Libyan leader of the revolution Muammar Gaddafi hosting the 2010 Arab League Summit in Tripoli.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
U.S. sending Navy ships, Marines for humanitarian efforts in Libya
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he's sending two warships and 400 Marines to the region to aid in any 'emergency evacuations and also for humanitarian relief,' but he urges caution on any military role in Libya
By David S. Cloud, Washington Bureau
4:07 PM PST, March 1, 2011
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Tuesday he was dispatching two warships and 400 Marines as a humanitarian response to the crisis in Libya, but he cautioned that U.S. military intervention should be carefully considered.
"The kinds of options that have been talked about in the press and elsewhere also have their own consequences," Gates said on Tuesday, referring to calls for a no-fly zone and other possible steps to halt attacks by Moammar Kadafi's forces on rebels. "They need to be considered very carefully."
Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said at a Pentagon news briefing that the Defense Department was examining a wide range of military options but said no decision had been made on executing any of them.
U.S. officials say that any U.S. role in Libya is likely to be part of a multinational coalition and confined, at least for the moment, to assistance in humanitarian or evacuation operations.
"All of the options beyond the humanitarian assistance and evacuation are complex," Gates said. Shifting U.S. forces to deal with Libya could affect U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan, he said.
"We also have to think about, frankly, the use of the U.S. military in another country in the Middle East," he said.
Mullen said that a no-fly zone over Libya would be a "complex" operation and he echoed statements by other military officers that it could require a bombing campaign to eliminate the threat from Libya's air defense system.
"If we were to set it up," Mullen said, "we'd have to work our way through doing it in a safe manner and certainly not put ourselves in jeopardy in doing that."
Gates noted that there were divisions among members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization about what to do about the violence in Libya. Also, the United Nations has not authorized use of force by members in response to the crisis, he said.
The two Navy vessels dispatched by Gates, the Kearsarge and the Ponce, "will be entering the Mediterranean shortly and will provide us a capability for both emergency evacuations and also for humanitarian relief," Gates said. The 400 Marines are headed to the Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship, to replace some of the troops that left the ship recently to go to Afghanistan.
david.cloud@latimes.com
Copyright © 2011, Tribune Interactive
March 1, 2011
Libyan Rebels Said to Debate Seeking U.N. Airstrikes
By KAREEM FAHIM and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
New York Times
BENGHAZI, Libya — In a sign of mounting frustration among rebel leaders over Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s diminished but unyielding grip on power, rebel leaders here are debating whether to ask for Western airstrikes under the United Nations banner, according to four people with knowledge of the deliberations.
By invoking the United Nations, a council of opposition leaders made up of lawyers, academics, judges and other prominent figures is seeking to draw a distinction between such airstrikes and foreign intervention, which the rebels said they emphatically opposed.
“He destroyed the army; we have two or three planes,” said a spokesman for the council, Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga. He refused to say if there would be any imminent announcement about such strikes, but he wanted to make it clear: “If it is with the United Nations, it is not a foreign intervention.”
That distinction is lost on many people, and any call for foreign military help carries great risks.
The antigovernment protesters in Libya, like those in Tunisia and Egypt, have drawn broad popular support — and great pride — from their status as homegrown movements that have defied autocrats without outside help.
Any intervention, even one with the imprimatur of the United Nations, could play into the hands of Colonel Qaddafi, who has called the uprising a foreign plot by Western powers that seek to occupy Libya.
“If he falls with no intervention, I’d be happy,” one rebel leader said. “But if he’s going to commit a massacre, my priority is to save my people.”
There was no indication that the United Nations Security Council’s members would approve such a request, or that most Libyans who are seeking to topple Colonel Qaddafi would welcome it. Among the Security Council’s members, Russia has dismissed talk of a no-fly zone to curb strikes by the Libyan Air Force still under Colonel Qaddafi’s control, and China usually votes against foreign intervention.
The discussions appeared to signal a rebel movement that is impatient with a military stalemate that has crippled the country. The airstrikes’ supporters hoped they might dislodge Colonel Qaddafi from crucial strongholds, including a fortified compound in the capital, Tripoli.
The council is considering strikes against only the compound and assets like radar stations, according to the people briefed on the discussions, who requested anonymity because no formal decision had been made.
The United States acknowledged the sensitivity concerning outside intervention.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday that the Obama administration knew that the Libyan opposition was eager to be seen “as doing this by themselves on behalf of the Libyan people — that there not be outside intervention by any external force.”
Tensions were high in Benghazi on Tuesday, the day after government warplanes attacked sites south of the city and special forces retook a rebel-held oil refinery at Ras Lanuf in central Libya.
Rebel soldiers drove a convoy of pickup trucks mounted with antiaircraft guns through the streets of Benghazi, and officers welcomed journalists at a base near the airport, where volunteers were learning to how to operate the weapons.
The training was far from complete: while one of the antiaircraft weapons was being fired, a large metal chunk flew off the gun and landed in the street.
Despite bold stands against government forces, and tremendous gains in territory, the military commanders allied with the rebels seemed unsure about how the effort to topple Colonel Qaddafi would play out. The Libyan leader commands loyalty in his hometown, Surt, whose location on a road that links eastern and western Libya is strategically important.
But of particular concern to the rebels is the colonel’s reinforced bunker, which is known as Bab al-Aziziya and is said to contain tunnels for easy escape. “It is designed to resist an atomic attack,” said Ramdan Jarbou, a writer who is advising the rebel council.
Faced with those realities, the council in Benghazi began talking about help from abroad. A heated discussion pitted several people — including those who dismissed the idea out of hand as a point of honor — against others who saw no option but to call in the airstrikes to end the bloodshed.
Another member of the rebel leadership who supported the idea said: “It should have been done three days ago. But it’s a burden to take this responsibility. It’s like you’re a traitor.” The leader said the council had reached a consensus to request the airstrikes.
As council members left the meeting on Tuesday evening, Ali Abubaker, 40, a trader, said it would take “big pressure” to remove Colonel Qaddafi. “We don’t want to be in the situation where the people are turning against one another,” he said, warning of the threat of civil war. “We’d like the honor of the Libyan people doing it themselves. But perhaps we need help.”
Others strongly disagreed.
“No foreign intervention in Libya,” said Essam al-Tawargi, an engineer. “With our guns, with our potential, we can bring Qaddafi down.”
That conviction was tested on Tuesday in Nalut, a city on the Tunisian border that the rebels said they now controlled, in part because local army units refused to fight them. “They said we cannot and we will not kill you because we are all Libyan,” a rebel who gave his name only as Ayman said in a telephone interview.
He said that soldiers working for Colonel Qaddafi still controlled the border but could not enter the city and that defectors from local army units had helped residents arm themselves. “At first we didn’t have weapons, so we didn’t use them,” Ayman said. “But in this war we need weapons, so we get weapons from our soldiers in our army — they have given them to us.”
He said that the people in the mountain region near Nalut rose in rebellion after hearing reports of massacres in Benghazi. “They are my brothers,” he said, “so of course I will fight for them.”
He said the rebels in the mountains would march on Tripoli “when all of our region is free.”
Rebels also said they continued to hold Zawiyah, an oil port just 30 miles from the capital, after fighting off an assault by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces on Monday night.
But they kept an anxious watch on the barricades; the government’s forces were heavily deployed just outside town. “Everything is all right, but there are army tanks on a farm outside the main gate from Tripoli,” said a rebel who used the name Faisal.
Some fighters had begun to refer to their town as “the Zawiyah State.”
Inside Tripoli, residents of the working class suburb of Tajoura described a massacre that they said had been carried out by pro-government forces last week.
The soldiers, they said, repeatedly drove through the neighborhood shooting at crowds and buildings, usually from Toyota Tundra pickup trucks but occasionally from the backs of ambulances.
They said one resident, a mother named Fatama Ragebi, had been killed by a stray bullet in her home and was buried on Saturday.
They repeated reports that the security forces had not only fired into crowds but also carried off the dead and wounded, sometimes from the hospitals.
The residents named 17 neighbors who they said had been killed and eight who had disappeared from just one street.
Few could agree on what would come next. Some said they were waiting for help in the form of weapons from the bastions of rebellion outside of Tripoli, like Benghazi.
Others vowed that “the people are going to free themselves by themselves.”
Kareem Fahim reported from Benghazi, Libya, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Tripoli, Libya.
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PANW Editor's Note: This article contains what is probably a deliberate falsehood about the U.S. invasion of Somalia. This intervention took place on December 9, 1992 during the final days of Bush administration. This article attributed to a Hoover Institution and military operative who should know that this action was not initiated by Clinton, but Bush. Clinton inherited the invasion and when the Somali resistance forces launched a campaign of attacks against the imperialist forces, the Marines were forced to withdraw beginning in late 1993.
Should the U.S. Move Against Qaddafi?
What are the dangers for the U.S. and the international community in intervening in Libya?
High Risks for Acting Now
March 1, 2011
Kori Schake is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and an associate professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. She has worked in the Pentagon, the National Security Council and the State Department, and is the author of “Managing American Hegemony.”
Secretary Clinton is right to emphasize that military options are under consideration for limiting Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's ability to continue terrorizing Libyans, and our military can be helpful in visibly moving strike assets into range to ensure that President Obama has a wide range of choices. Colonel Qaddafi's erratic behavior strongly argues for keeping our options open.
Four reasons to exercise caution toward Libya..We absolutely should try to convince the Libyan leader to stop fighting, that the consequences of continuing on his current course will be more detrimental than fleeing the country. And we should encourage his supporters to abandon him. Although other forms of pressure -- even the draconian U.N. Security Council sanctions spearheaded by Britain and France and the Treasury Department freezing $30 billion in Libyan assets -- have not resonated with Colonel Qaddafi, given the Reagan administration's attacks on Tripoli in 1986, the threat of American military power should carry some weight.
That said, we ought to be very cautious about actually using American military force to affect the rebellion in Libya, for four reasons.
First, it is difficult to see what practical measures, short of removing Colonel Gaddafi ourselves or sending military teams into Libya to assist rebel forces, would affect the fight. Defection of military units and tribes seems to have given rebels the necessary weapons; most of the fighting is urban operations not much involving air power.
Second, we have not had an ambassador in Libya for months, and we have evacuated our diplomats; we ought not overestimate how much we understand what is occurring in the country or the shape Libya's rebellion will take. Arming rebels or undertaking military operations on their behalf makes us parties to the conflict, the inchoate nature of Libya's rebels argues for caution.
Third, debate over the Security Council resolution suggests it is unlikely the Chinese and Russians would authorize the use of force (they had to be assured the resolution that passed would not), and NATO would not be an alternative without a U.N. mandate. Countries in the region are not likely to be supportive. While international pressure seems to be having little effect on Colonel Qaddafi, international institutions and support are central to the Obama administration's approach. Military force would have to be a unilateral or by coalition of the willing, which is at odds with the White House's political strategy.
Fourth, military force is sticky -- once the president commits American military forces to involvement, even tangentially, he commits the nation. It is difficult to disengage if the limited force committed doesn't achieve the president's objectives, as President Bill Clinton learned in both Somalia and Kosovo, and President George W. Bush realized, leading him to authorize a surge of forces in Iraq in 2006. While symbolic strikes on Colonel Qaddafi's palaces or no-flight zones would be a show of force, they raise the question of how far we are willing to go to achieve our objectives.
The administration has given no indication of serious commitment. Colonel Qaddafi is likely to bet rightly on the limits of President Obama's willingness to force him from power, which could lead to several bad outcomes for us: ineffectual shows of force, the president pulled in further than our interests dictate, or alienation of countries whose support we need to manage other important national security problems.
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