A Half-Cocked Operation in Pursuit of Half-Formed Goals. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

So NATO will now “lead” the Libyan intervention. That makes everything fine and dandy, right? Well, no. There’s no need for anyone unpersuaded by the wisdom of this operation to make a case against it. Not when its supporters do such a good job pointing out its shortcomings. Take my friend Brother Korski, for instance. Yesterday he wrote:

The Libya intervention goes on, with as many question marks hanging over the operation as airplanes in the sky. What is the aim? Who will run it? Can the United States, Britain and France keep allies such as Turkey on board?

Good questions! There’s more too:

Realistically, the UK should in the first instance work towards establishing a stalemate between loyalists and rebels. From such a stalemate a political process can then begin, which, though it may take many years and continue during the fighting, can help create the foundations for a new Libya. Ideally, that future would not contain Colonel Gaddafi and his family; but, unless the UK is willing to target him specifically, which seems unlikely, or he is toppled, which also seems unlikely, it is best to work off the assumption that he will play some kind of role.

Emphasis added. As Dan says anything more than this seems likely to prove “too incendiary” for much of the so-called alliance that’s making up the terms and conditions of this half-cocked operation as it goes along.

And who are we actually supporting? According to this New York Times report, not very many people at all:

After the uprising, the rebels stumbled as they tried to organize. They did a poor job of defining themselves when Libyans and the outside world tried to figure out what they stood for. And now, as they try to defeat Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s armed forces and militias, they will have to rely on allied airstrikes and young men with guns because the army that rebel military leaders bragged about consists of only about 1,000 trained men.

Emphasis added again. If this is an accurate estimate of the number of trigger-pullers the rebels can deploy then the US, UK and France aren’t so much supporting the rebels as leading them since a rebel army that’s only a battalion strong isn’t much of an army. This too means we now “own” Libya’s future in ways that go far beyond the anti-septic doublespeak of a “No Fly Zone”.

And if we’re leading the opposition to Gaddafi, rather than just trying to level the playing field because we don’t think it’s “fair” he should enjoy air supremacy then any outcome that leaves Gaddafi in power in even half of a post-partition Libya must surely be counted a failure and, in some senses, a defeat.

If the only thing worse than a battle won is a battle lost then perhaps it’s also true that a half-waged war often risks disaster. That makes it all the more ridiculous that the Obama administration dares not call this action a war at all. Instead it’s a “kinetic military action” and a “time-limited, scope-limited military action”.

One can quite see why the Americans are reluctant to make the kind of commitment that might be needed to achieve even the more limited goals the war’s advocates deem necessary, far less the larger aims implied by the supposed logic of the arguments for intervention but this too must undermine the wisdom of the operation. Half an intervention brings all the risks of not intervening at all and none of the even putative benefits of a full-scale assault. It is, one fears, the worst of all worlds, satisfying no-one. Wars, one can’t help but think, should be prosecuted properly or not at all.

Perhaps it will all work out fine in the end. But if it does we will have been lucky, not wise.