No good answers
I saw an interview with GEN Ham last night on ABC and he said (paraphrased)if you're intervening based on humanitarian reasons (to stop the killing), then you have to intervene relatively fast or what's the point? That means we may have to commit forces to stop the killing before we have a military end state figured out.
O.K. I don't entirely disagree with that logic as far at it goes, but getting to Slap's point, Qadhafi has employed terrorism and sponsored militant activity against his foes for years to include the U.S. (the disco bombing in Germany, and possibly PanAm 103, but understand there is still debate on whether that was ultimately sponsored by Iran or Libya), and while never truly an ally, he is definitely an enemy now and we're going to leave him untouched and negotiate with him? State sponsored terrorists can be much more dangerous than non-state terrorists based on the State's ability to provide intelligence, move money, weapons, people, etc. In the past State sponsored terrorism attacks were limited in scale, because they wanted to make a point not start a war. However, if we're already at war why would they limit the scale of their attacks? I agree with Slap that Americans are at great risk now due to this adventure.
If we are authorized to employ all means to stop the murder of Libyan civilians by their Government, then it would seem to me that the person ordering their murder would be a legitimate target? Why not? The longer the coalition waits to kill him the more of hero he will become because he is defying the West. We need to kill him now before he reaches folk hero status. We made this mistake with Sadr in Iraq, so here we go again.
Once again we're seeing the limits of air power. First off the Libyan Air Force was not the main military element killing civilians, it was their ground forces, and their ground forces now are reportly putting on civilian clothes and moving into areas to kill civilians who may be counter government.
GEN Ham's point above is right as far as it goes, but it is also true if you leap before thinking it through then you'll generally end up in a quagmire. Since we leapt and are currently in ankle knee deep mud this is no time to be paralyzed by indecision. Once we're in mud up to our mid thighs it will be too late to exit with honor and actually accomplish something.
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