Ivory Coast

[Ken White]

It is not only possible to separate the motivation to intervene from the operational method but essential. The military commander needs to receive his mission with any limitations to plan the operation.

With which I totally agree. However, I do have one caveat -- while I agree with your entire post, my observation has been that the political will to do what you wisely suggest is too often lacking (unless pressured by the not always consistent news media).

It is interesting that... A bit of spine at last?

Correct as nearly as I can determine and due to the current SecDef in large part, I suspect.

... except in Libya where it is true Obama did not wait until the mass graves were filling (but then faltered on the implementation which has led to the French and British calling for a more agressive approach from NATO.)

Deliberately done; the long term political aspect from a US perspective and national interests (political reality again) outweighed the plight of the Libyans and the wishes of others in NATO...

Interesting to note that supposedly under the guise of going after heavy weapons they (the French and rthe UN) did in fact target Gbagbo as I'm certain that the French if no one else realised that they needed to go for the head of the snake... and they did and had in the end to intervene to bring Gbagbo in.

That particular insight is not peculiar to you and the French. The French are notoriously unconcerned with public opinion in their foreign adventures (and good for them!). The US, in contrast, is excessively (and foolishly IMO) concerned with that.

That sad fact is highly unlikely to change in the near term.

So I say again that the problems with humanitarian interventions is that the timing is mostly too late and the methodology leaves much to be desired.

I agree -- however, I think that factor is unlikely to change and thus makes such intervention far from beneficial in too many cases. It's fine to say what should be, dealing with what is becomes far more problematical.

The Somalia case study where what started as a humanitarian intervention ended up with a get Aideed dead or alive. So yes without the first principle of war being followed - the selection and maintenance of the aim - matters can soon get out of control.

Exactly. In that case the change of direction was precipitated by media reporting -- flawed, of course -- US domestic politics and two massive egos (three if one counts Aideed ). The errors in execution were triggered by more US ego problems on the ground. Hopefully, Somalia was an exceptional case but the issue of politics will invariably significantly impact, usually adversely, any intervention and humanitarian interventions are peculiarly subject to political manipulation.

I have not said humanitarian intervention should not occur, it should -- however, I believe that only very rarely should that intervention be military. To change that and rely on a military solution, the politics of democratic nations would have to be modified and I don't believe that would be wise...

ADDED:

Then we have what I see as the biggest problem today and that is it takes generals 30 years service and years of staff courses and the like to get into contention to command such an operation only to be tasked, overseen and second-guessed by a bunch of clowns whose only qualification is that their daddy contributed a few million to the President's campaign.

Yes -- that's the root answer to a number of your posts over the past months. Sadly....