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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Sat Mar 19 2011 - 17:59:02 EST
http://www.nationaljournal.com/whitehouse/obama-s-first-new-war-20110319NATIONAL
SECURITYObama's First New War
By Marc Ambinder
Saturday, March 19, 2011 | 4:33 p.m.
<http://cdn-media.nationaljournal.com/?controllerName=image&action=get&id=6497>
President Obama had to balance the ideals of democracy and the hard-nosed
interests of the country in his decision making.
a href="
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border="0" alt=""></a>As a fleet of French airplanes lacerated a column of
Libyan army vehicles near Benghazi on Saturday, President Obama stuck to his
pre-arranged schedule in Brazil, receiving whispered updates from his aides.
Within three hours, more than 100 cruise missiles had hit two dozen targets
in Libya. That’s just “the first phase,” William Gortney, the director of
the Joint Staff, told reporters.
What he didn't say: it's the first phase of what will become Barack Obama's
first new war. By directing the military to hit targets inside Libya, the
Obama administration is trying to strike an incredibly delicate balance
between a strong disinclination to invade a Muslim country and their
determined desire to avoid looking like they’re walking away from the
indiscriminate slaughter of innocents.
When Muammar el-Qaddafi first struck back against protesters, Obama hoped
that tough sanctions and material support to the opposition would be enough
to force the dictator from power. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned him
that a “no fly zone” would be ineffective and essentially commit the country
to war. By Monday night, it was clear to Obama that this policy wasn’t
working. Countries like Iran were getting the wrong message. The Libyan
military was selectively testing the patience of the world by striking
opposition strongholds. The opposition was pinned down in the port city of
Benghazi, swelled by tens of thousands of refugees. Qaddafi kept using a
phrase: “no mercy” that stuck in Obama’s head. And France, smarting from
seeming to abandon Egyptians during their time of trouble, along with the
U.K., were champing at the bit to use force. The Arab League had kicked
Libya out and was closer to the French position. It risked its own
legitimacy, already questioned by many in the region, if it didn’t side with
the rebels.
On Tuesday, during a meeting of his national security team, Obama said he
wanted a new policy. “Clearly what we’re doing is not enough,” he said,
according to contemporaneous notes kept by a participant. A “humanitarian
disaster” was imminent unless something was done. He wanted more options.
Gates wanted to game out scenarios, knowing that any effective no fly zone
would necessitate a cascade of other military actions that would look a heck
of a lot like an invasion, no matter how carefully it was done.
Thomas P. Donilon, the national security adviser and one of the gatekeepers
of Obama’s foreign policy, was worried about the strategic implications of
both allowing Qaddafi to succeed in retaking control of Benghazi as well as
what would happen down the road in other countries if a successful military
response ousted him from power with a minimum of bloodshed. Even the
lightest military footprint would result in civilian casualties, he warned.
Almost as inevitable would be the death of a coalition soldier or the
downing of an airplane.
Hillary Rodham Clinton said instability in Libya threatened to clip the
democratic aspirations of its two neighbors, Egypt and Tunisia. She was also
worried about the message to Iran if the U.S. and its allies did nothing in
Libya: America was so afraid of committing its military to protect Muslims
and Arabs that it would allow virtually anything to happen.
The meeting broke up.
Donilon would take charge of a rapid-fire series of conference calls and
meetings and would, by that night, bring to the president three new policy
proposals, each of which would call for a mix of diplomatic, military and
intelligence actions against Libya. Obama had dinner with his combat
commanders, and solicited their input about what challenges the military
would face. At 9 p.m. that night, he reconvened only his principals.
(Secretary Clinton was represented by her deputy, James Steinberg.) Donilon
laid out his proposals. After about an hour, the Situation Room had come to
a rough consensus: a no fly zone wouldn’t work, but more words would not
work either. Obama instructed his U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, to inform the
Security Council that France’s resolution, which called for a no fly zone
and little else, was insufficient. He asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, Mike Mullen, to turn into him by the next evening a Concept of
Operation Plan, or CONPLAN, for a NATO-executed military campaign in Libya
that would be assisted by Arab countries.
In closed session at the UN, Rice laid out the U.S. position. The situation
was urgent and dire. But the world had to know precisely what it would mean
to keep Libyan troops from murdering their own citizens. Any resolution
would have to include language authorizing strikes against Libyan military
infrastructure on the ground to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. “We are
not going to hide pooch,” Rice said in the meeting, according to a U.S.
official. “We must be completely clear about what we are going to do and
why.” And Arab countries must participate, she insisted, in some visible
way, in the campaign. She proposed a number of amendments that added
significant heft to the resolution.
For the next 24 hours, Clinton and Rice tag-teamed Arab countries and
members of the Security Council. They argued that if nothing was done,
despots and beleaguered leaders everywhere would vow never to repeat the
“mistake” of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who yielded power without
foreign military intervention. Iran, in particular, would find itself with
an incentive to continue to spread its proxy forces to other countries and
further repress its own citizens. And Rice has made the reinvigoration of
the United Nations one of her prime goals as ambassador. The legitimacy of
that body was at stake too, she argued.
On Wednesday, at about 6:30 p.m., Mullen and Donilon presented Obama with
their CONPLAN for Libya. Its contents are mostly classified; an official
said the air strikes on Saturday were one part of a larger campaign that
includes a variety of overt and covert actions. Published reports suggest
that U.K. special operations forces were secreted in the country, scouting
out the battlefield in preparation for air strikes. The U.S. Air Force
Special Operations Command moved several tactical air teams to a small base
on Crete. In order to try and disguise their movements, the U.S. planes
changed their call signs once they entered airspace over the Mediterranean,
but commercial software that tracks their transponders revealed the shift,
and word leaked out on Twitter. These teams would coordinate the air assault
but are capable of parachuting into a region and directing them from the
ground.
On Friday, the U.S. moved a Rivet Joint signals intelligence plane to Souda
Air Base on a Greek Island, bearing the provocative call sign of “SNOOP 55.”
Subs capable of launching Tomahak missiles idled near Italy. The USS
Florida, armed with more than 100 Tomahawks, moved into firing range. Twenty
four hours after the U.S. introduced its amendments, it got its resolution,
10-0. Obama spoke with his counterparts in France and the UK and agreed that
they’d give Qadaffi 24 hours to turn heel and retreat. If he didn’t, France
would begin the bombardment.
It was important to the U.S. that Libyans and the world understand that this
coalition of the willing was more than a U.S. rhetorical construct. An hour
before bombing began Saturday, Clinton spoke to the press in Paris. Asked
why military action was in America’s interest, she gave three reasons and
implied a fourth. A destabilizing force would jeopardize progress in Tunisia
and Egypt; a humanitarian disaster was imminent unless prevented; Qaddafi
could not flout international law without consequences. The fourth: there’s
a line now, and one that others countries had better not cross.
The development of a new doctrine in the Middle East is taking form, and it
could become a paradigm for how the international community deals with
unrest across the region from now on. The new elements include the direct
participation of the Arab world, the visible participation of U.S. allies,
as well as a very specific set of military targets designed to forestall
needless human suffering. Though the Libyan situation is quite unique - its
military is nowhere near as strong as Iran’s is, for one thing – Obama hopes
that a short, surgical, non-US-led campaign with no ground troops will
satisfy Americans skeptical about military intervention and will not arouse
the suspicions of Arabs and Muslims that the U.S. is attempting to influence
indigenously growing democracies.
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