War in Libya

A few days ago the United States essentially went to war with Mummar Gaddafi*, the self-declared "leader" of Libya.  For the past few weeks the world has been watching as the Libyan rebels have been nearly completely defeated by Gaddafi's army, and now were forced into the capital of Bengazi.  If not for American military intervention coming when it did, Bengazi, a city of more than 600,000 would have been the sight of a massive battle with Gaddafi almost certainly being the victor.  Essentially what we were staring at was the prospect of a modern-day sacking.  So yeah, I'm going to support the President in his intervention in Libya, in fact, I've been worried for the last week that Obama would sit back and let us enjoy the watching a city be razed on CNN and the Huffington Post.

Now I know there are those among you who immediately panic to imagine the US in another war, especially after we so brilliantly mired ourselves into two quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade.  Then of course there are those among us who just naturally hate every single military action the US takes, no matter what the situation or circumstance.  Nobody wanted to go to war, but the situation has arisen where once again, if the United States stays silent, nobody will do anything.  Obama gave his support to the rebels several weeks ago when their victory seemed only days away, now that the situation has turned away from them is he to just leave them to be destroyed by a tyrannical dictator?  Unfortunately Obama has blundered his way into an incredibly unclear mandate:  just what the Hell are we doing in Libya?  Acting as a shield for the rebels?  Removing Gaddafi?  We will be backing up similar revolutionary movements in Bahrain, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, where protests have been met with viscous reprisals by their respective authoritarian governments?  How far are we willing to go for our mission here, whatever it is?  And finally, who is in control here?  The UN?  NATO?  The Arab League?  Or like in Iraq, is this going to be a mainly US-led operation?  Most importantly, if we want Gaddafi gone, what is our plan for the Libya to be?

Unless Obama answers those questions immediately with a clear statement of our goals in Libya, we could indeed end up in one more quagmire.  Right now the bombings have not deterred Gaddafi from launching another offensive - one most likely to doomed to be crushed under the bombardment coming from the most sophisticated military hard-ware in world history.  But what then?  Right now Obama is doing the right thing for fighting for humanitarian aid.  But we need a plan.

President Bush's Iraq War was obviously a misguided operation due to several reasons.  First and foremost, the stated goal of the mission, destroyed Saddam Husein's Weapons of Mass Destruction, was a complete failure because there were no WMDs.  But the situation did not need to turn into a six-year debacle and civil war.  Bush rushed into Iraq with amazing incompetency, having absolutely no plan of any kind as to what sort of political system was to replace the Ba'athists.  Worse, the US had no clear plan of reconstruction, completely dismantled the existing structures, and then was half-way out the door before we noticed that the entire nation was on the verge of falling into chaos.  To top it all off, in Iraq, just like in Afghanistan, we simply did not have enough troops to police the nation.  Bush's goal of spreading democracy was not foolish in principle, only in execution, which was an embarrassing failure of uncountable magnitude.  To this day I can only imagine how members of that administration sleep at night without knowing how many lives their gross stupidity cost.

In Libya, there already exists a rival political structure to Gaddafi, the rebels.  However, just as the rebels do not have an official name, they are not a fully organized government.  They are the natural evolution of the revolutionary wave that have shaken the entire Middle East.  Its still unclear just what is going to be born out of this Muslim Revolution (which is largely a youth movement), but considering that what existed before - dictatorships and absolute monarchies - I can only support them and hope they move forward to true democracy.  Remember however, Libya is a tribal nation filled with a very confusing ethnic framework which can very easily break up into a second civil war.  What unites the rebels now is their common hatred of a tyrant, when that tyrant is gone, nobody can know what is going to happen.  Obama has taken a very bold step by essentially tying his administration's fortunes with the fortunes of Libya, a very unstable nation.  And already the President seems desperate to pass off this one to the Europeans as soon as possible.

Another issue that I hear coming up is that of whether Obama's actions were Constitutional.  The simple answer is:  no.  The President cannot use military force without Congressional approval unless in situations of national danger.  Gaddafi offers no threat to the US, this is a very simple and clear case.  However, Obama is merely the heir to decades of an Imperial Presidency where Presidents can basically deploy troops wherever they want.  There are over a hundred cases where Presidents have taken military action without Congressional oversight, Obama is doing nothing new here.  If the Congress** wants to firmly take back its war powers, its free too, as it can easily cut the funding for Obama operation, or even Impeach him for this.  Of course, they probably should have Impeached President Reagan for bombing Libya back in 1986.  And Congress should remember that if it does cut our funding we will be leaving our allies in this situation all alone, after the US has pledged aid.  The destruction of the Libyan Rebels will be on their hands.

As for budgetary concerns, I can't imagine a more petty issue.  Hundreds of thousands of people were about to be slaughtered, and you tug at purse strings?

Ultimately what Obama's hopes in Libya seem to be is that this will be a very quick operation in which Gaddafi will fall very quickly.  Unfortunately he's managed to blunder himself into a tough corner with a very unclear mission plan - something that must be amended soon.  Unclear mandates like what we have in Libya now are the recipes for catastrophe.  All the US actually needs to do in this war is stand by, hold off Gaddafi while arming the rebels, then watch as he is taken down.  The world is better off with him gone, that much is clear.  With a careful strategy, Obama can finish our goals in the region (which are very obviously the destruction of Gaddafi), and help establish a functional democracy in Libya.  Its a hard line to walk, but nobody said being the Leader of the Free World was going to be an easy job.

Also Obama, "Odyssey Dawn" is a terrible title for a military operation.  It sounds like a level in "Dissidia Final Fantasy".

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* Or as I like to call him "Gaddafi Duck".

** Personally I'm somewhat ambivalent towards the Imperial Presidency.  On the one hand, the growth of Executive Power is clearly not what our Founding Fathers intended.  But on the other hand, Congress is typically a bickering body filled with dozens of petty grievances and often horribly uninformed elected officials.  You can't trust the US Congress to even pass a budget these days - do you really want them running this nation?  Maybe my inner NeoCon is finally starting to shine through, who knows?