The president made no reference to a Libya's declaration of an immediate cease-fire on Friday — a statement that a rebel spokesman said was fiction.This is more than just a ceasefire. This is a demand to roll back Khaddafi's captures. Is the coalition the president held out as a hammer to compel Khaddafi in agreement on this concept?
Instead, Obama listed a series of demands for Gadhafi, including the halting of all attacks against civilians, a stop to military action against Benghazi and other cities and permission for humanitarian supplies to reach the civilian population of the country.
"Let me be clear, these terms are not negotiable," he said.
Not that I think the president is wrong to demand these things. But what if Khaddafi won't submit to those demands? Words have meaning, to be sure. But their blast radius is minimal. If Khaddafi stands fast, then we might have a problem:
But the president also stressed the United States "is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya."
Ah. That might be a problem. With no authorization for sending in troops, we will be restricted to arming the rebels to do it (and having to look the other way as they violate the Security Council demand for a ceasefire) or bombing the loyalists into submission. Let loose the collateral damages of war! And then look around to see where that coalition wandered off to.
I hope this works out as intended. I'm not confident, however. Still, right now it looks like we've stopped the Libyan offensives. That is a success, to be sure. We'll see how well this was thought through.
