Libya Update
By Been a while, but apparently there’s a war on:
- Amphibs: Is there anything they can’t do? The French and British are now deploying attack helicopters from their respective amphibious warships. In a broad strategic sense, this reinforces my belief that the amphib is the ship of the future; it can do just about anything you want it to do. In tactical and operational senses, the use of attack helicopters obviously represents an additional escalation of commitment on the part of Britain and France.
- Libyan rebels continue to kill people associated with the Gadhafi regime, which in addition to being altogether unpleasant and illegal, probably isn’t ideal for encouraging defections from Gadhafi. Cue certain commenters popping up with a paraphrase of Don Rumsfeld’s “Freedom can be messy…”
- Curtis Bradley points out that the War Powers Resolution appears to be a useless waste of ink.
- Substantial attacks on Tripoli perhaps indicate that NATO is preparing to escalate to a strategic target set. Funny how attacks on “leader’s compounds” never ever seem to kill the leader…
- All that said, the situation for Gadhafi doesn’t appear to be improving; he hasn’t been able to push back against the rebels, there have been more defections, and relations with Tunisia are getting grim. But as Apps suggests, it’s hard to see where Gadhafi could go. While an assassination seems theoretically plausible, Gadhafi’s inner circle likely remains deeply loyal and fatally tied to the regime.