A senior NATO ambassador asked for patience. “In the end the balance will shift; it has to,” he said. “Qaddafi gets no more arms, no more tanks, no more ammo, and he gets weaker and over time the others get stronger. And at some point someone around Qaddafi decides to have a political way out.”
The balance "has to" shift? Why?
Libya started the war with 2,000 main battle tanks, over a thousand infantry fighting vehicles and armored reconnaissance vehicles, a thousand armored personnel carriers, nearly 2.5 thousand artillery pieces, and nearly 500 anti-aircraft guns which could be used on ground targets, too. If NATO knocks out 50 per day, Libya could in theory carry on for 140 days. Do the British and French have enough precision weapons to carry on at that rate for nearly four months? And Libya is using civilians vehicles, too. Further, while not all military vehicles or heavy weapons are in working order, even the hulks could be towed out to simulate a real, working tank to serve as smart bomb bait.
Will NATO hold together that long to wage this air war?
Further, who says Khaddafi gets no more arms? He may have to pay more, but I bet arms and ammo are moving through West Africa right now to make the run through southern Libya. Or through Algeria, for that matter. Even Spain's ultra-pacifist government sold (legally) cluster bombs to Libya in happier days. Do you really think someone less smug in their puffed-up moral superiority won't sell Libya arms now? Smugglers will demand more money, but Libya will get arms. And who knows how much ammo the Libyans have inside Libya now without needing imports? Not a lot of troops are in combat, after all.
Even if Khaddafi runs out of cash, he can promise future oil revenues to those who will supply him and he will get takers despite the sanctions.
Maybe Khaddafi gets weaker. Maybe he even gets weak enough for NATO to win with the current strategy. Heck, maybe we just get lucky. But counting on someone close to Khaddafi to shoot the man as a survival strategy is drawing to an inside straight, and then some.
But this is what we are doing, because NATO officials argue with a straight face that there is no military solution to this war. Bull. Send in a division's worth of Western brigades to capture Tripoli and the military problem of the regime surviving or winning will be over. There could be resistance amongst Khaddafi supporters, but the conventional phase will end. Heck, with Khaddafi out of power and either dead or on the run, negotiations could even cobble together a post-Khaddafi coalition government that includes even some former regime elements loyal to Khaddafi right now.
The mightiest military alliance in history may have been ordered not to attempt a decisive military solution to the Khaddafi problem, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. And after a month of this tentative intervention, Khaddafi is not on the verge of collapsing:
Muammar Gaddafi has consolidated his position in central and western Libya enough to maintain an indefinite standoff with rebels trying to end his four-decade rule, U.S. and European officials say.
"Gaddafi's people are feeling quite confident," said a European security official who closely follows Libyan events.
Our intervention surely prevented a rebel collapse. And our continued presence may be enough of a threat to keep the loyalists for making a lunge for Benghazi again. But this is no way to win a war.
