Category: Libya

‘Etch-a-Sketch’ Estimate of Libya War Costs: $40 Million Per Month? More?

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Spencer Ackerman smashes the Obama administration’s Libya policy through a plate-glass window:

How much will the Libya war cost America, now that NATO jets are hitting Moammar Gadhafi’s forces? Good luck figuring out an answer.
Michael Donley, the secretary of the Air Force, leveled with reporters that the cost estimates for the war are coming “by the hour” now that U.S. “participation in strike operations has now gone away.”  . . .
Donley’s best estimate, given to reporters at a breakfast meeting on Tuesday, was that the war has cost the Air Force about $75 million so far, with expenses running to $4 million a day. . . .
By contrast, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Congress last week that without a U.S. combat role in the Libya war, he expects the bill to run to $40 million per month. That doesn’t exactly match the Air Force’s tally. By Donley’s figures, if the Air Force slashed its costs for the war in half, it would still exceed Gates’ totals — and that’s not counting the Navy’s contribution.
None of this confusion should come as a surprise. The Libya war was launched on the fly and its goals are uncertain. No wonder the war bill is written with an Etch-a-Sketch.

Keeping in mind the inherent difficulty of criticizing Obama’s Libya policy — exactly what is the policy, anyway? — I’m willing to credit Ackerman for at least being consistent in his anti-war stance. If the Benghazi Bungle has accomplished nothing else useful, it might be worth $4 million a day to slap some sense into Obama’s sycophants.

(BTW, if you didn’t get the “plate-glass window” reference: That was Ackerman’s colorful description for a strategy to defend Obama during the Reverend Wright uproar, as shared with his fellow liberals on JournoList.)

Smitty asks: does this famous estimate resemble a ‘Salvador Dali print of two blindfolded dental hygienists trying to make a circle’? Because that would make it at least kinda cool.

Conor Friedersdorf: Now Turning the Atlantic into Media Matters Lite?

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When Andrew Sullivan jumped ship to The Daily Beast, Conor Friedersdorf stayed behind at the Atlantic, where today he devotes some 1,800 words to Why Rush Limbaugh Is Wrong About Libya. A few sample Conorisms:

His commentary has misled his audience, his prejudices have helped to distract the conservative movement from the stance it ought to be taking, and even his defenders will have a difficult time explaining away his latest buffoonery. . . .
Limbaugh is a man confident that his mistakes will drift off into the ether unnoticed. . . .
[T]he talk radio host isn’t guided in his commentary by any consistent principle, nor does he acknowledge obvious errors in analysis. Instead he blithely misinforms his audience about reality daily.

Well, Conor: Change the station, OK? Nobody is forcing you to listen to Limbaugh. Without attempting a detailed analysis of Rush Limbaugh’s various comments, I’ll say this: The greatest difficulty in criticizing Obama’s policy on Libya is in figuring out exactly what the policy is.

On the one hand, Obama tells us Qaddafi must go. On the other hand, Obama seems unwilling to commit sufficient military resources to drive Qaddafi out. So we are non-fighting a non-war under a U.N. “humanitarian” mandate, with the French leading a NATO coalition of air support for the half-assed Libyan rebels.

There’s something for everybody to hate: The neocon hawks think the policy is too weak. The constitutionalists are angry that Obama committed the U.S. to military action without even bothering to ask Congress. The peaceniks are angry that we’ve taken any military action at all. My main beef — borrowing an insight from Ace of Spades — is that America could “lose” a war we’re not even fighting.

In short, Obama’s policy is a huge joke, and trying to comment on it with a straight face is an enormous challenge. (Sully’s Libya headline today: “Stalemate Watch.”) If Limbaugh’s daily commentary on Libya has been somewhat contradictory — or perhaps just plain wrong at times — so what?

Like I said: If you don’t like it, change the station.

UPDATE: Via Twitter, Conor says: “‘Change the station’  could be a response to any criticism of any commentator.” Indeed, it could. But Rush Limbaugh built the world’s largest radio audience (think about that) as an independent syndicated host. He isn’t employed by a behemoth like NBC or the New York Times. There is no management who can fire him. His continued success depends solely upon his continued “Excellence in Broadcasting.”

An important point: I do not assume that the Limbaugh listener gets all his information from Limbaugh. If Limbaugh is wrong, therefore, his listeners are likely to figure that out for themselves. But Conor obviously thinks that Dittoheads are a bunch of morons who can’t think for themselves — “mind-numbed robots,” t0 borrow Rush’s phrase — and so frets about Limbaugh’s influence.

Linked by That Mr. G. Guy — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!


Your Daily Libyan Rebels Update

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Let me just start by noting that “Libyan Rebels” would be a great name for a punk-rock band. When last we checked in on the half-assed insurgency, the ill-armed and undisciplined rebels had made a 200-mile retreat to the vicinity of Brega. Now the BCC reports:

Rebels pushed towards Brega on Monday in an attempt to win back territory lost to forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
A BBC correspondent near Brega says they appear to be more buoyant and organised than recently. . . .
The BBC’s Wyre Davies, who is on the road close to Brega, says the sounds of gunfire and weaponry can be heard from the front line a few kilometres away.
Rebel fighters are charging towards the front line, our correspondent says, clearly bolstered by the presence in their ranks of more and more soldiers who have defected from Col Gaddafi’s army.
But the rebels remain poorly trained and equipped, he adds, and even if they manage to take Brega there still seems no realistic prospect of an advance on Tripoli, the Libyan capital.

OK, so the likelihood of rebels overthrowing Qaddafi appears as remote as ever. But there’s good news:

Italy on Monday formally recognized the rebel government of eastern Libya, dealing yet another blow to the embattled regime of Col. Moammar Kadafi.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Rome would open an office in rebel-held territory and formally recognize the Benghazi-based Libyan National Council as the only representative of the country. . . . Italy joins France as the second Western country to formally recognize the rebel government.

Diplomatic recognition by Italy and France — hey, that’s got to be worth something, right? Right? In other Libya news, Geraldo Rivera nearly got shot yesterday:

Geraldo isn’t really confident in the rebels. He said he was “as worried about getting shot in the back by the good guys as I was getting shot in the front by the Gaddafi forces,” and warned: “I swear to god, if you give these people weapons more powerful than they have right now, they will be a grave danger to themselves and others.”

In addition to scaring the crap out of Geraldo, the blundering insurgency is also ruining Obama’s message:

President Barack Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya has presented him with a whole new set of political problems with members of both parties. But its most worrisome effect for the White House is the way it’s undermining his efforts to address what has been his administration’s longest-running issue — the economy. . . .
Libya is drowning out his attempts to portray himself as an economic commander-in-chief fighting a series of new threats to the fragile U.S. recovery, especially the devastating and politically poisonous rise in gas prices.

Is it too early to say, “Quagmire”?

UPDATE: The New York Times reports that today “rebel fighters were engaging the main body of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces in an intense battle for the oil town of Brega, trading fire at close quarters and sending volleys of rockets into the town.”

It’s worth pointing out that we have very little knowledge of the size or disposition of Qaddafi’s forces — and neither do the rebels. So for all we know, the Qaddafi troops could be trying to draw the rebels into Brega while preparing a surprise encirclement. Given some estimates that the rebels number barely a thousand fighters, and that they have very little in the way of training or leadership, one suspects their tactical dispositions are not entirely sound (pardon the modest understatement). Allied air power is the only thing that’s keeping Qaddafi’s forces from mopping up the rebels.


Sully: ‘We Are Damn Lucky to Have Him at This Fraught Moment in History’

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“Him” of course being President Obama, who still moves Andrew Sullivan to paeans of gratitude, no matter how un-constitutionally Bush-like or wrong-headed Obama’s actual policies might be.

Did you say “Battered Wife Syndrome“?

Yeah. Everybody sees it, except the victim who refuses to take responsibility for enabling his own abuse. Meanwhile, with our brilliant European “allies” in charge of the air war, things are going just dandy for the Libyan rebels:

At least 13 people are reported to have been killed when a coalition plane flying over Libya fired on a rebel convoy between Brega and Ajdabiya on Friday, the rebels say. . . .
A doctor in the town of Ajdabiya, Suleiman Refardi, told the BBC that on Wednesday the coalition air strike on Zawia el Argobe targeted a government convoy that included tanks, artillery and lorries carrying ammunition.
A direct hit on an ammunition truck and trailer sent a hail of shrapnel into nearby houses, he said.
Four of the dead were female, including three children from the same family, aged between 12 and 16. Three boys, aged between 14 and 20, were also killed.

Here’s a video report:

Because there are no lefties marching around shouting “Obama lied, Libyans died,” Sullivan can pretend that President Awesomeness is a blessing to humanity “at this fraught moment in history.”

But this pretense cannot be maintained forever, if failures continue being heaped one upon another.

Sir Andrew of Rubesville

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No sooner does Kevin Drum claim ownership of his gullibility — one tenable option for Obama’s anti-war leftist supporters — than Andrew Sullivan mounts his high horse in protest:

Many of us supported this president because he promised to bring back the constitutional balance after the theories of Yoo, Delahunty, et al put the president on a par with emperors and kings in  wartime. And yet in this Libya move, what difference is there between Bush and Obama?

Well, competence — or at least the common-sense recognition that war cannot properly be fought by piecemeal commitments. Obama evidently wants the Libyan intervention to be something that is Not Quite War, and does not appear to have considered the possibility that this will be more damaging for U.S. interests than if he had ordered a massive invasion of Libya. Sully cares not a bit for U.S. interests, of course, but is concerned only for his own credibility: His erstwhile idol Obama has outdone Bush in foreign-policy high-handedness, thus embarrassing one Andrew Sullivan (B.A., Oxford; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard).

Leaving aside Sully’s tattered credibility, however, let’s consider the situation as it now stands in Libya:

U.S. officials are becoming increasingly resigned to the possibility of a protracted stalemate in Libya, with rebels retaining control of the eastern half of the divided country but lacking the muscle to drive Moammar Gaddafi from power. . . .
New evidence of a possible impasse emerged Friday as an opposition spokesman called publicly for a cease-fire that would halt the fighting and essentially freeze the battle lines. The Libyan government rejected the proposal, saying that it would not “withdraw from our own cities.” . . .

So the Obama administration has, apparently, committed insufficient military resources to achieve any decisive outcome. Every additional day Qaddafi remains in power is like an advertisement of American impotence. And Harry Reid adjourns the Senate rather than permit debate on whether the president has constitutional authority to wage this Not Quite War.

“The president’s own words are incredibly important here. The hypocrisy is amazing. In 2007, the president said, ‘The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.’ And yet here we have a president cavalierly taking us to war. He seems to have had a lot of time to talk to people. He talked to the Arab League; they had time to get together and vote on it. He talked to the U.N.; they had time to get together and vote on it. But he had utter disregard and contempt for the most important body in the United States that represents the people, the U.S. Congress — utter contempt. He’s gone to NATO, he’s gone to our allies, he’s gone to the U.N., he’s gone to the Arab League, but he has not had one single minute of debate in Congress. To add insult to injury, he chose to go to war while in Brazil, while Congress was not even in session.”
— Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky)

And rather than allow such a debate, Harry Reid adjourned the Senate — leaving Sully’s shredded credibility flapping in the wind.

UPDATE: Greetings, readers of the Instapundit!


Kevin Drum, Rube

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A left-winger admits his complete gullibility:

If it had been my call, I wouldn’t have gone into Libya. But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I’d literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he’s smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted. I voted for him because I trust him, and I still do.
For now, anyway. But I wouldn’t have intervened in Libya and he did. I sure hope his judgment really does turn out to have been better than mine.

In other words: “I’m such a chump, I still trust the guy, even though he’s doing something which seems utterly wrong to me, because I acknowledge myself to be so ignorant I don’t trust my own opinions.”

Obama’s Foreign Policy: America Could Lose a War That We’re Not Even Fighting

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Ace of Spades describes the situation that St. Hopey has maneuvered us into with the Libyan rebels:

Now, if Obama has in fact arrived far too late and backed a losing cause, he’s going to have to face a serious dilemma.

1. “Americanize” the war and win what the indigenous forces cannot.
2. Allow the rebels to lose in a war in which American prestige has been put into play.

This is the basic problem with war-by-proxy: You back one side in a conflict and if they lose, you lose. That’s essentially how we got bogged down in Vietnam. JFK and LBJ were backing the anti-Communist government in the south and, when it turned out that our allies were corrupt and incompetent, then we had to “escalate” on their behalf. Hanoi and their Vietcong allies then counter-escalated.

Oh, yeah: The assassination of Diem. One golden moment of “Camelot” that never makes the liberal highlight reel. “Cable 243” and all that. Diem was Catholic, and the “Best and Brightest” evidently decided we needed more Buddhist support in Vietnam.

Problem? The Catholics were fiercely anti-Communist whereas the Buddhists . . . Well, good luck stopping the NVA with an army of Buddhists, OK?

Don’t know why that flashed in my mind, except that I sometimes find myself arguing with neocons who defend the heyday of Cold War liberalism as the “good old days” when Democrats were all patriotic and stuff. But it’s a continuum, you see: The same familiar mixture of arrogance and incompetence. Anyway, back in the present day, Allahpundit describes how our “allies” are running the war:

If you thought “protecting civilians” was merely UN-speak for “aiding the rebels” (as many of the rebels did), think again. Not only are NATO leaders refusing to arm them, but the fact that they think violence against defenseless people by their putative ally is so likely that deterring it requires a formal warning backed by a threat of bombardment tells you a lot about how suspicious the coalition is of its new best friends.

So between Hillary’s State Department geniuses and our Euro-weenie “allies,” it’s looking like a total clusterfark. I’ll just switch over to Google News and grab a random headline:

Robert Gates’ goal for Libya:
No American troops on the ground

Great: The Secretary of Defense establishes U.S. non-involvement as a policy goal. Do we want the rebels to win, or not? Do we want to get rid of Qaddafi, or not? If the idea is for the rebels to win and Qaddafi to go, why rule anything out in advance?

Quick question: How many U.S. Marines would it take to kick the living shit out of any force Qaddafi could muster?

I’m guessing “less than 5,000,” and it would be over in a week.

We’ve launched craploads of Tomahawk cruise missiles and flown who-knows-how-many combat air missions over Libya, but no ground troops, see? Because “ground troops” would look too much like an actual war, and President Nobel Peace Prize can’t have that.

So here we are, as Ace says, with America’s international prestige dependent on a bunch of half-assed rebels. Another random story:

Many of the idealistic young men who looted army depots of gun trucks and weapons six weeks ago believed the tyrannical 41-year reign of Col. Moammar Kadafi would quickly collapse under the weight of a mass rebellion.
Now those same volunteer fighters, most of whom had never before fired a gun, have fled a determined onslaught by Kadafi’s forces, which have shown resilience after being bombarded and routed by allied airstrikes a week ago.
Some exhausted rebels capped a 200-plus mile retreat up the Libyan coast by fleeing all the way to Benghazi, the rebels’ de facto capital, to rest and regroup. Others remained at thinly manned positions at the strategic crossroads city of Ajdabiya on Thursday.
Small groups of rebels stood their ground and fought Kadafi militiamen who seemed on the verge late Thursday of recapturing the oil city of Port Brega. . . .

Just go read the whole thing: “Rebels” smoking hashish and shouting “Allahu akbar”? Buddy, I don’t know about you, but that just fills me with all kinds of confidence. It might yet work out — there are “secret” talks in London, so Qaddafi may be looking for a way out — but if so, the success will be despite Obama’s policy, not because of Obama’s policy.

Obama Sends CIA Into Libya Ground Operations; Andrew Sullivan Stunned

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New York Times:

The Central Intelligence Agency has inserted clandestine operatives into Libya to gather intelligence for military airstrikes and contact rebels battling Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces, according to American officials.

And don’t you know it’s just breaking Sully’s poor little heart?

I’m still absorbing this news and don’t want to vent immediately, because there is still part of me that simply cannot believe that president Obama has already ordered covert action in Libya on one side in a civil war . . . It’s so surreal, so discordant with what the president has told the American people, so fantastically contrary to everything he campaigned on. . . . I simply cannot believe it.

Heh. More salt for that fresh wound? Because we’re going to keep rubbing it in, you gullible rube.

Go ahead. Have another bite of that “turd sandwich“!