Libyan Spider Hole
The Beeb is reporting that Muammar Quaddafi has captured by Libya’s transitional government, hiding in a spider hole much like Saddam Hussein had been. Or maybe he was killed. (UPDATE: Al-Jazeera and the Gray Lady are both reporting “died of wounds after capture”.) Lots of bad information circles around in wartime.
So — mission accomplished? This wasn’t really the mission in the first place, was it? Either way, the task now is nation-building. What’s the best way to reach an endgame of a legitimate government providing the rule of law in Libya, with economic ties and a diplomatic alignment to the West? What lessons have we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan?
What lessons have we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan?
That the choices
1. Choosing a side and supporting it with an indefinitely prolonged occupation .
2. Declaring victory and getting the hell out.
are equally successful.Report
What lessons have we learned? Maybe that Democrats are better at picking wars.
Snark aside I don’t know we’ve learned much. Libya is kindof a special case. Small, wealthy and with a long time leader who’s made himself disliked by virtually everyone even his autocrat neighbors.Report
North:
Maybe the lesson is that Dems are hypocrites, since they condemned Bush but give Barry a pass for using the US military w/o any basis in federal law. Maybe the next president should claim that using force is a humanitarian mission to protect protestors and that will be enough to satisfy Dems.Report
Scott, there’s also the fact that Iraq cost a Trillion and Libya a Billion which is three, count em, three orders of magnitude smaller.
Even the small government types have to be impressed.Report
It would have helped if Iraq had started a nice local rebellion and attempted to topple their own dictator and we just had to wait a minute, that /did/ happen, unfortunately under Bush the 1st and soldiers (including McVeigh) had to watch while the locals were slaughtered. Whether that influenced Tim we’ll just never know but I have my opinion.Report
yarly. Afghanistan worked until they went off Clarke’s plan, too.Report
If we’re gonna stick with the snark then everything you say here simply amounts to “Dems are better at picking wars”. Now I’d really prefer we not involve ourselves at all but if we are stuck with both parties picking wars then I’d personally prefer the short cheap victorious ones the Dems select to the long expensive bloody and quagmire ones the GOP swandives into.Report
North:
You seem to have conveniently forgotten the quick Repub conflicts in Panama and Grenada and the Dem quagmire in Vietnam. I didn’t realize that obeying federal law on the use of US forces now meant so little to Dems.Report
also chile! full points, sir!
GWB and Cheney are not good at wars (including vietnam, ya?)Report
Democrats are also better at planning wars. Clinton/Clarke’s plan for Afghanistan worked out just as planned. Then Bush tried some stupid nationbuilding.Report
If you want to kill a dictator, it’s best to have a Peace Prize first.Report
Less snarkily, this is the type of “invasion” that I thought that Iraq ought to have been. Go in. Decapitate. Kill the dictator, kill his sons.
Leave a note that says “don’t make us come back”.
None of this midwifing the birth of a democracy. None of this trying to make this culture into that one. None of this school painting business. Go in, kill the worst dictators, let the country go on to sort itself out.
As such, I’d say that Libya is the victory that Iraq ought to have been and well done.Report
Here’s Mr. Peace Prize himselfReport
Oh, so he was going to go Galt and kick out the ladder after all society did for him!
Wait… oh! That says Libyan spider hole! Never mind!Report
It’s a big blow to the Authoritarian Fashion Industry; Kim Jong-Il simply doesn’t have the same pizazz.Report
What if they don’t necessarily want alignment to the West?Report
Boom!Report
But we want them aligned to the West. That’s the endgame we want. Clearly we have to convince them somehow that looking north is better for them than looking east. How do we do that, what words do we say and what actions do we take?Report
Who is this “we” you talk about? I personally don’t give a shit who they align with, as long as the people of Libya are free. They might align with us, they might not, it isn’t our call.
That said, IMO realizing that it isn’t our call and acting accordingly would probably provide the best odds of such an alliance occurring, and vice versa. In other words, the best thing you could do for U.S./Libya relations would be to let Libya determine the extent of them. You throw around the typical imperialist vibes and they will justifiably turn hostile.Report
Generally speaking, it’s better to make friends than enemies.
At any rate, it’s better not to make bloodthirsty enemies.
Therefore, properly, we want them aligned with the West.
Alternatively, we could just nuke ’em.Report
I want strong friends, not subservient POS. Still hoping for a lost dream of a stronger middle east.Report
Maybe they don’t, but they want to sell their oil to Europe. The West helped extricate them from their former “Dear leader” and China meanwhile supported him or at the most stayed quiet. So it’s beyond me why the new Libyan polity would have any interest in looking eastward.Report
Because china is realist. If tomorrow, the government that formed imposed sharia law and hung all apostates, China can still be relied on to want to trade. China doesnt give a shit about your ideology, your human rights record or the labour laws you have. All it cares about is increasing trade volume. Europe and america cannot be relied upon to not care about the internal politics of Libya. America and Europe are therefore risky diplomatic partners. China and the non-aligned states are not.Report
By “eastward” I didn’t mean as far as China. I was referring to leaders, cultures, attitudes, and most of all political alignments to be found within the Middle East. Particularly if Libya becomes an “Islamic nation,” and its leaders buy in to the idea that there is an unresolvable tension between Islam and the secular-to-Christian West.Report
Oh, one more lesson. Amazonian bodyguard cadres ain’t what they used to be.Report
Word.Report
So for the liberals out there, which dictator should Barry attack next in the name of protecting humanity and w/o any basis in federal law?Report