In this Telegraph story about the first American plane to crash in our new Libyan operations (both pilots survived, and one has been recovered so far), we get a feeling for how ill-thought-through this war is:
But after Defence Secretary Liam Fox suggested over the weekend that Col Gaddafi could be a “legitimate target”, No 10 sources insisted it was legal to target anyone killing Libyan civilians.
The controversy blew up as Col Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli was hit in a second night of coalition air strikes aimed at suppressing the regime’s air defences and command and control structure.
Following a meeting of the newly formed Libya subcommittee of the National Security Council, chaired by David Cameron, Gen Richards was adamant that it was not permitted to target Col Gaddafi.
“Absolutely not. It is not allowed under the UN resolution and it is not something I want to discuss any further,” he said.
At a Ministry of Defence briefing, Gen Richards’ spokesman, Major Gen John Lorimer, stressed that the international military intervention was in support of the UN no-fly zone.
“It is very clear that, in support of the United Nations Security Council, we are there to implement and enforce the no-fly zone,” he said.
“The targets we are attacking are command and control facilities and the integrated air defence system. They are legitimate military targets.”
In what way is Colonel Gadaffi not a legitimate military target? He was a soldier who seized power in a coup, who has governed his country through a military dictatorship, and is now using military might to threaten the civilian population. Which is where we come in. He’s a military commander whose actions as a military commander have caused us to intervene. It’s difficult to think of a more legitimate military target than our enemy’s commander.
“I’m not going to speculate on the targets,” [Foreign Secretary William Hague] told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. “That depends on the circumstances at the time.”
Dr Fox also discussed the possibility at the weekend, although he stressed the need to avoid civilian casualties in any attack.
“Well, that would potentially be a possibility but you mention immediately one of the problems we would have, which is that you would have to take into account any civilian casualties that might result from that,” he said.
Decades of Western pussilanimity in the face of the human shield tactic have gotten us to this point, where every tin pot tyrant who faces Western military might can simply surround himself with civilians and we act like a vampire confronted with a cross. We have taught Gadaffi that this is how to ward us off, and he is doing as we’ve tought him. This tactic will be used in every future conflict we have until stop letting it work.
I don’t like the idea of killing civilians, but let us never imagine that these people are innocent. A fundamental tenent of Western political thought is that the people are responsible for their government. We’ve moved beyond the age of divine right, where the people and the government could be morally severed. To step back to the philosophical past, to say that somehow a people who have let a terrorist and a tyrant govern them for decades, whose sons have served in his army, are so innocent that we cannot legitimately kill them when they are protecting his life is a rebuke to every liberal advance going back to John Locke.
The talk of targeting Col Gaddafi also appeared to alarm the Americans, with US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warning that it could undermine the cohesion of the international coalition supporting the no-fly zone.
“If we start adding additional objectives then I think we create a problem in that respect,” he said.
“I also think it is unwise to set as specific goals things that you may or may not be able to achieve.”
What? Robert Gates is a smart man, and on its face that last sentence is nonsense. He cannot possibly mean what that sentence literally means, as that would preclude ever setting any goal.
But, frankly, why does the cohesion of the international coalition supporting the no-fly zone matter here? If we kill Gadaffi, there’s no more need for a no-fly zone, and the coalition can simply dissolve. Yesterday I linked to a comment from John Bolton, that removing Gadaffi “apparently remains our political objective, but not our military objective.” The most appropriate way to see these comments from Gates is as a jawdropping response to Bolton: if we achieve our political ends, then our military coalition will fall apart.
Well, yeah. That’s what it looks like when you win a war. Could it be that victory is such an alien notion to us that we have forgotten this?
At this point, this war looks exactly like what the Left 8 or 9 years ago said Iraq looked like: we’re launching an illegitimate attack on an oil rich country that posed no threat to us, at a time when our resources are needed elsewhere, and we have no exit strategy. In Iraq, though, our leadership never waivered in what we were aiming for: a WMD-free, Saddam-free Iraq that was governed by some sort of representative government. We never turned away from that goal, and though it’s taken us longer to get there than we wanted, we’re basically there.
What is our goal in Libya, and how are our military actions aimed at achieving that? Judging by the comments from our government and our allies, I don’t think I’m the only one who can’t answer those questions.
Posted by Apollo in To the Shores of Tripoli