And Libya goes on...

[Dayuhan]

LIFG has not been mentioned much in reporting on recent events in Libya. I would assume that is more intentional than accidental given their past affiliations, espoused ideologies, and the fact that we have been carrying them as a Terrorist organization on our books for several years now, and since 2007 have been working with Qaddafi to help suppress them in the name of GWOT.

Exactly how have we been "working with Qaddafi to suppress them"? That seems a quite dramatic overstatement.

Do we have any real evidence that LIFG is a significant player in the current rebel movement?

It is safe to assume that LIFG is perhaps the most organized aspect of the current movement and that AQ is doing their best to strengthen their ties and spin current events as something that they have brought about.

I'm not sure it's ever safe to assume. Unless there's tangible evidence, best to leave such questions open. "We don't know yet" is a lot more honest and a lot less dangerous than "it is safe to assume". Once we assume that it's safe to assume we get committed to our assumption, and that can make it more difficult to adapt down the line if our assumptions prove invalid.

I'm not sure the model of nationalist insurgencies accepting help from AQ because they need help from anywhere they can get it is necessarily valid. What has AQ actually done to help these insurgencies? In many cases (not necessarily in Libya) the affiliated movements are the ones supporting AQ, not the other way round.

Once liberty is attained though, often the ideologies employed to motivate the masses, and the leaders and organizations that carried much of the fight fade away, as their sole purpose for existing is no longer there.

Are you assuming that LIFG is essentially a nationalist insurgency that is simply using Islamist ideology as a tool? If so, on what evidence is that assumption based?

How are you defining "liberty" when you say "once liberty is attained"? It's a relevant question, because the fall of a despot often does not mark the arrival of "liberty".

Why would you assume that the ideology will fade away once the despot falls and the revolutionaries take over (let's not pretend that this has any intrinsic relationship to "liberty")? Did the Taliban's ideology fade when they gained power? We've a limited data set for Islamist revolutionaries, but if we look at communist revolutions, the ideology didn't necessarily fade when the revolutionaries won. Did the ideology fade in Cuba or North Korea? Sometimes it faded down the line, or was overthrown, but there was often a wee mess in the interval. Ask a Cambodian about that... or a Russian, or a Chinese.

If one slapped a bell curve on the Libyan populace one would probably find hardcore Qaddafi people on one tail, and hard core Islamists on the other. The vast center is that moderate majority that just wants reasonable liberty, rights, and the ability to live their lives to the best of their abilities in freedom and peace. The evil, the greedy, and those who lust for power will all show up to exploit to their ends.

Is that assumption based on specific evidence emerging from Libya, or is it based on an abstract model?

From Chaos comes opportunity. From great Chaos come great Opportunity. Our challenge is to shape and mitigate the chaos. Effects in Libya must be secondary to how we employ this operation as a Stratcom to the Arabian Peninsula.

How exactly do you propose to "employ this operation as a Stratcom to the Arabian Peninsula"? What exactly do you propose that we do in Libya, and how do you propose to leverage that action as "Stratcom to the Arabian Peninsula".

My concern in Libya is that there are major limits to the end-state goals that we can realistically hope to achieve with the level of force we are willing (and, realistically, able) to commit. We prevented the sack of Benghazi; that's done. We might be able to remove MG or enable the rebels to remove him. We absolutely cannot assure liberty or good governance, and it would be folly to establish those as goals when we know we cannot achieve them.

Our folly in Iraq and Afghanistan was that once we'd done what we had the capacity to do (remove governments) we attempted what we did not have the capacity to do (replace them with governments that would govern the way we would like to see these countries governed). Gotta hope we don't fall into that trap in Libya.