Khaddafi Versus the Coalition Clocks

Khaddafi's loyalists continue to use their ground firepower advantage to grind down rebels in cities. Coalition air power may make it too difficult to escape attack out in the open, but once inside the cities, the loyalists can use their firepower while the Coalition is hampered in going after the loyalists because the tolerance for collateral damage (dead civilians) is extremely low (example for the day: Canada, which came darned close to participating in the air campaign).

In the west, the loyalists are hammering the big prize of Misrata east of Tripoli as well as Zintan near the Tunisian border (which only recently came up on my radar screen as a rebel stronghold. When did that happen?). At the tip of the eastern front, loyalists are digging in inside Ajdabiya, where last I heard rebels were also inside and outside (although outside they are just a small mob).

If the loyalists can keep the fight inside cities, with only rapid movements in the open between them to avoid coalition air power (or moving with civilians amongst the military vehicles as human shields), they can fight for quite a while and score victories over the rebels. But coalition air power will keep the loyalists from advancing beyond Ajdabiya, at this point.

The next phase, after degrading Libyan air defenses and air fields to our satisfaction, will be when coalition air power shifts to targeting loyalist military units:

U.S. and coalition forces intend to accelerate attacks on ground forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in the "coming hours and days," the top U.S. on-scene commander said Tuesday[.] ...

Locklear said that as the "capability of the coalition" grows, it will be able to do more missions aimed at ground troops that are not complying with the U.N. resolution to protect those seeking Gadhafi's ouster.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others said the U.S. military's role will lessen in coming days as other countries take on more missions and the need declines for large-scale offensive action like the barrage of cruise missiles fired over the weekend mainly by U.S. ships and submarines.

We'll see how the non-US coalition forces step up to the plate as we take a back seat, when more choices between helping the rebels at the risk of collateral damage have to be made.

Unless Khaffafi's side cracks under the psychological pressure of air attacks, my early speculation that this could turn into an east-west desert version of the Iran-Iraq War could come true.

Of course, maybe the coalition will screw up the courage to send in special forces to organize, advise, and even lead the rebels--and call in air strikes, of course. If we were serious about defeating Khaddafi, that's the least we'd do.