I don't even mind that we are providing support functions now to let Europe take the lead in Libya. From the beginning, I said it was a European matter and as a NATO ally, we should help without taking the lead. Europe can handle this, and if Britain and France want help, let them look to the other European NATO countries for real help rather than token (if real) help, neutrality, passive resistance, or pretend participation. Yet after making the fate of Khaddafi our objective, was it wise not to go all in? That's hard to say. Europe does have the military assets to do the job--on the ground if necessary--without our ground troops. The Europeans may yet suck it up and do the job. We could afford to do the job despite our campaigns in Afghanistan and our mission in Iraq, as long as we get iron clad European commitments to send in the peacekeepers to Libya within days of our capture of Tripoli with a division's worth of troops, which allows us to withdraw in weeks.
But now, it appears that the pressure for a ceasefire is growing. I don't know if there is time for NATO or America alone to do the job on the ground.
The rebels surely are growing to realize--at least amongst themselves--that they can't pry Khaddafi from his throne and NATO won't help them do it. Preparing for a long war seems to have occurred to them:
"We have a dreadful situation in the east. Lack of food, lack of fuel, there is no income except oil, financial reserves are depleting and we need to sort these issues out to ensure the people do not suffer," Aref Ali Nayed, a rebel representative who coordinates efforts to secure supplies from overseas, told Reuters in an interview.
"What we are trying to do is keep (cash) transactions at a minimum, and one way to do this is to barter crude sitting in tanks for petroleum products that are urgently needed."
Khaddafi surely has financial limits on how long he can pay for foreign help to keep his advantage in the civil war. Foreign troops, maintenance personnel to put weapons into the field, and supplies from abroad through sanctions barriers don't come cheap. Even Khaddafi has limits to cash on hand and how much future oil revenues he can barter for help now.
My only question is where the ceasefire line will be drawn. My guess is that Khaddafi doesn't want a ceasefire until he captures Misrata. If he captures Ajdabiya before he can capture Misrata, Ajdabiya gets added to the loyalist realm. If not, Ajdabiya is not critical to the loyalists as long as Khaddafi controls oil export infrastructure just to the west of the city. Would Khaddafi gamble that NATO won't suddenly get a spine and send in ground troops to overthrow him if he drags out the fighting? Hard to say. The rebels, on the other hand, will likely consider themselves lucky to hold Ajdabiya in a ceasefire and understand that once Misrata falls, they are helpless to do anything about it. Any rebel objections to a ceasefire that would deny NATO a chance to declare victory and go home will only be leverage to gain aid from NATO countries, I'd guess.
So Libya will be split between a loyalist west that has no reason not to revert to its rogue past and a rebel east that has learned to be suspicious of the NATO West that would not fully help it in their civil war with the hated Khaddafi. And Khaddafi will survive.
Remember that President Obama made his fate the metric of victory or defeat. Imagine if he'd kept his opinion to himself? From early in the revolt, I speculated about a potential long east-west civil war in Libya. If the president hadn't made the liberation of all of Libya from Khaddafi's tender mercies our stated objective, we could celebrate a partial victory that freed half of Libya, at least, with hope that in the future we could engineer (quietly) a rebel total victory. And the rebels would have been grateful for our help.
That's my idea of nuanced, smart diplomacy.
But we have what we have. Some other poor dumb sap will get the job of finishing the job.
UPDATE: While we aren't conducting strike missions against Khaddafi ground forces, apparently we are carrying out strike missions as part of the air defense suppression category of strike missions. An interesting clarification. And it is information that makes French whining that they'd like more support from us even less compelling than it was originally.
