Rebels pushing on TripoliFollow

Went on for 5 months. Until we (we being NATO) wiped out pretty much every plane, heavy weapon, and C&C location held by Khadaffi, and then put massive amounts of weapons into the hands of ground forces, and then gave them heavy weapons, and then showed them how to use them, and then put "advisers" on the ground. So yeah. If we'd done that stuff from day one, maybe the conflict would have ended 4.5 months ago and cost fewer lives.

Just saying. If we'd acted when the rebels first asked for help, when they initially had the upper hand, we could probably have helped them win in the first couple weeks, while only having to destroy Libya's air power, some heavy units, and some command/control sites. By waiting until Khadaffi mobilized his forces, and then waiting more until he'd destroyed almost everything the rebels had and pushed them to the brink of destruction, we made this a far steeper uphill battle than it should have been.

By continuing to try to keep the appearance of not directly helping the rebels, while still directly helping the rebels we stretched it out even further after that point.


Don't get me wrong. I completely understand why Obama chose this course of action. But it's clear that this was essentially driven by domestic political conditions and not so much what the best course was in terms of resolving the conflict. He was bound by his own rhetoric regarding Iraq, and that limited his options. It's good that everything worked out well anyway (so far at least), but I'm still going to point out that this was far from a perfect plan much less execution.


And before you go all partisan on me, I made the exact same criticism of Bush after the invasion of Iraq. The choice to go minimalist during the initial invasion (also for political reasons) combined with trying too hard to avoid appearing to be leading in the rebuilding allowed for lots of weapons to be hidden and later used against us *and* lead to the significant faction fighting which arguably cost more lives than any of the insurgents, loyalists, or just plain anti-US folks in the area did. It's a delicate balance, but we made the mistake of being too delicate in that first year, and it made things much worse IMO.


Of course, it's good that we can learn from earlier mistakes. Usually at least.

Five months *after* NATO started helping Joph. The war had already been going for a month prior to that point, during which time we basically sat on the sidelines and played cheerleader.

You do realize that Libya is just now entering the equivalent stage to Iraq in April of 2003, right? That was after a whopping 21 days of fighting. What happens next is anyone's guess, but the point is that it took far far longer to get to the point of toppling Khadaffi and even starting to stabilize the country, rebuild, create a new government, and a host of other things that still lie before them.

I'm not even looking at the parts that lie ahead. I'm looking at the fact that had we acted earlier and more decisively, we could have helped the rebellion topple Khadaffi in that first month or so. Instead, we waited until the rebellion was nearly wiped out, then took action at the very last second, and even then limited it so as to not appear to be helping too much (even though everyone knew otherwise).



Longer than it should have been.

I am? You're the one who brought that word into this thread Joph. But I'll do ya a favor:


I first used that word in this thread. Specifically:



I did not say that this stalemate would last forever, just that "even more people will die". So... April, May, June, July, August. That's 5 extra months *after* I said this before an opponent we could have helped them defeat in like 2 weeks was finally defeated.

And if you read that whole thread, you'll note that my issue was with the original claim of using nothing but air support. I argued that we would need to do more than that if we were to help the rebels actually win. And guess what? I was right! We (NATO) did do more than just blow stuff up from the air. We did provide tons of weapons and on the ground military assistance before the rebels were able to win.

It's quite arguable that had NATO stuck to its original promise of just using air power to protect civilians from Khadaffi's forces, we would still be in that stalemate. It's precisely because they didn't do this that the rebels won. And I also predicted that as well. I said that everyone knows they'll have to do more, but they're effectively lying to the public so that they don't suffer massive outcry for their actions. Then, as time goes by and no one's really paying attention, they'll start providing weapons, then ground support, etc.


My whole argument was that either they were embarking on a venture that could not work *or* were being dishonest and intending to do the right thing (eventually), but lying about it so as not to draw negative political attention to themselves. As it happens, they did the latter. My position is that had they been honest about what they were doing (toppling Khadaffi), and directly provided what was needed to accomplish this instead of dancing around the issue, this conflict could have been resolved months ago and many fewer lives would have been lost.

I was right about it then, and I'm still right about it now.



Um... Yeah. That's kinda the point! It's why one conflict took 21 days and the other 6 months. Gee. I thought that's exactly what I was saying.

Wrong that unless and until we put more focus on the ground the rebels would not win? Hmmm... Yeah. I was so wrong about that one!

Not...really?

The Detroit Steel Project has several thousand armed drones that accompany the battle armor and are controlled by civilian simple smart phone apps disguised as a video game.

Well... Sorta.




If you think that helping to "train and arm the rebels" didn't also consist of "coordinate and target air strikes to rebel ground force movements so we can stop accidentally hitting rebel forces" you've failed at comprehension. The rebels suddenly became effective after 4 and a half months of flailing around because NATO finally imposed some operational control over the ground forces themselves. You cannot effectively use close air support without a single command structure in place. Is it really that hard to noodle out what changed? A month ago, the rebels were unable to make any ground and we were accidentally hitting them as often as the Khadaffi forces. Suddenly, like a switch is thrown, our air forces (almost) perfectly coordinate with a rebel ground assault and take over the capitol?


Don't strain your brain thinking about it.

Edited, Aug 31st 2011 5:45pm by gbaji

But NATO don't have boots on the ground. Aside from a few SAS liaisons training the rebels?

Awesome.

It's sort of like coming full circle for the SAS, though. I mean, Libya was where they started in WWII.

Aside from that...

"Presence" is measured in ways other than numbers of boots. It's very clear from the radical change in air to ground coordination just a few weeks ago that those special forces teams were doing more than training. We were basically running their ground war for them in terms of command and control. Had to be. It was those NATO special forces who were giving the orders to rebel commanders and telling them where to put their units and when.

This has to be true because the only way to coordinate air and ground forces that well is if both are following the same set of commands and are hooked into the same network of information. And since it's a very good bet that we didn't give the rebels access to our military networks, that what we did was put our guys into their command tents with our equipment and ran their war for them. Or is this still too hard to noodle out?

Maybe they just put beacons on their vehicles? Maybe the SAS liaisons were doing just that, liaising. You know, radioing in "Hey, they're attacking X, don't(or do) blow it up"

Doesn't mean NATO is illegally running a civil war.