And Libya goes on...

[Bob's World]

Well, there is the small moral dilemma for the West.

Qaddafi the despot in Libya is applying military force to suppress the insurgent segment of his populace.

Karzai the despot in Afghanistan is applying military force to suppress the insurgent segment of his populace.

We started off clean with Karzai, but allowed him to drag us into the sewer with manner of government we allowed him to create and operate, dedicating ourselves to keeping him in power as the situation continues to worsen. Supporting the leader rather than the populace; supporting the government rather than the nation state. Such are the slippery slopes of such relationships.

Now we have a populace standing up to the despot Qadaffi, who we have only recently opened relations with in the name of counterterrorism (which in fact was Qadaffi suppressing this nationalist movement with our blessing under the auspices of our global war on terrorism). If we follow the path we've taken in Afghanistan we pile on and help Qaddafi suppress the movement.

But we've painted Qadaffi as a bad guy for decades, so that doesn't fly. But if we support this populace directly, how do we continue to suppress the Afghan populace?

Or, probably more pressing in our government leader's minds: What happens when Dubai, the UAE and Saudi Arabia follow Libya? Who do we help there? The despots or the people?

My vote is for the people, but even as I cast that vote, I appreciate why "moral courage" is a value we hold up high, as it will take tremendous moral courage for the US to get straight so that we are on the same side of this issue on every front. At some point we need to do that. To support the despots who guard our interests while at the same time attacking the despots who either refuse to work with us or where our interests are low creates a strategic communications of such hypocrisy that severely damages our national image and influence.

When a sinner sins, no one cares much (right Charlie Sheen?). But if you are going to hold yourself out as some holier than thou entity, when you sin everyone notices. So we need to either back off on our rhetoric, or ramp up on our consistency of action IAW our rhetoric. Pick one. We've been playing a shady game of influence in the Middle East since WWII, the wheels started coming off on 9/11, and we are definitely dragging a axle at this point. Time to clean up our act.

[AdamG]

Chivers on Libyan MANPADs

Friday’s New York Times covered fears that looted Libyan arms could find their way into terrorists’ hands. The article’s emphasis is on heat-seeking, shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft missiles and the threats they pose to civilian aircraft.

But it is worth noting on this blog, which discusses military small arms from many different perspectives, that the looting of the stockpiles of traditional infantry arms raises serious long-term security concerns, too. Once machine guns, assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades slip from state arsenals, they invariably travel. Their migration to other users and other wars is all but certain. Their grim effects can last decades.

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/...er=rss&emc=rss

[Bob's World]

In 1987, the year the first SU-17 was shot down by a stinger missile over Afghanistan, some 30 Soviet aircraft were shot down.

It would be a very different operation if a similar year were had by the Taliban against the current coalition.

Yet one more reason to side with the populace in Libya. Cut AQ out of the picture, or at least be in position to compete to buy up such missiles as they enter the marketplace. Also small states are easily deterred from employing such systems or selling such systems to our opponents. Individuals and non-state actors are largely immune to our current family of deterrence tools.

Many states that the US sells arms to could easily follow this same path that Libya is on in the near future. Makes one look at the $60 B arms deal with the Saudis announced a few months back in a new light. Hopefully there weren't any shoulder fired missiles in with the F-15s, Longbows and Blackhawks...

[Fuchs]

The old shoulder-fired ManPADS systems should both be susceptible to standard countermeasures (flares, IR dazzlers) and have a weak punch (later Russian-made ManPADS have a substantially enlarged warhead).

They would pose a problem, but only an old one.


Btw, Pakistan is a ManPADS producer and the ISI could easily have slipped some of them into AFG if it had deemed it worthwhile.

[Bob's World]

Btw, Pakistan is a ManPADS producer and the ISI could easily have slipped some of them into AFG if it had deemed it worthwhile.

As I said, weak states are easily deterred from such behavior. Pakistan has interests that it leverages the Taliban to service. But it has interests it leverages its relationship with the US to service as well. They will not lightly make the decision to bite that hand. They rationalize their support of the Taliban, I suspect, as being exempt from being a bite of the US hand. After all, we don't need to be in Afghanistan by their estimation, but they do.

Weapons captured by Libyan freedom fighters and sold to AQ are another story altogether. Such weapons are outside the state system, and thereby outside the system of state deterrence.

I don't figure that Libya would have highend systems, but I do not know what equally vulnerable states with much closer relationships to the US might have.

[Pete]

From the Sunday Telegraph, London, March 6, 2011, story available here:

When the helicopter touched down outside Benghazi in the early hours of Friday morning, the SAS troops on board knew they were entering a volatile situation.

Tasked with escorting a diplomat to meet rebel Libyan forces and assessing the humanitarian situation on the ground, they did not, however, expect a hostile reception.

With the British Government openly rejecting Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and already in dialogue with opposition leaders, it should have been an uncontroversial visit.

[TROUFION]

Ok I am not a democracy zealot but hear this out. The best option (in my opinion) in Libiya is to, with UN and NATO backing, support a local solution to bring about a rapid end to the violence. The rebels may not want overt Western outside assistance but could they say the same for overt Eygptian assitance? Fellow democrats coming to the aid of neighbors desiring freedom and democracy, what could be better. A brigade of armor, some SF, naval and air assets and Eygpt comes in as the cavalry to the rescue of beleaguered democracy craving patriots. With UN and NATO backing, old MQ would be crushed quickly. While some would say Eygpt's military has its hands full with protecting its own house I'd argue this would be the 'right' thing to do and would solidify the Eygptians as true democrats and the Eygptian Military as the protectors of the people. -T

[carl]

The old shoulder-fired ManPADS systems should both be susceptible to standard countermeasures (flares, IR dazzlers) and have a weak punch (later Russian-made ManPADS have a substantially enlarged warhead).

The warhead size of a shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile doesn't make much difference if your target is a small ISR airplane. The kinetic energy of the hit will almost certainly be enough to destroy the airplane. We use a lot of small manned ISR airplanes.

The SA-24 is a very good missile. Venezuela operates those and so far, as far as I know, jolly Ceasar has hung onto the ones he has. If a missile like that got out, we would have a very hard time keeping all those ISR assets flying.

Those missiles will eventually get out so we should probably start thinking about what we will do when they do.

[Stan]

Cut AQ out of the picture, or at least be in position to compete to buy up such missiles as they enter the marketplace.

We've been actively doing that although we don't come right out and say we'll buy MANPADs.

I'll leave the price tag out for now.