When the Spanish-American War of 1898 ended with a victory for the United States, John Hay, U.S. ambassador in London, felt moved to celebrate. In a letter to Teddy Roosevelt, he described it as a war “begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by the fortune which loves the brave.” It was, in short, “a splendid little war.”
The fall of the Qaddafi regime in Libya has inclined many contemporary commentators to similarly effusive bursts of cheer. But does the war in Libya deserve all the praise being bestowed upon it? Will this be the dawn of a new era of low-cost, humanitarian intervention? Was this our own era’s “splendid little war,” a model for future wars to come?
Not quite. There is little evident splendor in a war which took the richest bunch of nations on earth five months to decide, just in time before the bombs ran out. In Serbia, against a much more potent foe than Qaddafi’s army, NATO did it in half the time. But in judging just how exemplary this war was, let’s consider Hay’s descriptors in order.
Was the war “begun with the highest motives”? No war ever is. (Not even the assault on Cuba that Ambassador Hay was cheering: Republican President William McKinley entered the war in part because Democrats and the “Yellow Press” of Hearst and Pulitzer berated him into it.) Benevolent altruism explains only so much about NATO-in-Libya. Yes, Qaddafi seemed poised to lay low Benghazi, the wellspring of the revolt, and the “responsibility to protect” is now a part of international law. But the coalition-of-the-willing was pushed into action by its own parochial interests.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France had domestic fish to fry: He saw the war as a way to fend off the challenge posed to him in next year’s presidential election by Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the nationalist right, who polls suggest may force him into a run-off. The nations on the northern littoral of the Mediterranean, most notably Italy, were motivated by other practical concerns. These countries wanted to stem the arrival on their shores of unwanted refugee from North Africa, unwanted intruders of dark color and Muslim faith. (In this, their feelings resembled those of Germans and Austrians in the 1990s: Those countries were glad when the Bosnians who had escaped from the Serbs in the Balkan wars finally went home again.)
Was the war in Libya “carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit”? It would be more accurate to make that: With less-than-magnificent resolve and even less ordnance. Two of NATO-Europe’s biggest—Germany and Poland—did not fly along, and the United States did so only half-heartedly, dropping command authority into French and British laps. The Germans couldn’t even bring themselves to vote for the no-fly zone in the U.N. Security Council.
At the time, Berlin’s Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, thought the intervention was too fraught with “risks and dangers.” True enough, but the risks he was referring to were the electoral kind. Germans, whose Afrika Korps went to the gates of Cairo in Word War II, don’t do war any more; the two big ones lost between 1914 and 1945 were one too many. The government could read the opinion polls, and so Westerwelle gave the people what they wanted to hear, declaring at the time, “We don’t want to become party to a civil war in North Africa and step onto a slippery slope that, in the end, will make German soldiers participants in a Libyan war.” Naturally, he now claims credit for an “apparent success,” hawking the mighty contribution Germany has made to sanctions and civilian aid.
So Britain and France shouldered the main burden, cheered along by Obama’s America, which, for the first time since NATO’s birth in 1949, refused to move to the head of the class. Luckily, the U.S. provided the bulk of the sophisticated hardware: Space-based surveillance, battlefield intelligence, drones, precision munitions, tank and bunker busters. Judging how the top brass in Britain and France were moaning about running out of bombs in early summer, the U.S. also must have eventually ponied up the standard stuff.
Why didn't President Obama consult with the Congress during the military intervention in Libya under the provisions of The War Powers Act? Well, he consulted his lawyers, who advised him that since there were no boots on the ground, this intervention was different from a conventional war. Is it just me or when you start dropping bombs to support the rebels that's pretty much a war? Certainly all the civilians and hapless rebels, who were blown apart and became collateral damage, would tell you if they could speak that this was definitely a war. But, hey, what's a little collateral damage? Can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs? That's what the powerful elites tell the eggs.
So ... view full comment
Why didn't President Obama consult with the Congress during the military intervention in Libya under the provisions of The War Powers Act? Well, he consulted his lawyers, who advised him that since there were no boots on the ground, this intervention was different from a conventional war. Is it just me or when you start dropping bombs to support the rebels that's pretty much a war? Certainly all the civilians and hapless rebels, who were blown apart and became collateral damage, would tell you if they could speak that this was definitely a war. But, hey, what's a little collateral damage? Can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs? That's what the powerful elites tell the eggs. So essentially, Obama said to Congress, "Fuck it. I'll do what I want." The Imperial Presidency, once again, wins out over the laws enacted by Congress, who has the constitutional purse strings to make war or to cut off funds for war.
damn, pretty damn weak piece.
To take one example: There is little evident splendor in a war which took the richest bunch of nations on earth five months to decide, just in time before the bombs ran out.
Nato did not drop ordnance on most sorties, they did this because they were extraordinarily careful not to inflict civilian casualties, they did such a great job that Gadhafi had to manufacture fake casualties (bringing up people from morgues who died in car accidents, having empty coffins for display claiming them to be full) etc. Contrast that to Serbia where there were far more civilian casualties and where the US accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy.
And the bombs were not about to ... view full comment
damn, pretty damn weak piece. To take one example: There is little evident splendor in a war which took the richest bunch of nations on earth five months to decide, just in time before the bombs ran out.
Nato did not drop ordnance on most sorties, they did this because they were extraordinarily careful not to inflict civilian casualties, they did such a great job that Gadhafi had to manufacture fake casualties (bringing up people from morgues who died in car accidents, having empty coffins for display claiming them to be full) etc. Contrast that to Serbia where there were far more civilian casualties and where the US accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy.
And the bombs were not about to run out, that is nonsense, after Gadhafi was pushed out of Misrata and the Nafusa mountains time was against him, there was never a stalemate, the rebels have consistently gained new ground, just because it was slow did not mean it was not real. Nato held the rebels back in the East around Brega so as to have them concentrate on the supply line to Misrata and the Nafusa mountains, which is where the war was won.
As to the future, the author is already predicting the worst, so tiresome. Syria is a very different situation, but to then say because we can not do this type of war in Syria this type of war can not be done anywhere else but Libya is nonsensical. Joffe seems not to have noticed what transpired in the Ivory Coast, where far, far fewer French involvement led to the removal of the regime to be replaced by the lawful one. To state that Libya can not happen anywhere else when it already happened in the Ivory Coast shows how truly weak the author is.
rewiredhog, oh please, the Senate passed a resolution calling for a no fly zone to be in place, and there was absolutely nothing to prevent Congress from exerting there power by defunding operations there, so what "imperial" Presidency are you referring to? If Obama did not act Congress would have passed resolutions slamming him for not acting. And the War powers act was never ruled upon as Constitutional so quit your bitching.
The Libyan war was one of the finest examples of the international community coming together to get rid of a rogue actor. There was UN authorization and about as much world wide support for this as you will ever find, now rewiredhog is crying into his beer that the British and French helped win the war there. To ignore that they carried out, after the initial salvo, the vast majority of the military bombing runs is to ignore facts. So Britain and France are also now subject to the War powers act? What horseshit.
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