No End in Sight to Libyan Air Campaign

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/05/18-0

Published on Wednesday, May 18, 2011 by the McClatchy Newspapers

After 2 Months, No End in Sight to Libyan Air Campaign

by Shashank Bengali


WASHINGTON — On March 19, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's army had quashed weeks of anti-government protests and was poised for an all-out assault on Benghazi, the opposition's stronghold, when the U.N. Security Council authorized coalition forces to step in and protect civilians.


Two months and nearly 7,000 air sorties later, the international military campaign has stopped a potentially devastating massacre in Benghazi, allowed humanitarian aid into besieged civilian areas and helped the rebels keep their hold on eastern Libya.

But Gadhafi, hunkered down in his heavily fortified bastion in the western capital, Tripoli, betrays no sign of ceding power. His loyalists, though weakened, continue to bombard the opposition's scattered outposts in the west.

When the United States and its European and Arab allies launched the air war, President Barack Obama said that U.S. forces would carry out "a limited military action ... to protect Libyan civilians." Today that military effort continues under NATO command, but with no coalition nation willing to commit ground forces or substantially more firepower, there's no clear end in sight.
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And if we can't even afford the basics here at home what the hell are we doing in Libya? Not to mention Afghanistan where "Mission Accomplished" seems to have become a reality. Or in Iraq where, like Libya, we never belonged in the first place?

Honestly, I swear.

What must I have been thinking? Of course! Just like Iraq!

:sarcasm:

What arrogant idiocy: fighting a war on the cheap. We're willing to let it drag on and destroy who knows how many lives just because we don't want to spend much money or risk any of our own lives. All this is done under the ridiculous guise of "protecting civilians", when we're quite clearly and cynically interceding in a civil war so we can get a better deal on oil. It's so starkly obvious that it's just plain shameful.

Another middle-of-the-road masterpiece from Mr. Grandmaster Chess Whiz, trying to be all things at once and basically being nothing much at all.

When are we going to finally steal his money and give it to the rebels? We keep floating the trial balloon, but I guess enough flak keeps them from crossing this line. The Qataris must be pissed that the spigot just got cut off, too.

This is truly a moral low-point: conducting an illegal war of greed while hiding behind faux-altruism. I wonder what W thinks of all this.