NATO bombs Libyan state TV transmitters--Campaign could drag to Autumn and Beyond...

NATO bombs Libyan state TV transmitters
AP

"Striking specifically these critical satellite dishes will reduce the regime's ability to oppress civilians while (preserving) television broadcast infrastructure that will be needed after the conflict," the alliance said in a statement posted on its website.

It said Gadhafi's inflammatory TV broadcasts were intended to mobilize his supporters.

In addition to the three TV transmitters, during the past 24 hours alliance aircraft targeted military vehicles, radars, ammunition dumps, anti-aircraft guns, and command centers near the front lines in the east and west, NATO said in a statement.

The attempt to silence the government's TV broadcasts comes at a sensitive time for the rebels, who appeared to be in disarray after the mysterious death of their chief military commander. Abdel-Fattah Younis' body was found Thursday, dumped outside the rebels' de facto capital of Benghazi, along with the bodies of two colonels who were his top aides. They had been shot and their bodies burned.

NATO too has been increasingly embarrassed by the failure of its bombing campaign, now in its fifth month, to dislodge Gadhafi's regime. With the fasting month of Ramadan due to start in August, there is growing realization within the alliance that the costly campaign will drag on into the autumn and possibly longer.
http://news.yahoo.com/nato-bombs-libyan-state-tv-transmitters-075048584.html

Humanitarian needs say you need to stop the fighting near populated areas.

In order to do this you need an offensive to help push the front lines back.

To keep the front lines there you need to destroy the opponent's local military capacity to resist the offensive or even stage a counterstrike. This involves a few different approaches.

Branch A:
To do that, you need to make sure that the opponent's military can't resupply.

To do that, you need to make sure the opponent's territory cannot move supplies or produce supplies.

To do that you must make sure nothing can move, by destroying vehicles and depriving the opponent of fuel. You must make sure there is no industry to produce materiel, and you must make sure there are no young men alive who could be mustered as troops.

Branch B:
To sap morale, you must not only hurt the troops but also the troops' families.

You must keep the leaders from communicating, but also keep families from supporting the troops.

Anything to weaken morale, in the public or among the troops, will help prevent a counterstrike.

Branch C:
The only way to truly prevent a counterstrike, in the absence of conquering the country to preserve a city, is to provoke a further revolution.

We've seen that economic collapse and deprivation is the way to trigger uprisings, but only if the government is deemed responsible.

Therefore anything that destroys the public morale, including extreme economic deprivation, is good.


Therefore, in order to be truly humanitarian, we must cause extreme economic deprivation dislocation; we must destroy any and all infrastructure. Ideally, if we could cause a truly horrendous humanitarian catastrophe, it would achieve the illustrious and just goal of preventing any humanitarian catastrophe at all.