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Two Lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan That May Not Apply to Libya (But Probably Do)
We all learned different lessons from our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. One lesson I learned was that you should always robustly plan for stabilization and reconstruction operations to follow the conclusion of major combat operations. But with that lesson in mind and being fully aware of the costs associated with properly resourced, comprehensive stablization operations, another lesson I learned is that you should be very, very cautious about intervening in the first place.*
Here's Max Boot in today's New York Times:
To avert the worst, we must work with the nascent opposition government, the National Transitional Council, to develop a plan for a post-Qaddafi state. It is also vitally important that Western special forces, Arab soldiers or both begin arming and training the rebel fighters. They must be able to not only help toss out Colonel Qaddafi but also maintain law and order in the new Libya.
Like such other post-conflict states as Kosovo and East Timor, post-Qaddafi Libya will most likely need an international peacekeeping force. This should be organized under the auspices of the United Nations, NATO and the Arab League — a step that will require amending the Security Council resolution, which forbids a “foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.”
Max and I have agreed more than we have disagreed about what to do in Afghanistan and Iraq after the United States and its allies intervened in both places.** But there is no way the U.S. Congress will authorize or fund the kind of comprehensive stabilization operations about which Max is writing here. (To say nothing of the United Nations, the Arab League, or many other NATO member states.) He and others who have advocated on behalf of military intervention in Libya should have known this prior to the intervention.
*Although I have a lot of tactical, operational, and theoretical lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan that might interest readers of this blog, at the end of the day, my personal lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan boil down to the following: "Well, this has been hard, bloody, painful and expensive. Let us think very hard before ever doing it again."
**I did not support going to war in the latter on strategic grounds, but since I was a lowly 1st lieutenant at the time, I kept my mouth shut. Which is a hard thing for me to do.
Taken from
Taken from http://highchairanalyst.blogspot.com/2011/03/un-libya-and-nation-buildin...
Not much has been written about, at least in the punditsphere, of Libya's history, and especially the challenges they faced following WWII. Of particular relevance may be Libya's brief time as a UN protectorate. In 1949, the UN General Assembly, unable to come to an agreement on how to divide the post-war Italian colony between the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain, appointed a Dutch commissioner, Adrian Pelt, to ready the country for eventual independence. Over the course of the next two years, Pelt and his advisors were faced with serious difficulties
"in preparing for independence an economically backward and politically inexperienced country, almost totally lacking in trained managerial and technical personnel, physicians, and teachers. Of Libya's approximately 1 million inhabitants, at least 90 percent were illiterate."
Not the least of the problems that post-colonial Libya had to deal with was a seriously divided country, not merely geographically but also politically.
Historically, the administration of Libya had been united for only a few years--and those under Italian rule. Many groups vied for influence over the people but, although all parties desired independence, there was no consensus as to what form of government was to be established. The social basis of political organization varied from region to region. In Cyrenaica [Eastern Libya] and Fezzan [South Western], the tribe was the chief focus of social identification, even in an urban context...In Tripolitania [North West], by contrast, loyalty that in a social context was reserved largely to the family and kinship group could be transferred more easily to a political party and its leader.
Fast-forwarding through Libyan history, the system that Gaddafi put in place, according to Lisa Anderson, a leading expert on Libya, was laid upon this foundation.
"Ruled for decades by arbitrary and cruel decree, Libyans often resorted to unsavory expedients to obtain simple necessities such as access to medical care, exit visas or even Internet services. As a result, their trust in the system and in each other eroded, and they took refuge in the last remaining source of assistance and solace: tribe and family. Libyan society has been fractured along tribal and clan lines, and every national institution, including the military, is divided by the cleavages of kinship and region. This means there are personal scores to settle and local rivalries to cope with.
There is no system of political alliances, no network of economic associations; there is no national organization of any kind. Libya will again need the sort of international assistance it enjoyed on the eve of its independence in 1951."
While Libya has clearly come a long way from its post-colonial roots--oil among other things had not yet been discovered when independence was declared--and the activities of individuals like Mohammed Nabbous demonstrate the substantial progress it has made since its struggles with illiteracy and economic development, it seems reasonable to suspect that it remains politically stunted. How then will the void left by Gaddafi, who himself purposefully rotted out a civil society and even military to prevent a challenge to his rule, be filled? But maybe the question that should be asked is whether or not it is going to be possible to have a functioning and interconnected state? Yglesias brings up the point that Libya has essentially one, mostly barren, road connecting the East to the West, to show how easy it will be for a No-Fly Zone to be enforced, but isn't that also fairly strong evidence of just how divided the country may essentially be? Between tribal allegiances, familial bonds, and geography separating the people of Libya, and without a functioning political infrastructure to tap into, the dreaded task of "nation building" is likely going to have to fall into someone's hands. Is the UN and the intervening powers, some of whom once thought to divide Libya amongst themselves, prepared for it to again be theirs?
Andrew: I am in agreement
Andrew:
I am in agreement with you.
The question of follow on occupations after military strikes--and what seems to be an immutable rule with many folks that if you break it then you must stay to fix it through long term occupation--must be a question for strategy to determine.
Unforunately neoconservatives like Max Boot are more than happy to ditch strategy and rely on these tactical rules because they fit their political ideology of active and never ending occupations of countries in the arab world.
Of course none of these neoconservative pundits will ever experience the bloody, business end of the doing of these occupations as have you and I and many others.
gian
It isn't neoconservative
It isn't neoconservative pundits bringing us to this end.
Impeachment. Obama is
Impeachment.
Obama is throwing water over his back to put out the flames. I can only feel that Obama is hoping for a leadership change to NATO before he gets back from vacation. I say vacation, cause knowing Brazil-American trade relations to date, the only thing that could have come out of Obama's Brazil trip is a firm agreement to talk more about trade relations. I think that is being spun as a "Trade Framework". You do not need your family along to come to agreement to talk more about talking.
There is going to be a lot of discussion about War Powers. Obama, being the good Jewish Lawyer that he is, is thumbing his nose at Congress. Obama has 60 days to get his Congressional approval. He has already screwed the pooch on notification. US Troops touched Libya soil when the F15 pilot was rescued by the US Marines. One of his aces, was not having US troops involved, that ace has been played. Another ace was this war being the UN's not the US, he thought he could sit back and say, "It is not me". Right now, the Arab League has different ideas about NATO leadership.
Obama says Libya is multi-laterial, but he forgot the most important country, America. Multi-Lateral is a lie.
Think it is time for change and hope, the US can walk away anytime it wants. There is no law saying we have to be involved any longer.
Obama is on the wrong side of history.
Why do you think that Pelosi
Why do you think that Pelosi got sick in Rome?
1) Ate too much rich food?
2) Saw the bill that the Tax Payer will get for the Four Star hotel her group is staying at?
3) Watched her favorite Son, step on his foreign policy dick?
Don't we have Generals we are paying six-figure salaries in Afghanistan to run the war?
To avert the worst, we must
To avert the worst, we must work with the nascent opposition government, the National Transitional Council, to develop a plan for a post-Qaddafi state. It is also vitally important that Western special forces, Arab soldiers or both begin arming and training the rebel fighters. They must be able to not only help toss out Colonel Qaddafi but also maintain law and order in the new Libya.
No, just no. As long as our role in this consists of air strikes, we can just as easily cancel them and pull out. But if we get even deeper involved, then it's not so easy - and the last thing we need is yet another nation-building project.
The peacekeeping force is an even worse idea. Remember all those concerns about how foreign intervention might turn perceptions of the Libyan civil war from "these are people fighting to free themselves from a dictatorship" to "yet another foreign meddling in the Arab world"? This would basically make that real.
What is Boot thinking?
BTW..... Who are the forward
BTW.....
Who are the forward observers in this little UN operation? I will leave the names nameless.
Hope their boots are not too dirty, then we will never know will we.
So are we going for regime
So are we going for regime change in Libya? I mean right now rebel forces are not able to take pro-Qaddafi land, so if as Max Boot suggest we use special forces as force multipliers for the rebels, why not just launch a conventional campaign against Tripoli. It would be faster and inevitably save Libyan lives ( the rebels anyway).
Then all we have to do is step back and let the Transitional council do there thing, and ethnically cleanse pro-Qaddafi partisans from the population...oh wait did I say that...
Given we are committed to the
Given we are committed to the course of action we have embarked upon - which I suppose is a long-winded way of saying, "We are where we are" - other than exhorting us to plan for stabilization/Phase IV, what *precise* "robust plan[s]" would you advocate for when major combat operations cease? Far be it for me to dictate your blog's editorial content, but if you respond to this at all, I could easily see it as a post in itself, rather than a mere response to a potentially provocative comment.
Best regards,
ADTS
We aren't committed to
We aren't committed to anything. Libya isn't making war on us - we're active agents here.
"Well, this has been hard,
"Well, this has been hard, bloody, painful and expensive. Let us think very hard before ever doing it again."
Hey, Obambi thought for maybe two weeks before deciding on another open-ended commitment to "do good things" in a Muslim country where just about everyone hates us.
And Obambi was touted as the thoughtful, reflective President, so unlike the previous dunderhead. LOL, so much for that.
"But there is still much that
"But there is still much that could go wrong in a post-Qaddafi Libya. For one, the country has had an active Islamist movement that has sent many fighters to Iraq. The collapse of Colonel Qaddafi’s police state would mean greater freedom for all Libyans, including jihadists who could try to instigate an insurgency as they did in Iraq.
The danger is compounded by Libya’s tribalism. Behind the thin facade of a modern state lies a long, seething history of rivalries among 140 tribes and clans, about whom we know little. Colonel Qaddafi has kept them in check with a combination of brutal repression and generous payoffs. Once he’s gone, the tribes could fight one another for the spoils of Libya’s oil industry; as in Iraq, some could form alliances with Al Qaeda."
Gee it would have been nice to know about the Islamist movement that actually did form alliances with AQ.
I believe someone asked about the tribes.
Everyone who called Bush reckless owes him an apology. Bush took longer to compose himself when informed by Card that we were under attack - on camera - then this chump took to decide to give into the nags and go to war.
We've duplicated Iraq's mistakes knowingly, and without any National Interest, or perceived danger. We also blew off Congress. He'll never get that War Powers authorization.
On the other hand, at least the GOP can't decide to shut down the govt unless we finally pass a budget.
Hey CNAS, got that phase IV
Hey CNAS, got that phase IV plan yet?
I propose a contest for the name of the next Phase of the Operation.
(if you haven't been involved or paying attention the last 20 years, when we want to say an Operation's over and it isn't, we change the slogan. Kind of like re-branding).
How about Operation Jurgathine II ?
One of the major differences
One of the major differences from Iraq is that we went in with international support (including the support of some Arab nations) and with a popular uprising already in progress. Unfortunately the intervention took so long to set up that Qaddafi had the time to marshal his supporters and capture basically all strategically valuable positions taken by the revolutionaries.
In addition poor communication with the public and a ham-fisted initial implementation of the no-fly zone has allowed Qaddafi to score some significant PR victories. Qaddafi has been able to crow about civilian casualties and the denials ring rather hollow in face of confusion amongst the people enforcing the no-fly zone as to what should be targeted. A list of the previous day's strikes and what they targeted (and where) would clarify the situation immensely but of course will not be released. I know Operational secrecy is important but the enemy knows full well what has been struck and the PR war is also important. It could also be that you want to cover up you embarrassing failures but that is a different matter...
Anyway, I just hope we won't have another "Chinese Embassy" style embarrassment.
Background info from the War
Background info from the War Nerd: http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7183&IBLOCK_ID=35
What is really really really embarassing is to see the EU people fighting like cocaine-addled bitches right about now... Can we have mandatory drugtesting of all government leaders? please?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/22/sarkozy-nato-libya-france
Also, the Afghanistan lesson
Also, the Afghanistan lesson I should have mentioned is that killing civilians via mis-targeted air-strikes is always a losing proposition.
Are you saying that Obama is
Are you saying that Obama is a neo-conservative? Or is it that he has been co-opted by neo-cons? Either way, DAMN you neo-cons for getting us into yet another war!
Thunk! (that was the sound
Thunk!
(that was the sound of me falling to the floor after seeing Col Gentile and you agree on something).
Having taken part in a sucessful stabilization operation in Africa (Sierra Leone), I think a peacekeeping operation might not be a bad idea. Of course, there has to be a peace to keep. This was part of the reason the UN nearly failed in Sierra Leone. Luckily, the British intervened as well and managed to do just enough to stop the fighting. They had a UN mandate, but didn't operate as part of the UN. The UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone concluded, sucessfully, in 2005.
I could see another hybrid operation working, perhaps led by the French (pause for the chuckling to die down) with UN peacekeepers coming in handle a lot of the development and governance work after (and this point is important) the fighting reached a stalemate and neither side thought they could effectively destroy the other.
Alternately, an outside actor could choose to back one side (like the Brits backing the government in Sierra Leone). Assuming that no one comes to the other sides aid, there could be a decent outcome. That would be dicey here, as it hinges on the idea that the rebels are less bad than Qaddafi. I'm not sure the rest of the Arab world is convinced.
As with General Clapper's testimony, there is a big difference between what probably will happen and what one actor thinks should happen. S-2s and S-3s have been debating that point from time immemorial.
And as always, the world's greatest Phase 4 plan is worthless if you lose Phase 3. Still, I hope someone is thinking through what to do if the rebels win, lose or draw.
But now that we're talking a
But now that we're talking a steering committee to be a body above NATO while NATO implements this tactically...
I'm actually looking for another stream of income, and always wanted to see a Brussels whorehouse internal operations.
Can anyone point me to the job site for this steering committee? Why should the Eurocrats have the fun?
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20110322/twl-france-says-new-non-nato-body-to...
Obtuseangle, There's no way
Obtuseangle,
There's no way to make a battlefield safe for anyone even near it. If that's the standard, perhaps we should return to the Heroic Age of warfare, and let Champions decide the fate of nations.
It'd be interesting to see how NATO fares then ;-)
There is a term used in
There is a term used in government agency circles when those who get too close to a group of foreigners and make it their belief that U.S. foreign policy or involvement should be changed to accommodate or help a group of foreigners. The term is called: "Going Native". Ask around about this term and see what people say and how it applies to this situation.
The term is used to identify those who have proverbially "gone off the reservation" and lost their training and understanding that, "their job is to specifically help advance and protect the interests of the United States of America, worldwide. Their job is not to advance or protect the interests of a foreign country or people in foreign lands.
It's not uncommon when those in a junior position in our government "goes native", they are disciplined if caught. I've heard of people being sent home from overseas assignment and/or placed on administrative leave, pending an administrative action, because they have lost sight of what their job is "specifically" and are not upholding their oath of office.
My question is, what happens when those at the top of the tree..... have lost sight of their responsibilities?
Well, fuck me and call me
Well, fuck me and call me ignorant.
I didn't get my Presidential briefing this morning, so it's kind of hard for me to second guess the POTUS' recent decision on Libya.
BUT, I am damn glad that Newt's not the POTUS ("The United States doesn't need anybody's permission. We don't need to have NATO, who frankly, won't bring much to the fight. We don't need to have the United Nations." )
And I'm even damn gladder that McCain's not the POTUS (Senator McCain says that Obama waited too long to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya. As the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain had been urging that move for nearly a month before allied warplanes struck targets in Libya on Saturday. ) Especially since that would make $arah Palin the VPOTUS (call me Esther, I love Israel, the Rapture's coming, let's bomb Iran).
And I'm hysterically delighted that it's not our ass hanging out there in the wind all by our lonesome.
So, fuck me and call me happy that our POTUS decided to hang back and wait, because we're still going to be blamed and called a piece of shit, but, at least now, we'll have lots of shit to hang out with.
"Either way, DAMN you
Indeed, it was the noted combat veterans Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Powers, and company.
No blood for chickenhawks!
I think it's great when dishonest rhetoric bites people in the ass.
And for what it's worth,
And for what it's worth, Bush's coalition was both larger and more coherent than this mess - which is falling apart in days.
I whole-heartedly agree with
I whole-heartedly agree with Andrew's two lessons. Furthermore, I believe that at least our military readers understand the resistance to commitment to an intervention in Libya is primarily based upon a strategy without clearly defined goal/endstate. From what I have read, a key contributor to the lack of any strategy beyond a "no-fly zone" may be the dearth of knowledge of the Libyan insurgency.
The insurgency appears to be an unknown quantity to the international players at this point. Little is known (in the open source forum) about its leaders, military experience/skill beyond their capability to fire small arms at fast moving aircraft. Therefore, it seems reasonable to me, that the international community has decided to limit its initial goals to protection of the Libyan population, while it gains more information on the force it wishes to assist in removing Qadaffi from power.
Once the insurgency is characterized, the coalition will have the knowledge necessary to decide to expand, maintain, or contract its support. I believe that if the insurgency was perceived to be robust/competent/politically well-led, it would have been easier to define the endstate as removal of Qadaffi and the establishment of a representative government.
BTW, thanks for the blog....it is a great forum!
Very little was being done
Very little was being done before & immediately after the CPA turn-over in Iraq. The CPA in Iraq was a rolling train wreck. Lots of people were sleeping during work hours, watching TV or playing video games all day, hid out in remote locations while the Marines and Army protected them. Lots of the civilians were just fuc*ing the dog or KBR's girls, getting drunk and going to parties....always lots of parties at the Palace / Green Zone. Libyan - UN&US / CPA will probably have many of the same boys and girls involved in prostitution, drinking, drugs and mayhem with $135.00 a day per-diem and Joe the U.S. Taxpayer paying for it. If we go in to Tripoli, it should be kept a total U.S. military operation. NO CPA, very few diplomats and almost NO contractors. Keep it total military or as much as possible. No bullsh*t like in Iraq. Iraq CPA was a total mess and a complete waste of taxpayer money.
Call your Congressman and ask
Call your Congressman and ask them to defund the no-fly zone over Libya.
It is that simple. Pass a resolution stating it is illegal to spend money on the operation.
Right now Congressmen are making all sorts of noise, like they do right before they no nothing. American people are upset about this Administration's commitment and I am sure that Congress is getting an ear full. Just need to be specific about what is said.
Elf, No contest there. zero
Elf,
No contest there. zero civilian casualties is not going to happen.
However, by leaving unclear what targets they are going for and where, they are making it very difficult to evaluate how far they are going out of their way to minimize them. This leaves a lot of room for doubts to build up in various Arab and Muslim nations and gives Qaddafi an open goal to aim for.
The bellicose rhetoric of various European leaders does not help.
Also, I can see where McCain is coming from. If the aim was to avoid putting boots on the ground an earlier intervention would have helped as the insurgency would have been in a stronger position. However a unilateral or even US led intervention without UN backing would have been a seriously bad idea. I still think that an earlier intervention would have been better as we would have been more likely to achieve either an internal toppling or favorable stalemate however like civilians casualties being impossible as swift consensus was as well.
Fish, If the Congress so
Fish,
If the Congress so chose, they could do more than de-fund this farce. It's completely within their power to direct the President to withdraw forces from combat operations immediately. We're so used to an imperial presidency and a Congress that lets it's power be abused that we don't even seem to remember who's got the Constitutional authority to call these shots any more.
The Congress legislates, or declares new laws. The President must execute them. If the Congress passes a law that "No military forces shall set foot upon or pass over Libyan soil" then that's the law.
They won't, because they think it's politically expedient not to, and it's just the sort of briar patch Obama would probably like to be thrown into (so it becomes an Obama vs. the Republicans issue and not a right vs. wrong issue where Obama is wrong). In short, we're fucked.
"UN&US / CPA will probably
"UN&US / CPA will probably have many of the same boys and girls involved in prostitution*, drinking, drugs and mayhem with $135.00 a day per-diem "
Just please send me the application form, I'll be your biggest spokes-whore ever. And the taxpayer won't lose money, because I'll do a PPV contract with Al-Jazzera. I begin to see the percentage for Qatar.
*do they have donkeys in Libya? Just asking...
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/03
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/03/donkey-in-libya-%E2%80%98i-understand-you-...
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