Military force in Libya
'Regardless of whether one thinks the presidentâ??s intervention in Libya was right or wrong, the way he intervened has likely guaranteed that the eventual fall of Qaddafi will cost many more lives and leave Libya in worse shape than if Obama had chosen more aggressive American actionâ??including lots of Special Forces on the groundâ??earlier. The president had to knowâ??despite whatever Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said publiclyâ??that the decision to intervene meant regime change. The stiff retorts of Gates to questions about American objectives in Libya show his concern about â??mission creep.â? It will be brutally ironic if Gates, the administrationâ??s preeminent â??realist,â? who surely would have opposed the Iraq â??surgeâ? if heâ??d stayed in the Iraq Study Group, ends up making in Libya exactly the same mistake as his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, in Iraq: dogged opposition to sending sufficient force to accomplish the mission. - Reuel Marc Gerecht'
The notion that sending in loads of special forces to help unseat Gaddafi would end the conflict with less loss of life is pure conjecture. Undoubtedly it would hasten Gaddafi's end, but that's not the same thing as restoring stability and a measure of peace to Libya. Indeed, recent U.S. forays into this kind of business show that we are uniquely incapable of restoring peace and stability to a country after we've intervened in it.
Steve Chapman has a good piece today on just this subject.