The key Libyan oil town of Brega was again the theatre of heavy fighting on Sunday as rebel forces advanced only to be forced back in an ambush by forces loyal to Moamer Kadhafi.
An ambush certainly indicates some discipline and skill. This is no surprise since even the poorly trained Libyan loyalists look like Waffen SS compared to almost all the rebels:
Most of the rebel volunteers acknowledged they had neither the military training and discipline, nor the knowledge of the terrain to mount a frontal assault on Brega.
They said they were dependent on the rebels' few trained fighters, most of them defectors from the regular army.
"There is no commander. We are all together," said Abdul Wahed Aguri, a 28-year-old volunteer.
Sheesh. One side trained and armed with the other side sporting little more than enthusiasm? Combined with the seeming stalemate at Brega (al Burayqah), this is starting to sound like the Spanish Civil War. As bonus parallels, the Spanish Civil War failed to prove the claims by air power theorists that bombing could win wars (although in that case it was terror bombing of civilians to break their morale) and featured an arms embargo that only really hurt one side.
Maybe the President's plan all along has been to rise above America and inspire the world to send international brigades to help the rebels as a form of armed community organizing. "Barack Obama Brigades" has a certain ring to it, especially if it attracts the right sort of people, like the academics and intellectuals who joined the Republican international brigades. Folk songs and poems could be written to remember them! Maybe Michael Moore could make a movie about the Libyan civil war. I can't find the reference now, but wasn't there some famous comment about the Spanish Civil War to the effect that the nationalists fought and won but the Republicans had more fun? That was the gist of it, if my semi-functioning memory is at all correct.
That would be a post-America presidential legacy.
