Further: The seesaw battle along Libya's northern coast road continues. Inexperienced rebels ran away when faced with renewed counterattacks by Qaddafi's professionals who appear to have adapted to air strikes. Loyalist forces consist mostly of two militias led by Qaddafi's sons numbering about 10,000 men drawn from the Warfalla, Margaha and Qaddafa tribes. Western experts number the active rebel forces at about 1,000. Anti-Qaddafi fighters have been pushed out of Raz Lanouf again, past the town of Brega. NATO air sorties continue; most of the 102 air strikes flown by US pilots within the last 24 hours. Western leaders are considering arming the rebels with more sophisticated weapons, but
questions remain about their ability to use them effectively, and the scope of the UN mandate under which western intervention is supposedly operating*. Rebel leaders have repeatedly asked western contacts for heavy weapons. Col. Qaddafi still has hundreds of tanks, armored carriers, long-range artillery pieces and mobile missile launchers.
*Questions have also surfaced about who the rebels are. There may be indications of links to Hezbollah and even Al Qaeda in Iraq. Perhaps Qaddafi is not protesting too much, and Samantha Power should take a time out.
More: {29.3.11} US Person reports the operative fact concerning the Libyan "operation" regardless of what the Obamacon claims on TV in defense of another
unauthorized war: France, a member of NATO and the closest US ally save the United Kingdom, imports about
15% of its crude oil supplies from Libya. That makes Libya France's second largest supplier after Russia. Libya is the third largest producer of crude oil in Africa behind Nigeria and Angola. If supplies of Libyan oil were cut off, the head of the French oil industry association said it would be "very, very worrying". Some oil companies have stopped production and others have brought staff home midst the escalating civil war between Qaddafi loyalists and rebels. France was understandably the first western nation to officially recognize the Benghazi uprising when the revolution took control of oil assets. Cynical geopolitics trumps stopping bloodshed once again or
'regime change' by another means. More evidence that the intervention has taken on a momentum beyond the control of any elected US official is the
statement by an American admiral that NATO troops may be required to occupy Libya as part of a "stabilization regime". The President pledged unequivocally in his public address that no American troops will be used in Libya. Whether Obamacon honors that pledge remains to be seen.
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| NATO Harrier returns to USS Kearsage |
Just three years ago French President Sarkozy hosted 'Mr. Africa'
[photo]. He explained his hospitality saying, "He is the longest serving head of state in the region. And in the Arab world, that counts." So Qaddafi pitched his Bedouin tent in the gardens of the Elysee Palace during his six day visit. Sarkozy signed letters of intent to sell the dictator Mirage jet fighters and Airbuses worth €10 billion. Fortunately for French aviators, those fighters were never ordered. Qaddafi did order $300 million worth of French anti-tank missiles and radio systems. One goal of the NATO intervention is unambiguous if unspoken: secure the safety of the Libyan oil infrastructure because the civil war now looks as it may be protracted. Russia abstained from the UN Security Council vote authorizing military action to protect Libyan civilians from attack. Russian diplomats have publicly said the NATO intervention has already gone beyond the UN mandate. Since this story's last post, rebels retook the oil terminal of Raz Lanouf and moved on Qaddafi's hometown and stronghold of Sirte behind NATO air to ground support. But the
latest reports indicate rebels retreated in the face of rocket and tank barrages by Qaddafi forces near the hamlet of Bin Jawwad, sixty miles to the east of Sirte. Despite pounding Misrata, rebels still hold that surrounded western city. Qaddafi has characterized the UN authorized intervention as a "barbaric offensive" to turn Libya into "a new Afghanistan".
Update:
{24.3.11}Mission creep, the deadly quicksand of foreign entanglements, has already begun in Libya. NATO air forces eliminated Qaddafi's air force as an effective fighting unit
according to a British air marshal, and now they have turned their attention to
ground attacks. Military commanders claim they are sticking to their essentially humanitarian UN mandate, but it is becoming increasingly clear as attacks escalate they are buying time for a weak and disorganized Libyan opposition. The expanding scope of US forces beyond aerial interdiction
raises questions of who is in actual control of our participation, the President or the Pentagon? All too familiar phrases like "American prestige" and "American advisers" are being aired right now by retired generals labeled experts by the jingoist corporate media. The conflict in Libya has devolved into an internal
civil war because the rebels were unable or unwilling to push into Tripoli to administer a
coup de grace while fascist Qaddafi was still blaming Al Qaeda for the uprising. Any government emerging from the conflict must have the legitimacy of defeating the other side, otherwise the risk is the incremental establishment of yet another client state totally dependent on US military power and money. See Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. But perhaps that is the goal. The lack of legitimate US security interests in Libya alone causes
US Person to question whether the disingenuous Obama, the peace prize winner, is harboring "regime change" in his heart. If the United States is to avoid a third war it cannot afford,
Congress will have to act to limit US involvement in a foreign civil conflict with no large impacts on United States' security interests. War, not peace, is the Pentagon's profession. The
crusade rolls on, and to Mr. Putin we say: "I feel you".
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| Rebel fighter improvises |
{23.3.11}Rep. Dennis Kucinich thinks the President has committed an impeachable offense by enforcing the UN Security Council's unanimous resolution 1973 to protect Libyan civilians from Col. Qaddafi.
US Person respects
Rep. Kucinich, but begs to differ with his attention grabbing headline. Obama has the support of leaders of Congress for military action, and briefed them before US naval ships began their bombardment. But if the
War Powers Resolution of 1973 is constitutionally valid--and that is an open question--Obama has sixty days or less if Congress so directs termination of hostilities by concurrent resolution to accomplish the mission of establishing the no-fly zone. Beyond that time limit he must seek a Congressional authorization of war or withdraw US forces. One may quibble with whether the Libyan operation qualifies as a "national emergency". Significantly §1547 of the Act specifically prohibits inferences of statutory authority to engage in hostilities from any treaty, unless there is specific implementing statutes allowing introduction of US forces. In this case a specific statute would have to allow the United States to enforce Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. But only Rep. Kucinich has publicly raised this question so far. Candidate Obama
said in 2007,
"The President does not have power under the Constitution to authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." How soon power corrupts. Perhaps this legality is one reason US military commanders
want to hand-over no-fly operations quickly to our European and Arab allies. A hand-over makes logistical and fiscal sense as well. Each
BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile cost $569,000 (FY99$).
