After the U.S. standdown takes effect on Sunday, Navy ships and submarines armed with Tomahawks will remain in the Mediterranean in position to resume firing if requested by NATO and approved by the Pentagon, the officials said. U.S. attack aircraft at land bases in Italy and aboard a Navy amphibious ship will also be at the ready, the officials said.
The U.S. military will continue providing a range of support, including aerial refueling and aerial surveillance and reconnaissance. NATO aircraft will perform the combat role as well as patrol a no-fly zone.
In theory there is nothing wrong with this. Indeed, while it wouldn't have been as effective or as rapid, our allies could have handled this war on their own from day one. This is Libya we're talking about. Libya wracked by civil war. I early on advocated taking a supporting--mostly logistics and electronics--role to a European-led effort since they have the motives of stopping mass refugee flows and getting the flow of oil going again.
We have interests in supporting allies in combat and showing that we are on the right side of the Arab Spring. Getting rid of Khaddafi was always a nice thing to have given his past, but we did "flip" him after Saddam's downfall. Sure, that flip was shaky, but there you go. But then President Obama said Khaddafi "had to go." Now our prestige is on the line based on the simple measure of whether Khaddafi stays or goes.
The problem is that our objective for the war that our allies will now fight is reliant on those allies fighting for what we want--and most of them don't share that objective. And even if they do, their finances are in worse shape than ours and public opinion will start dragging at their military effort if Khaddafi can just hang on.
So we'll hang in the background. Rather than trying to win (under our terms), we'll only intervene again if our side starts to lose on the battlefield and then back out again when balance is restored. That's bizarre, in my mind, and keeps our allies ensnared in a war without end unless they win it on their own. Or maybe if the rebels target civilians, we'll attack them, too, as NATO command threatened. That's bizarre squared.
The situation is a bit funny, actually (not really, but you know what I mean). Europeans have complained that we were late to both world wars and let Europe suffer and bleed before we came in to fight until final victories. In Libya we came early with them--but left early. Technically they got their complaint addressed. The Europeans perhaps weren't clear enough about their objections, I suppose. We shall see if Europe can win this war--however they decide to define victory.
The only thing that makes sense from our point of view now, I think, is to send in a division's worth of troops to land near Tripoli and march on the capital to overthrow the regime directly and then pull out to turn things over to rebels and West Europeans. Of course, unlike in Iraq when a number of allies quietly promised to send troops after we did the heavy lifting but then backed out when it became clear it wasn't a relatively quiet peacekeeping mission, we'd need very public and very precise commitments from our allies about what they'll send and when they'll send them. Then, and only then, can we proclaim mission accomplished.
UPDATE: The mystery of intervening without doing enough to actually win (tip to Mad Minerva):
By merely bolstering the weaker side, we are prolonging Libya's civil warThe interventionists lack the courage of their convictions. If they really want Gaddafi gone, they should just get on with it[.]
Get on with it and win this damn thing. Or we'll lose it. Does that seem too obvious? Not to the crowd we have in Washington (or London, too, apparently).
