Rebels Advance
Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces retreated from this strategic city on Saturday, running for dozens of miles back along the coast in the first significant advance for Libyan rebels since American and European airstrikes began a week ago.
The rebel victory was the first sign that the allied attacks, directed not only against Colonel Qaddafi’s aircraft and defenses but also against his ground troops, were changing the dynamics of the battle for control of the country. As night fell, rebel forces had not only recaptured Ajdabiya, a crucial hub city in eastern Libya, but had also driven almost uncontested to the town of Brega, erasing weeks of loss as the airstrikes opened the way.
Three ways in which this is positive:
- As momentum shifts away from Gaddafi and towards the rebels, there may be more defections. I say “may” because the least loyal layers have been peeled away, and remaining Loyalist forces may fear rebel reprisal. But nevertheless, as the scales tip against Gaddafi there’s still some hope that his regime may collapse.
- If this war ends in partition rather than in rebel victory, it’s helpful that larger swaths of the country end up under rebel control. Although there are still substantial question about the rebel’s plans for Libya, there is at least the hope that they’ll try to build a liberal system of governance.
- It may indicate that the balance between Loyalist vs. rebel plus coalition forces favors the latter more than I had hoped. To be sure, there are still reasons to be skeptical of the rebel’s ability to win the war militarily, but the capture of Ajdabiya is a positive sign.
Surely, these cardio-vascular supermen will destroy us all!
or they are just garden variety ultra marathoners
Pretty sure both description apply to that feat.
I’m not sure this is good news; nobody’s done a lot of thinking about who takes power after Qaddaffi. Libya could easily fracture, and religious loons are thick on the ground in parts of that land.
Were you saying this about the Tunisian protesters? How about the Egyptian protesters?
For that matter, were you saying this about the Libyan protesters before Khadaffy started slaughtering them, and the UN came to their rescue?
Why did they suddenly become skeey al Qaeda mooslims in the eyes of so many people who were cheering them on a month ago? Because it’s easier to say “fuck ‘em” and get the non-intervention policy you want?
Ten years after I heard Ahmed Chalabi’s name for the first time, the fact that there isn’t a mediagenic, CIA-asset “George Washington of Libya” being groomed to take Khadaffy’s place makes me support the effort to overthrow him more, not less. Yep, things aren’t lined up for the post-revolution to follow our script. Good.
I and many others have been saying this about Qaddaffi for a number of years. This is not the first time that he’s been seen as vulnerable, and each time the subject has come up. Tunisia and Egypt are not even remotely comparable; they have much stronger institutions of government, with much less family and tribal nepotism networking. Moreover, Tunisians and Egyptians are not especially well-represented among jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan; Libyans are.
I’m not looking for the West to groom a successor; I want to see a plan for any kind of transfer of power. Thing can get worse, I assure you, and the Qaddaffi clan is ripe for reprisals that would make the Colonel’s plans look fairly benign.
I was not aware we were involved in military actions in Egypt and Tunisia.
I dunno about everyone else, but “skeey al qaeda mooslims” didn’t really factor in to why I thought us getting involved was a bad idea, now and before.
I like that the lack of info as to who exactly it is we are now supporting with military aide is a plus, on your list. It’s like the world is now a 70′s game show.
Excellent summary.
And I would add:
4. Perhaps the rebel troops, green to the point of being raw by essentially all accounts, are starting to learn how to fight. Combat has been heavy enough, by media reports, that the survivors should be getting better. I say “perhaps” because it isn’t yet clear the extent to which the Qadaffi forces were driven out of town by ground forces, or retreated due to combat losses or logical problems traceable to coalition airpower.
Obviously antitank weapons are the rebels’ best friends right now. They will need them to clear out their cities of the armor that Gadaffi parked there.
Once they push further to the west, however, it is unclear if the population will much support them. There mortars plus artillery will be needed. And there is also where we will see if Gadaffi supporters are worthy from protection by western powers too.
What is that hope based on? I’m not trying to be a downer here. I just don’t know why people say it. What evidence is there that this might happen? I’m under-informed, but trying.
Two reasons:
1. The rebels have associated themselves with the rhetoric of liberal democracy. This isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing, either.
2. The rebels are likely to have a far closer relationship with the West than Gaddafi. In every state that the West has effectively created over the last twenty years (Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan), there has been an effort to create the form/facade of liberal democracy. That ain’t everything, and there are serious problems with all of the above, but it not nothing, either.
And so that makes me very tenuously optimistic about the possibility that rebel areas or a rebel Libya might honor at least the forms of liberal democracy. But as Doc says above, it’s certainly possible that we could see a much worse outcome.
Is a client state that honors the forms/facade of democracy without delivering the benefits of democracy necessarily a good thing? Or seeing it fail, could the citizens turn to something much worse (for us and them) out of disillusionment and desperation? Don’t the historical examples (Weimar?) worry you even a little?
For my own part, I believe the managerial technology (predators, surveillance) has improved to the point, or is very close that Predatory Empire can prevent anything unprofitable from happening. Iraq, Afghanistan, Wisconsin, Michigan, Egypt, soon Libya will never escape neo-liberal managed democracy once it has taken over.
“Don’t the historical examples (Weimar?) worry you even a little?”
No.
I take it you mean that a sequence of events significantly analogous to Weimar is unlikely, not that things can’t go anti-democratically pear shaped (since, after all, you’ve been pointing to the latter constantly)?
Is there a good run down anywhere of the probably negative outcomes for non-Gaddafi controlled parts (whether all or merely a part of Libya)? I mean, talking a new strongman, warlord anarchy, a Talibanesque state…something else?
Is a client state that honors the forms/facade of democracy without delivering the benefits of democracy necessarily a good thing?
Oddly, yes. The historical record is never simple and clear, but societies that pass from dictatorship to democracy tend to do better at the democracy thing if they have some experience at the forms of sham democracy. Still not sure why that’s true, but it seems to be a pattern.
For what it’s worth, from the perspective of a neocon troll, I agree with you completely (I think). There’s a gamble involved here, but it’s worth the risk; and not everything can be tightly controlled. We’ll just have to see how things shake out.
I would suggest that it would have been better not to ever have dithered on the decision to act, though. I think that hesitation probably cost some rebel lives, and reduced the likelihood of them feeling some gratitude for the West’s intervention.
And I’d appreciate it if someone could answer this for me — I’m not trolling for a fight, I’d just really like to know: Why didn’t President Obama go to congress for a resolution of some sort?
Had he, it surely would have passed. Even if it didn’t, his ass would be covered — he’d at least have asked, and so anything bad that happened because we didn’t go in couldn’t be blamed on him. And while I’m admittedly not a constitutional scholar, this consultation with congress appears to be legally necessary.
Again, I’m not looking for an argument, and I don’t care whether “Bush did it too.” I’d just like to know: Why didn’t he?
I’d like to help you out, dude, but being a liberal-lefty type, I’ve never worked an honest day in my life, and therefore I have absolutely no clue as to how the real world works. So I can’t see how my opinion would be of interest.
Understood. Thank you for not wasting my time with your worthless analysis.
Possible answer: It seems to be important to Obama that this operation have a low profile. If he went to Congress, the operation would seem larger. Obama doesn’t want that.
Not arguing that this is good reasoning—just speculating about what is in Obama’s mind.
Meh. Plausible, I suppose; but I’m not sure that going to congress would really add to the publicity. Everyone’s pretty much already aware of Operation Hopen’Change or whatever they’re calling this kinetic military action.
And bypassing congress just creates the possibility of someone like Ron Paul raising a big stink and calling for impeachment.
Congress didn’t make any noises that I heard about demanding that he do so. Neither did the press. In the run up to invading Iraq and Afghanistan, there was some of that.
And Obama doesn’t think any more of the War Powers Act than the average president.
‘The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation,’ Mr. Obama told the Boston Globe in 2007.
So, no, I don’t think this is a good answer. Good try, though.
Speaking from the perspective of someone highly skeptical of this intervention, I think part of the reason that Obama didn’t go to Congress is that partisanship is now at such a high pitch that legislators who would in previous years have been reliably in favor of military action would have blocked or stalled this one–just because it’s Obama asking. The Paul faction would be anti-war, because they have a history of that, but they’d be joined by the Bachmann faction, which would very soon swing a bunch of Republicans and pretty soon the Great Pumpkin himself.
Easier just to say, “Hey, it’s Paris’s party; we’re just here because of treaty obligations!” Then the Teabag types don’t have to fret over the cognitive dissonance of voting for military action while going along with The Seekrit Kenyan Mooslim.
I’ve seen Bachman criticize Obama’s Libyan moves based on doubts about just who the rebels are, and whether Obama has a clear endgame in mind.
But you can’t seriously think that a majority of the House would have voted this down. Maybe Bachman and a few others supported more by the Tea Party than they were the Republican Party; certainly Ron Paul; and probably Maxine Waters, Kucinich, and about 10 others on the far left.
So that’s about 20, maybe 30, representatives. It would have passed something like 350 to 30 with a bunch of abstentions.
And as far as I know, there’s no filibuster in the House, so I don’t know they would have committed political suicide by ‘blocking or stalling’ military action that the President has deemed necessary to our national security, or for humanitarian reasons, whichever he used in his presentation to them.
And so what if it didn’t pass? He could have hung this albatross around his political opponents’ necks; and it’s pretty clear from his dithering that he really didn’t want to do anything here — that Hillary pretty much forced him to. So it’s not as if he was worried about a resolution failing in Congress, because he wanted to use military force so much.
So I’m not buying this one either.
It’s interesting how everything on the right is always interpreted through a lens which assumes without evidence that Democratic politics consists of emasculated men being forced to act like real men by masculine women.
Sorry if I made it sound that way; I didn’t mean to.
Maybe you’re thinking of that noted arch-conservative, Robert Dreyfuss, who scribbled in that neocon rag The Nation:
“…the bellicosity is worst among Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power. All three are liberal interventionists, and all three seem to believe that when the United States exercises military force it has some profound, moral, life-saving character to it. Far from it. Unless President Obama’s better instincts manage to reign in his warrior women—and happily, there’s a chance of that—the United States could find itself engaged in open war in Libya…”
Because that’s not me. That’s a completely different guy. Yes, I’m sure that he and I agree on nearly everything.
And I’d appreciate it if you have a better answer to my question: Why didn’t President Obama go to Congress?
Maybe Bachman and a few others supported more by the Tea Party than they were the Republican Party
You haven’t been paying much attention to the doings of your party lately, have you? All of the Republicans are trying to out-teabag each other lately, and Boehner seems quite content to let them do so. One the teabag faction makes it clear that a given policy, idea, or suggestion is heretical, the keening and thrashing hit a fever pitch and the supposedly sane fall right into line.
No, Mostly, I don’t recall seeing unity amongst Republicans.
Not lately, not ever, in general. Maybe on a few slam-dunk issues, like socializing medicine. But not on every issue, as you’ve described.
And I’ve completely missed the vocal demonstrations of the ‘teabag faction’ against the no-fly zone, shrieking “No Kinetic Military Action for Oil.” I do recall them becoming very worked-up about Obamacare; but over this no-fly zone, no, not so much.
But even if we grant this (unlikely in my troll opinion) thesis of yours, that a congressional resolution might fail, how would this have hurt Obama? And how do you square this with his 2007 statement quoted about 7 comments above this one?
Failure of a Congressional resolution wouldn’t have hurt Obama–he would have made the claim that we’re treaty-bound to participate in this Libyan adventure, and thus this does not rise to the level of things that Congress needs to approve. I don’t agree, but that’s the case he’d make, and he’d pay no price for it, as he’s going to pay no price for doing this without Congressional authorization. He did the teabag faction a favor–they like the military action, but they don’t like Obama. This way, they get the war without having to approve of anything Obama does or asks for.
How do I square the Libyan action with Obama’s 2007 statement? I don’t. He’s turned his back on most of what Obama the Candidate ever said. Please note that there are still thousands of military personnel in Iraq and that Guantanamo Bay is still in the stalag business. Obama said a lot of things to get elected; then he threw in his lot with the money crowd. This is but one example.
“He did the teabag faction a favor…”
I agree. (Well, I wouldn’t use the term ‘teabag’, but I do agree that he did them a favor here — he spared his opponents from going on-record.)
And I don’t understand it. President Obama and his advisors are smart enough to know that. There’s something here I’m missing.
You sound pretty disappointed in BHO. Who’s your candidate in 2012?
President Obama and his advisors are smart enough to know that. There’s something here I’m missing.
It’s possible that Obama’s camp may try to use this to call in some favors from the Rs in the near future; it’s also possible that they don’t really care if they’ve done Bachmann and Friends a solid, because they don’t see themselves as fundamentally opposed to the Rs. For an example of this, look at how quickly national health, Medicare for All, and the public option were swept off the table in favor of a plan that provides huge benefits to insurers. The financial backers of the Administration are in large part the financial backers of the Republicans, and they’re going to get what they’ve paid for, regardless of the sturm und drang that gets sold to the viewing audience.
Who’s your candidate in 2012?
You make it sound like there’s some kind of choice.
Robert, just dropping this link in case you haven’t seen it by now, it’s worth getting out there. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/world/middleeast/27tripoli.html?hp
So Doctor why do you want to perform surgery?
I hope it makes me feel better about myself.
any result leaving qaddafi other than in the ground, or deposed & out of the country, is a bad result. partition, with qaddafi in power in one section will, i guarantee, result in his constant attempts to take back the other section, until he finally dies.
that’s pretty much how dictators roll.
That’s no help unless you have some idea as to how to get a good result.
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As much as I love America and Star Wars, successful military campaigns by rebels are usually signs that things have really lost their chance of improving much (or never had a chance).
Does anyone have a good breakdown of the composition of the rebels?