Libya Intervention a Repeat of a Blunder

Make no mistake: What’s going on in Libya is a “war.” President Obama does not want to call it that, and who can blame him? His predecessor had two wars to his name and that situation worked out none too well. But our engagement in Libya plants a seed that could grow to match the other giant mistakes we recently made abroad.

Why is Libya a mistake? Reverse the question and it becomes obvious: Why is it not? America has no rationale for getting mired in this conflict. Libya’s leader Moammar Gadhafi has long posed no threat to U.S. security; he gave up his nuclear weapons program years ago and his rebel opponents may have stronger ties to international terror groups than he now does. Obama and allied nations tout the humanitarian reason for war, as if it existed. War, by definition, is not humanitarian. It’s a nasty, deadly enterprise that is sometimes necessary to defend a nation’s interests and impose a durable peace. See anything like that here?

So far, the Libya War is a modest air campaign to protect the population from Gadhafi’s air and ground forces. Its proponents make no clear pretense of a firm objective (e.g. Gadhafi’s ouster) or a plan to see the war through to that objective (e.g. a sustained bombing and ground campaign). We speak ambiguously about whether Gadhafi must go. We defend Libyan rebels but refuse to support their offensive efforts. This is a strategy for stalemate, not victory. Obama & Co. want this war tame, but successful wars never are. If we get out soon, we will have embarrassingly accomplished nothing. If we stay and topple Gadhafi’s regime, we may inherit humanitarian and security crises worse than we’ve seen yet.

Cato Institute Vice President Ted Galen Carpenter outlines how those crises could unfold in a recent National Interest piece. Because Libya is a fragmented state, with anti-Gadhafi rebels dominant near the eastern stronghold of Benghazi and Gadhafi’s forces stronger in the northwest in and around Tripoli (Tripolitania), a victory for the rebels would spell danger for the Tripolitanian population. Denizens of eastern Libya won’t likely agree to forgive and forget Gadhafi’s years of brutality. They’ll find it more than tempting to match it with their own.

“Assisting the [eastern] rebels to oust Gadhafi will almost certainly provoke resentment from the people of Tripolitania,” Carpenter writes. “If the rebels split the country, that will become a focal point of resentment for those defeated tribes—and a new grievance against the West throughout much of the Muslim world. Even if the rebels attempt to keep Libya intact, the Tripolitanians are bound to resent Washington for their new, subordinate status.”

What would our president have us do in that situation? Would we Americans—who polls find to be decisively in favor of our strikes—stand for our involvement at that point? The American people tend to support American interventions as they begin but grow skeptical as those interventions bog us down in tribal clashes unimportant (indeed, counterproductive) to our own safety.

We’ve been on this track repeatedly. The disastrous Vietnam War began with “military advisors” working quietly for Saigon. George W. Bush’s miniature Vietnam in Iraq came after the imposition of a “no-fly zone.” Even in the necessary Afghanistan War, we let the simple goal of catching our attackers expand into a crusade for American-style democracy in a nation that has shown little interest in it. America has a habit of getting into quagmires uneventfully and gradually.

This war’s security dangers—not to mention the strain it puts on our already overextended military—come with great damage to the American rule of law: Obama has sought approval for the war from the Arab League and the United Nations but not our democratically elected representatives in Congress. This war is a mess on all fronts. Our president, working with our legislators, should cut our losses by withdrawing or, if he insists on staying, deploying overwhelming force for a quick, decisive victory with no occupation afterward.