Obama's Libya credibility gap
Image via WikipediaAddressing the nation Monday evening, President Obama suggested that the United States was in the process of reducing its military footprint in Libya, even as he explicitly rejected the idea of pursuing regime change in Tripoli by force of arms. Both statements seemed calculated to make our intervention seem tightly limited rather than open-ended. (“I want to be clear,” Obama said. “The United States of America has done what we said we would do.”) But two days later, both look dubious in the extreme.There is more.
No sooner had the president finished speaking than the Times’s Eric Schmitt came out with a story undercutting the idea that America can be just be one partner among many in the Libyan operation. (American military involvement, Schmitt reported, “is far deeper than discussed in public and more instrumental to the fight than was previously known.”) The next day in London, representatives of the allied powers took turns insisting that regime change was, in fact, the coalition’s goal in Libya. And 24 hours later, with Qaddafi’s forces counterattacking and the rebels falling back in disarray, American policymakers find themselves furiously debating whether our air campaign needs to be supplemented by an effort to arm the rebels directly — which would obviously represent a further escalation of the conflict, and one that would arguably fall outside the United Nations mandate that we claim to be enforcing.
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Shortly after his speech the US announced it was sending A-10s and AC-130 Specter Gun ships. Both these planes would be very effective against the charging Qaddafi military which has been chasing the rebels of late. Judging by what is happening in Libya, these planes have not been put to work yet, at least not effectively.
One of the problems with Obama's strategy is that he has some invisible arbitrary timeline for ending the conflict which does not take account of the enemy's vote on that point. By suggesting that we are not in for the long haul, he gives hope to Qaddafi that if he just holds out until we leave, he will survive. You win wars by making the enemy believe his cause is hopeless. Obama is doing the opposite and it may not end well for him.
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