepened. ''There wasn't resistance,'' Faraj Sheydani, 42, a rebel fighter interviewed by The New York Times, said on Monday. ''There was no one in front of us. There's no fighting.''

Where did the army go? A few days earlier, it had posed an urgent threat to Benghazi, a city of over 500,000 inhabitants and full of rebel fighters. ''People coming along the coastal road from Sirte said Gaddafi forces were gathered around 60 kilometers outside the city, positioned in trees,'' al-Jazeera reported on Monday.

An army of trees waiting for the enemy - to a civilian, it is an image almost out of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Not that it is something completely unusual - ambush is very much a part of standard military operations - but it certainly signals a shift of tactics for Gaddafi.

Mobile warfare, Mao's specialty, can be loosely interpreted as a cross-breed between positional warfare (defense and conquest of territory, what regular armies usually do) and guerrilla warfare (hit-and-run tactics; small units that melt into the civilian population or disappear into the surroundings).

It is designed for regular units with certain permanent bases, but it draws heavily on guerrilla tactics: battle lines are blurred, the forces use surprise to strike quickly and regroup, exploiting specifically the overextended communication and supply lines of the enemy. To quote one of Mao's speeches in the compilation On Protracted War (1938):

Our strategy should be to employ our main forces to operate over an extended and fluid front. To achieve success, the Chinese troops must conduct their warfare with a high degree of mobility on extensive battlefields, making swift advances and withdrawals, swift concentrations and dispersals. This means large-scale mobile warfare, and not positional warfare depending exclusively on defense works with deep trenches, high fortresses and successive rows of defensive positions. It does not mean the abandonment of all the vital strategic points, which should be defended by positional warfare as long as profitable. But the pivotal strategy must be mobile warfare.

It is hard not to see the similarities with what is currently happening in Libya:

The rebel pick-up truck cavalcade was first ambushed, and then outflanked by Gadhafi's troops. The advance stopped and government forces retook the small town of Nawfaliyah, 120 km (75 miles) east of Sirte. (Reuters, March 29)

Several [rebels] also described a ruse in which pro-Qaddafi forces stationed about 12 miles west of Bin Jawwad waved white flags to lure them close and then opened fire. (The New York Times, March 28)

Fighting is ongoing at Nawfaliya, about 180km east of Sirte, where opposition forces say they have come upon a heavily mined road. Pro-Gaddafi forces have dug into positions near the front line, and are shelling opposition fighters … The speed of the rebel advance has stretched lines of communications and created logistical problems, said [Al Jazeera's correspondent] Bays. One problem is a lack of electricity, which means that petrol pumps do not work ... ''At petrol stations they're using plastic bottles on strings down into the tank below the station to pull up fuel," said Bays. (al-Jazeera, March 28)

Strategically, Gaddafi faces a broadly similar challenge to Mao's in 1938: he has a considerable force at his disposal and can achieve local superiority on the ground, but nevertheless he is confronted with superior fire power and, for the moment being, is unable to achieve victory in a decisive confrontation.

The Libyan leader, moreover, has a long background in both positional and guerrilla warfare: the commander-in-chief of a standing army for the last four decades, he also supported actively numerous rebel movements that took the latter tactics to extremes of violence across Africa. According to some reports, prior to his attack on Benghazi 10 days ago, he was able to plant undercover forces and hide equipment, even tanks, in the city. By all accounts, he understands mobile warfare very well and is well prepared for it.

In Libya, there are some peculiar twists: firstly, the rebels on the ground are hardly a match for Gaddafi's army. Patrick Graham, writing from the ground for Foreign Policy, describes them as a disorganized and undisciplined group of mostly ''young volunteers'':

It is not much clearer who is running the rebel army - or even who is in it ... As courageous as they are undisciplined, the fighters' simple tactic is to make quick, abortive jabs at Qaddafi's forces, drawing fire from various kinds of artillery. At the front, it is rare to come across anyone who presents himself as a commander, let alone an officer ... A real military is unlikely to be organized by the rebels for some time ...

On the other hand, the powerful air campaign currently compensates for this weakness. The American and North Atlantic Treaty Organization onslaught on Gaddafi is intensifying, featuring strategic air strikes and what looks suspiciously like close air support. According to a report by think-tank Stratfor:

[One March 28-29] Coalition airstrikes continued unabated, with individual military operations being flown against targets in Tripoli, Tajoura, Surman, Sirte, Sabha, Harawa, Garyan, Mizdah, Misurata, and the mountain area west of Tripoli. In addition, U.S. forces attacked three Libyan ships firing at merchant vessels in the port of Misurata.... An unnamed top U.S. military official said March 29 that in addition to the A-10C Thunderbolt IIs, which specialize in close air support and targeting armor on the ground, U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunships - devastating and increasingly precise platforms for attacking ground targets - were employed over the weekend of March 27-28. Despite the increased use of aircraft tailored for the close air support role, U.S. Vice Adm. William Gortney denied that the United States is coordinating attacks with the opposition.

Air power, nevertheless, is subject to tactical and political limitations - in this case, the mandate ''to protect civilians'' given by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. The administration of US President Barack Obama and its international allies has already gone a long way in interpreting the text selectively to justify a wider mandate than specified, and this has produced some international backlash. To unleash a massive bombing campaign on a city where the population supports Gaddafi, just so that the rebels can capture it, is pretty clearly a gross violation of the resolution, and would cause a storm at the United Nations.

Thus, when Gaddafi fights ''on his own turf',' the efficiency of the air strikes against him is reduced, and this has a similar effect to that of overextended supply lines in ground operations. It is pretty clear, moreover, that the Libyan leader has a ''turf'': in a recent report, Reuters quotes rebel fighters as saying that residents of the town of Nawfaliyah had fired at them, and that the population of some towns near Sirte had formed local militias allied with the government forces.

Besides, even strikes on Gaddafi forces laying siege on rebel cities have their limitations. They worked for now in Benghazi (the attackers withdrew), but have not had much success in the third-largest city of Libya, which is in the Gaddafi-dominated western part of the country. In the past few days, the government army captured large parts of the city despite the continuing air campaign.

Intelligence-analysis website Debka File interprets Gaddafi's withdrawal as a signal to the West, and underscores that the Libyan leader has other options left in store:

Qaddafi offered Washington a way out. By pulling his troops out of the eastern towns, he gave the Americans a chance to chalk up a rebel victory - or at least a standoff - and leave it at that.
…
However, should the Obama administration decide to persist in its active military support for the rebellion, the Libyan ruler may consider three counter-steps: One, to carry out the threat he made prior to the coalition campaign against his regime to strike back at American, British and French targets in the Middle East and Europe; Two, to activate Libyan undercover terrorist networks in Europe against US targets as well as local ones; Three, to retreat along with his family to a secret sanctuary among loyal Saharan tribes and from there to fight for his survival against both the Americans and al-Qaeda which he accuses of penetrating the opposition and turning his people against him.

Despite that Debka is known for occasionally publishing wild rumors, this analysis makes a lot of sense, and different parts of it concur with the observations of other experts; the three ''counter-steps'' outlined could as well be right out of Mao's handbook. Whether the coalition intends to settle for a standoff, however, is another matter.

In a meeting in London on Tuesday, 40 ''global leaders'' resolved to continue with the air campaign, after today under NATO auspices. This is nothing new, and the vaguely formulated end goal - until Gaddafi stopped his attacks on civilians - does not clarify much. A day earlier, in a televised address from the National Defense University in Washington, Obama defended the military operation, even as he claimed that removing Gaddafi from power was not one of its goals. Previously, he has said that removing the Libyan leader is US ''policy,'' not a military ''mission goal.''

At least some of the European governments taking part in the operation have indicated that their goal is to see Gaddafi ousted. How they hope to accomplish that, short of a ground invasion, is uncertain. Some - for example, France - have suggested arming and training the rebels, but the idea caused ''fierce debate'' in Washington, over worries that the arms might go to Muslim extremists such as al-Qaeda. [1]

In all, Gaddafi seems to be in a good position right now to wait patiently while consolidating his control in the west. His enemies are in a bind - as NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen put it on Tuesday, ''Clearly there's no military solution, solely, to the problems in Libya.''

It is unlikely that, even if it tries seriously, NATO can train and equip the rebels well enough to take on his army in the next few months. Meanwhile, as the air campaign draws on, costs for NATO will pile up and backlash against the operation will grow. Equipment failure - if not anti-aircraft fire - can even bring down a few warplanes, hurting the morale of the allies.

At a later stage, according to Mao's doctrines, mobile warfare turns again into positional warfare, and the enemy is conquered. The Libyan leader, who left most of the oil infrastructure intact even as his forces withdrew over the weekend from key oil towns such as Ras Lanuf and Brega, appears confident that this is how his battle will develop as well. The burden is on the coalition and the rebels to prove him wrong.

Notes
1. Washington in Fierce Debate on Arming Libyan Rebels, The New York Times, March 29, 2011.

Victor Kotsev is a journalist and political analyst based in Tel Aviv.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC31Ak03.html

[GRG55]

Re: 11th hour intervention in Libya

Colonel Gaddafi goes Mao
...

So this:


has been upgraded to this?



And General Claire Chennault has been replaced with Lt.-Gen. Charles Bouchard?

The more things change, the more they stay the same...