The Lesson Of Libya
October 23, 2011 9 Comments
Conservative hawks and anti-Obama commentators who feel ambivalent about the Libya outcome (such as myself) need to ask themselves a question:
All-in, which experience was better for the U.S.: Libya, or Iraq?
The answer seems pretty obvious to me.
In terms of importance end outcomes, they are roughly the same: In each case the main reason to support the warfare – with apologies to ‘neocons’ – was that the regime was a declared enemy of the U.S. who had shed U.S. blood in the past. In each case, the autocrat was ousted and lynched. In each case, the regime was atomized and replaced by a new one of dubious allegiance, competence, and corruption, under which tribal vendettas and a fundamental lack of security & rule of law are likely to be the norm. And now in each case, the average American no longer knows the name of the ‘leader’ of either country, nor (thankfully!) has any reason to for the foreseeable future. Both endeavors left a taint of suspect motives and legality on the part of those already inclined to doubt such things. And now, we hope, life goes on (for us).
The differences seem to boil down to various costs: Iraq took a lot longer, cost a lot more, and got tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers killed in the process. This is something of an unfair comparison (after all, unlike Iraq, the Libya ouster started with an actual uprising and evidently it was sufficient for us to just help it by bombing from the air), but leaving that aside, if we could replay Iraq but only making it more Libya-like, I know I’d take that deal in a heartbeat.
What is the lesson? That future Presidents should follow the lead of President Obama in their geopolitical strategy and warfare? That seems like a strange, bitter pill to swallow, almost unbelievable. But if that’s not the lesson of Libya, I don’t know what is, so I welcome being convinced otherwise.
If you mean that it’s better to just punish the regime and if possible, to crush it without going into the ‘building a nation’ business then that’s clearly better (though easier said than done). But the Libya thing had two main points about it
a: It was done by a left-wing President
b: it was presented as a military campaign fought without America having anything to gain.
You could argue that only a left-wing President can initiate a war the rest of the country will go along with and that America (see also the strange case of the war against Serbia) can fight wars only when it seems it doesn’t have anything to gain.
The Iraq war was initiated by Bush. Maybe Obama would’ve done the same and thereby sanctified it. And there was no civil uprising against Saddam (wrong decade). Moreover, we see Obama was quick to go against Mubarak and to go even deeper against Kaddafi but that America has zero interest in going against Iran or Syria. Both Mubarak and Kaddafi were by and large pro-West (in terms of getting along with it), unlike Syria and Iran and that’s a third point: It’s easy for America to initiate wars against its unpopular allies. Not against its enemies. Saddam was an enemy.
If it’s easier for America to initiate wars against allies, under a left-wing President, the answer seems clear – we need to bomb France.
I was hoping the answer would be to bomb Britain, back when the uprising was going on.
Would’ve been priceless.
As with Iraq, too soon to say that either measure was good idea, but Libya was a lot cheaper.
Egypt, however, definitely a bad idea.
A minor point with regard to casualties – about 4000 U.S. servicemembers died in Iraq, not “tens of thousands”. Still a very high price…
Geez. You are right, thanks. I’m not even sure where I got my number. I guess I was confusing/conflating it with Afghanistan casualties, or the Lancet ‘study’ on Iraq civilian deaths, or something. I’ve never been that great with numbers…
Tschafer, don’t bust his balls about the precise number of casualties. Sonic isn’t well up on things iraq war related.
The main lesson would seem to be that the President should be a member of the Inner Party before launching a war, in which case concerns about UN resolutions and War Powers Acts and such can be freely ignored.
The real question is how long USG will continue to undertake expensive foreign adventures that achieve little strategic advantage in the face of its deteriorating finances.
“Tschafer, don’t bust his balls about the precise number of casualties”
Not my intent at all. Just passing on a little info. The only experts on Iraq are those who were there, and there are plenty of them out there. I’ll leave any comments to them.