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.
