Center for a New American Security

The photojournalist Bryan Denton has been a friend for several years, and this past year has been a career year for him. Those who followed the reporting of C. J. "Chris" Chivers from Libya probably also know of Bryan's photographs. Bryan and I caught up a few weeks ago at the wedding of some friends, and I convinced him, late one night, to answer a few questions for the blog. What follows is some pretty incredible testimony from one of the bravest men in the business.

What a year! I hardly know where to begin, given all that you and your cameras have seen over the past 10 months. Let's begin with something you didn't see -- Egypt. After living in the Middle East for all these years, you missed the kickoff to the Arab Spring!

Ha, I wish I had been able to be there. I was stuck for most of February on a small base in southern Helmand Province, embedded with U.S. Marines on an assignment that had taken some time to get set up so I couldn't get out of it. I was leaving Beirut for this assignment on January 29th, just as Egypt's protests were beginning and I remember having goosebumps as I watched al-Jazeera in the airport with virtually everyone else on my flight to Dubai, in total silence. I knew, after Tunisia, and based on the size of the protests I was seeing on TV, that the region was changing in a way no one had called or could have foreseen. Sitting it out in Helmand was tough, but I came back just in time to be in position for Libya, once the revolution there really got under way, and the borders opened.

Man, Libya was an entirely different kettle of fish from Afghanistan. As someone who has always tried to make myself as small as possible while under fire, I do not envy any 6-foot, 8-inch combat photojournalist trying to cover high-intensity conflict. Talk us through the beginning of that campaign. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced as a photojournalist?

I think in the beginning, myself and most of my colleagues thought that Libya's revolution was going to be more tear gas and rubber bullets than a conventional war, including combined artillery, armor and airpower. Virtually no one I know, myself included, even brought body armor into Libya in late February/early March, and I, despite my time spent in Afghanistan over the past years, was in no way prepared for the level of combat that kicked off in early march. I don't know if anyone was.

Most of us had been in Benghazi covering the aftermath of that city's uprising for about a week when Qaddafi forces attacked the city of Brega on March 2. We'd spent the previous two days documenting the rebels as they were in the very beginning stages of starting to think about some kind of self defense force, as many of them were calling it. Mostly, it was young students washing 14.5mm ammunition that had long been in storage, putting it into links, and then spending their mornings learning to line up in formation. On March 2, I was at one of these training camps when news broke that Qaddafi loyalist forces had attacked Brega, and the camp emptied out as men took to the road. It was as if all of Benghazi had decided to fight that day, with hundreds of cars full of men and boys, mostly unarmed, heading towards Brega. By the end of that day, the rebels had repelled what in retrospect was a small probing force of about 45 trucks, simply through sheer numbers of bodies on the road. Qaddafi had begun using airstrikes though, and I remember going back to Benghazi that day thinking that the revolution in LIbya had now become a military conflict.

I have always been pretty gung-ho, but what followed in the coming days, as the rebels continued to push west, bouyed by what they saw as a victory at Brega, and their destiny, along the coast was a hard introduction to a kind of fear I hadn't felt before while working. They encountered relatively light resistance up through Ras Lanuf and into Bin Jawad on March 5, where there was a day-long celebration by rebels and some residents. I had bought a bottle of Jameson with me that I was planning on cracking open once we arrived in Tripoli, and at that time, I was convinced that was going to be in a week or two tops. The next morning, March 6, we woke up to an entirely different reality.

Qaddafi troops, not in trucks, but in tanks and aided by loyalists in Bin Jawad had begun to push back against the rabble/horde of mainly unarmed rebels. The force had come from Sirte, the garrison town that is now under siege, and they were firing 122mm and 107mm rockets, T-72 tank main gun rounds, mortars, Qaddafi's airforce was dropping unguided iron bombs on groups of rebels massing on the road—which at the time was all the rebels really knew how to do, and Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters were straffing rebel positions. I had four of the most harrowing close calls of my career that day, all within the span of about four or five hours, as did a number of my colleagues. By the end of the day my fight or flight mechanism was completely shot, and I was the closest I've ever been to all out panic — it took a lot to keep my composure.

What compounded the fear most was the realization that many of the things I'd taken for granted while embedded with U.S. troops, like a robust Medevac chain, advanced communications and situational awareness tools, and all the other goodies that I'd grown accustomed to were absent. Our access was total and completely unfettered, which I think is why most of us braved it through those days ... the pictures, if you could muster the courage, were amazingly dramatic, but for the most part, and this became a theme throughout the Libyan conflict, we were working in the blind, and basing decisions with very real deadly consequences on very little information, if any at all.

The conflict turned nasty quickly. But the rebels improved over time. You had previously spent a lot of time with seasoned U.S. troops in Afghanistan and know the difference between well-trained regular units and the kinds of citizen militias that were fighting in Libya. Talk the readership of this blog through what you were able to witness in terms of battlefield learning and innovation.

The learning curve for the rebels was most certainly steep. I think the best way I've heard them described was by Chivers, who referred to them as "accidental combatants," a term I've always thought was pretty prescient. They were engineers, lawyers, students, unemployed youth, and I don't think at the outset, they anticipated such a long grinding conflict that would take so many of their lives, and require so much innovation in the field. There wasn't a lot, if any combat experience within their collective ranks at the beginning, and everything they did — especially in the early days, was learned through a school of pretty hard knocks. No place better illustrated this than Misrata — which was under siege for two solid months. By the time we arrived there in mid April, it was like a mad scientists workshop of urban warfare tactics. They'd taught themselves how to move between buildings by knocking out "rat-holes" dug through multiple walls along the frontline, and had turned downtown Misrata — essentially a circular network of roads that link up at various roundabouts—into a virtual maze by blocking off streets at various points with shipping containers and sand berms. In the beginning, they built these fortifications by putting a brave sole in a bulldozer or forklift, and having him brave blistering machine gun and RPG fire in order to build them in place, when they lost enough people and bulldozers, they started welding steel plates onto the bulldozers. Electricians and steel workers who had worked in the oil industry perviously were now working in make-shift weapons workshops, mounting all kinds of things onto the backs of pickup trucks as rebel units filtered in for refits or repairs, suggesting tweaks here and there. From an objective point of view, watching a civilian population it was awe inspiring to watch. In April, maybe two out of five rebels in Misrata had a weapon, and most of them were fighting from their neighborhoods.

No amount of training can give a man absolute belief in his cause. Most American troops I've spent time with in Afghanistan, where politics and fighting are constantly happening side by side, and often times at odds with one another, fight as much for each other as they do for their country. A lot of the soldiering I've seen, in a variety of places, relies on brotherhood more than rank to hold a unit together. In Misrata, what they may have lacked in training was replaced by this sheer will and belief in their cause and the notion of their city as a cohesive family unit. One thing Americans haven't had in over a hundred years, thankfully, is the experience of fighting over our own physical land. Fighting for something physical, like your life, or your house, rather than something almost existential, like your security changes the dynamic completely.

I remember this one day, in the hospital, a rebel came in badly burned. I was talking to his friend later who said that he'd been been in Birwaya, west of the city, when a Qaddafi forces tank had begun pushing on their position. According to his friend, the man had charged the tank with a grenade and a molotav cocktail, and in the process of trying to climb onto the moving tank to drop the grenade in the hatch, the molotov cocktail had exploded and engulfed him in flame. Perhaps not the smartest of tactic if self preservation is concerned, and there were plenty of similar cases of negligence in handling weapons that come along with an untrained fighting force, but the belief one has to have in their cause to charge a tank with a grenade? You can't buy, train, or equip a soldier with that ...

This has been a very tough year for photojournalists. First, at the end of the last year, Joao Silva was horrifically wounded in southern Afghanistan. Then several journalists -- including your friends Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington -- were killed in Libya this past spring. What effects have these events had on you as a professional? And is there anything readers of the blog should know about these men and the other men and women who put themselves in harm's way to bring us the news here in the United States?

It has been a brutal year for our group, which is a small one. Joao Silva's wounding in Afghanistan, as well as Tyler Hicks' and Lynsey Addario's capture in Libya in March — both of whom I was working with just days before they were captured -- had me very rattled before the loss of Chris and Tim. More than any others, Tyler, Joao and Lynsey have been my mentors in covering conflict through the early years of my career in places like Georgia and Lebanon. I was lucky enough to get my start in this business by working alongside them, looking up to them both as photographers, and as individuals, and as a novice, they've often helped me gauge the safety of situations. What each of those three went through, before Chris and Tim passed, was chilling in that I think for the first time I really understood that this work potentially has serious consequences, no matter how much experience you have. Tim and Chris' deaths didn't really confirm this any more than it needed to be, but I still think about both of them a lot and haven't been able to shake the sadness knowing that both of them somehow ran out of luck, together, in Misrata, at such bright times in their lives.

None of us are immune, and we live and die by the choices we make in the field. I think Chris and Tim both knew this better than most. Both were brave in their reporting, but mostly to me, what I think about, is how thoughtful they both were. Tim I only met in Benghazi, but over two weeks or so working around him and talking over pictures in the evenings, I was in awe of how he could freestyle incredibly sensitive narrative jazz into a visual record based on what he was seeing. In an industry known for its large personalities, he traveled almost directly from the red carpet at the Oscars to the western gate of Ajdabiyeh, and arrived with no pretense or posturing. I, like most I imagine, met him and knew immediately that he was someone genuine and special, and am sad that I didn't get the opportunity to know him better.

Hondros I'd known since 2008, when we had both covered the war in Georgia, and we had hung out in Afghanistan, New York and Egypt several times in the intervening years. Chris took his work quite seriously, and I was always struck by his ability to look at situations in a very un-stylized way and let what was actually happening come through the image. It sounds easy, but it's not, and he was one of the best in the business in my opinion. His last set of photographs from Misrata, of rebels storming a building on Tripoli street, are as terrifying as they are a perfect example of his dedication to his work — especially knowing that he went back out to keep working after taking a break to file them.

Along the same lines, we spoke at length last weekend about risk mitigation in combat -- a subject I also discussed with Chris Chivers recently. Tell us about your philosophy for managing and mitigating risk in your work. What steps do you take to report what you need to report while doing so in as smart and safe a way as possible?

After March 6, which I wrote about above, I knew that covering the war in Libya would require a significant rethink in terms of managing risk if I was going to continue to cover it on a long term basis. I was extremely lucky to have had the chance to work with Chivers on my second trip, which included our Misrata reporting. I had some idea about what I was doing, but Chris (Chivers) can look at a battlefield, through all the light and noise, and see it as a three dimensional and dynamic entity. As we probed the front in Brega, and later, the frontlines in Misrata, and the Western Mountains, we came up with a system that both of us were comfortable with. As soon as we were within range of artillery, we wore our body armor and kevlar if we were outside or driving, and would only travel to the frontlines if there was news or a specific story that would justify the risk. Once there, we would do our reporting, get the material that we needed, and then get out.

Artillery was probably the single greatest threat during much of our time reporting together, and there were instances on the road to Brega early on that had led us to believe that the teams directing Qaddafi's rockets, mortars and artillery were striking pre-registered targets on the map such as intersections, or key installations — many of which were occupied by rebels, so hanging around at these positions just waiting for something to happen was potentially quite dangerous.

What was amazing was that by not simply chasing the noise, as I watched many photographers do — it's a natural reaction for many, including myself — we were able to do what was, in my opinion, some of the better reporting, particularly from Misrata, on the gears and moving parts of the rebellion.

I always end these interviews with something related to food and drink. You and I have together polished off several bottles of Laphroig on the balconies of Beirut. Where are the three best places in the Middle East to sit down with your photojournalist peers and swap stories over a cold beer or glass of Scotch?

A great part of this year and the last has been drinking less to be honest. Afghanistan and Libya are both fairly booze-free zones for me. I'm realizing that I need to start exercising more, and living healthy if I want to keep doing this job. That said, when in Beirut, one can never go wrong going for a cocktail at Kayan in Gemayze, or on my balcony as you mentioned, particularly if there's something on my BBQ. I was just in Sidi Bou Said in Tunisia as well, and that place nearly gives Beirut a run for it's money.

For those of you in New York City, an exhibit of Bryan's photos will be running from 20 October until 19 Novemberat the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. The rest of you can follow Bryan on Twitter at@bdentonphoto.

I have been on vacation for the past week, largely away from both the internet and television in rural Tennessee, and I missed most coverage of the rebel advance into Tripoli. I must say, I was shocked when I read the news. I had expected the fall of Tripoli to drag out for weeks. I had reasoned that both parties to the conflict were continuing to fight a more-or-less zero-sum game and that the loyalists around Tripoli could be expected to mount a fierce and organized defense. I had also been privy to all kinds of pessimistic assessments of the combat abilities of the rebel fighting forces and thought they would have a much tougher time advancing on prepared defenses than they ended up having. In the end, I perhaps overestimated the competence of the loyalist forces (among whom we have not had the luxury of embedded reporters to assess their quality). I might have also underestimated the effectiveness of discrete allied advisory teams and the tactical application of air power. If you are someone who saw this coming, though, feel free to pipe up in the comments and tell me what else I missed.

Given my poor record of prognostication this year -- which includes my opinion, expressed in January, that Hosni Mubarak would retain the loyalty of his military (!) -- you can be forgiven for doubting any other predictions I have for 2011. I'll make, instead, a few observations.

1. It has been said before and ad nauseum but bears repeating: the war in Libya does not stop with the fall of the Qadhdhafi regime. The war in Libya stops when Libya's new rulers a) train and field enough security forces of their own to maintain public order and then b) create institutions to redistribute the resources of the state and address popular grievances. So let's hold off on the celebratory handshakes, eh?

2. Some, knowing #1, are already suggesting NATO provide ground forces to serve as peacekeepers and advisors. I am not sure how wise this would be. Given how few U.S. interests are at stake in Libya, it makes more sense -- to me, at least -- for other nations and coalitions to take the lead in partnering with Libya's new government. I am thinking, especially, of the Mediterranean countries. (Not that Italy did such a hot job creating enduring public institutions the last time they were around.) At the least, I think the calls for NATO peacekeeping forces (or even advisors) is premature. Serious questions to which I do not know the answer: have the rebels even requested such forces? What would the mission of these forces be? What kind of mandate, if any, would they enjoy from the United Nations?

3. The single most important issue for me, which I was screaming about several days ago when the defenses of Tripoli began to collapse, concerns the status of Libyan munitions -- especially Libya's anti-aircraft weaponry. I hope the United States and its allies have a good plan to buy back or otherwise seize all those man-portable air defense systems that have walked off the Libyan battlefield over the past few months...

4. Many members of the Obama Administration, especially the veterans of the Kosovo Campaign, were more sanguine about the open-ended application of U.S. military power in Libya than I was. I am glad the Qadhdhafi regime has fallen, but I worry we have reinforced a precedent where we do not feel the need to carefully think through our strategic goals (to include our desired end states) and assumptions before going to war. Because giving the U.S. military unclear guidance to prosecute open-ended military interventions is a recipe for a serious crisis in civil-military relations, we might not want to do that next time.

I'll conclude with linking to several smart and relevant articles that you have probably already seen. The first is a Steve Negus post on Arabist concerning the question of whether the rebels are ready to now rule Libya. The second was a brief on post-Qadhdhafi planning considerations by Daniel Serwer.

It's good to be back.

Each year, around this time in the (lunar) calendar, Western newspapers are usually filled with stories about the latest exciting Ramadan soap opera everyone is watching. Nothing happens during Ramadan, the story goes, so most reporting on the Arabic-speaking world is of the human interest variety.

It's worth pausing to consider, then, how remarkable this year has been and continues to be. I woke up this morning to images of Hosni Mubarak in a cage, on trial in Egypt. This is a stunning image for me to see, so I can only imagine the effect it has on 83m Egyptians and about 250m other people in the region.

Elsewhere in the Arabic-speaking world, meanwhile, violent civil wars and upheavals continue to press for the fall of the Qadhdhafi regime in Libya, the al-Asad regime in Syria, and the Saleh regime in Yemen. If I had to place my bets, I would bet all will ultimately and bloodily be successful.

Remarkable. Ramadan mubarak indeed.

Tripoli and other Qadhdhafi-held areas of Libya are now suffering from crippling shortages of both food and fuel. I want to prepare you all for the very real possibility that the United Nations or other multi- or international organizations will have to provide humanitarian relief to the people of Tripoli in the near future -- because the international community earlier intervened on behalf of Libyan rebels and has now enabled those rebels to march on those areas loyal to Qadhdhafi. If you're confused by war waged via the logic of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect ... you're not alone.

UPDATE: From a reader...

FYI, WFP has been sending in thousands of metric tons of food to Gaddafi controlled areas for well over a month, purchase with funding from USAID, among others.

 

Ostensibly this food is being distributed by the Libyan Red Crescent to various bakeries from distribution to the public, but trust me when I say they have absolutely know way to verify this.

 

I've been participating in this "humanitarian intervention" since the end of February, and I really don't have a fucking clue what we're doing here.

I'm no lawyer, I'll admit, but I do know thing or two about shooting wars, having been in a few and having studied others, and the conflict in which we have intervened in Libya is most certainly a war. The reason why the Obama Administration's legalistic determination that it is not a war is ridiculous is not because we've gotten to the point where we care most about which lawyers were smarter than other lawyers but because it does not pass the "common sense test" or "laugh test" of most Americans. I more or less approve of the way this administration has handled foreign and defense policy, but the way in which it has handled Libya, from the decision to intervene to this stupid determination that it is not a war, is a head-scratcher. And this latest episode, which to most Americans I suspect looks like a bunch of eggheads arguing about how many bombs you have to drop for it to be "hostilities" and, while they're at it, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, is simply one of the stupidest things I've read in some time. It does not pass the laugh test, and the administration has handed an empty net to anyone looking to score points off of this. Just incredibly stupid.

1. I will be participating in two events tomorrow on reconciliation in Afghanistan. I am not really a specialist on the subject as it pertains to Afghanistan when compared with others, but I will discuss reconciliation efforts in terms of civil wars in general and will offer comment on how operations in Afghanistan may or may not be setting the conditions for what we have come to expect based on historical experience. The first event, hosted by the Institute for Inclusive Security, will be held at the National Press Club and will feature me along with David Kilcullen, Rangina Hamidi, and Wazhma Frogh Mohammad Yonus. The great Elizabeth Rubin will moderate. Details here (.pdf). (Also, the event will be televised on PBS at some point.)

The second event will be at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Hamish Nixon and Andrew Wilder asked me to participate in an event with Ali Jalali, Michael Semple, Bill Taylor, Ashley Tellis and other smart people. Details here. (I suspect we'll spend much time talking about Hamish's new paper, which I read last week while attending a conference with both Andrew and Hamish.)

2. There was an article in the Washington Post today about a new strategy in Afghanistan. Here are my two cents: The so-called "Biden CT option" for Afghanistan was a really bad idea in the fall of 2009 but may be a good option, as I and others have argued, once we have bought enough time and space to build up effective Afghan security forces that allow us to fight a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan by, with and through the Afghans rather than with costly and large deployments of U.S. general purpose forces. The debate, as I see it, surround whether or not we have suffiently set the conditions to fight this kind of lower-cost counterinsurgency campaign. (And this debate, of course, only applies if no progress has been made on reconciliation.) The military, based on the remarks of Sec. Gates and LTG Rodriguez, among others, feels the Afghan security forces need more time and space to develop. In the end, I do not see a way to transition in Afghanistan much faster or much slower than the timeline LTG Barno and I came up with, but if you've got other ideas, knock yourself out.

3. Chaning gears, if the Libyan rebels seize control of the road connecting Tripoli with Tunisia, that's a huge and strategically important victory. I really think the administration has been terribly sloppy in its own management of this conflict, but the rebel gains should be cheered nonetheless.

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President Obama has subtly shifted Washington’s public explanation of its goals in Libya, declaring now that he wants to assure the Libyan people are “finally free of 40 years of tyranny” at the hands of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, after first stating he wanted to protect civilians from massacres.

 

But if regime change is now the goal in Libya, Mr. Obama’s trip through Europe this week has highlighted significant tensions over how much time the NATO allies have to finish a job that is now into its third month.

 

Mr. Obama has urged strategic patience, expressing confidence that over time the combination of bombing, sanctions and import cutoffs will force Colonel Qaddafi from power. “Time is working against Qaddafi,”’ Mr. Obama said on Tuesday during a news conference in London with Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain.

 

But in Europe and in Libya, patience is calculated differently. Many countries are struggling with the rapid pace of operations, and some, like Norway, have already said they will sharply reduce their forces beginning next month.  Colonel Qaddafi, according to NATO officials, has a calculation of his own under way:  Indicted by the International Criminal Court, he now has few places to go and nothing to lose from waiting out NATO and betting that European public opinion will tire of the bombing campaign and its costs. 

The U.S. and allied military campaign in Libya is an embarassment. From the very beginning, U.S. and allied political and strategic objectives have been unclear, and thus U.S. and allied military forces have been asked to carry out military operations without a clear commander's intent or end state. Out of all the operations orders that have been issued by the U.S. military for operations in Libya, in fact, only one -- the order to carry out the evacuation of non-combatants -- included an end state. None of the other orders issued to and by the U.S. military included an end state, in large part because senior military and civilian leaders either could not or chose not to explicitly articulate what the end state might be. The U.S. and allied military intervention is thus the very definition of an open-ended military intervention -- the kind in which most U.S. decision-makers swore we would never again engage after Iraq and Afghanistan.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, is sadly on familiar territory. The U.S. Army, in response to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (in which the military was asked to operate in a complex environment with often unclear policy guidance), developed commander's appreciation and campaign design (.pdf) to help officers properly frame and understand the problems in front of them. Good campaign design does three things:

1. It describes, as best as possible, what the intent of the commander might be,
2. It describes the campaign approach,
3. And it describes any factors that would force subordinate units and commanders to think differently about the problem.

Campaign design is a great tool for commanders, but it is also the reflection of a bigger problem -- one identified and described most eloquently by Hew Strachan in this essay in Survival. It is what happens when you leave military commanders to figure out strategy and policy for themselves. Speaking of the war in Afghanistan, Strachan writes,

Arguably, strategy has been absent throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In part that is because the political objects have been unclear, or variable, or defined in terms too broad to be deliverable in strategic terms. Because there has been no clear relationship between the ends and the limited (and often inappropriate) means, strategy is simply not possible. The result has often been war shaped by platoon and company commanders, a series of ill-coordinated tactical actions, where killing and casualties define success, rather than the objectives of securing the population, establishing law and order, and delivering aid and reconstruction. Counter-insurgency theory has stepped in to give shape to what has happened. The US Army's Field Manual 3-24, published in December 2006, is a clear illustration. But, while positive in so many ways, counter-insurgency doctrine has only served further to complicate the relationship between the operational level of war and strategy. ...

 

If Obama really is to marshal his generals (not to mention his allies), he must have a policy which meets and channels operational effects. True, this is only one facet of the challenges which he confronts, and he will not be able to give his operational commanders clear and consistent guidance without significant opportunity costs - costs which will be borne in both regional and domestic politics. These are the issues which the McChrystal affair has brought into sharp relief. Resolving the latter has not removed the pressures of the former. As Henry Kissinger observed of McChrystal's dismissal, 'America needs a strategy, not an alibi'.

Truer words, etc.

I am in part frustrated because the difficulties of Libya were so painfully easy to predict. But I am also frustrated because the United States has now been applying force in Libya for over two months without explaining why. What is the political end we are trying to achieve? The United States needs to be honest with both its allies and its military. Because we should expect the U.S. military to go to great lengths to understand the environment and the enemy, but what makes the military intervention in Libya so embarassing is that the U.S. military is once again in the position of laboring to divine the intent of its own elected and appointed leaders.

P.S. That New York Times article also includes this gem: "[The Europeans would] like the war to be over, and have it done properly with no allied casualties or collateral damage to civilians." In related news, I want a winged unicorn for my birthday.

...the rebels have been making some encouraging advances in and around Misurata. The reporting of C.J. Chivers both in the New York Times and on his Twitter feed has been essential reading.*

The worst-case scenario Zack Hosford and I had predicted a few months ago sadly came to pass in Libya, but it is worth considering the possibility that NATO air strikes, economic sanctions and improving rebel tactical performances are finally combining to have an effect on the forces of Moammar Gadhafi. In the end, I am inclined to agree with Lisa Anderson that both sides will feel compelled to fight until the end in Libya, but right now, even skeptics of the war kinetic military action like me should take some heart in the advances of the rebels.

*How great is Twitter? It's at its best when a top-flight reporter like Chivers files his report for the New York Times and then has the humility and intellectual curiosity to engage with questions from his stateside readers, which he has been doing the entire time he (and Bryan) have been in Libya.

UPDATE: The rebels have the airport.

On the one hand, while reading this op-ed by LTG (Ret.) Jim Dubik, a man I very much admire, I found myself understanding the logic of the author's argument: fighting half-assed wars is a bad idea. If you are going to fight them, fight them to win, and go all the way. Trying to fight a "limited" war is a fool's errand, and not planning for the post-conflict environment is just ignorant given the challenges we faced in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the other hand, what am I supposed to make of this?

If Colonel Qaddafi falls, the United States and NATO will have a responsibility to help shape the postwar order, including providing security to prevent a liberated Libya from sinking into chaos.

 

After all, the pro-Qaddafi Libyan Army and police are unlikely to provide it; many of them could become insurgents as did Saddam Hussein’s forces in Iraq. Nor are the rebels, who may well be more interested in revenge than stability.

 

The responsibility for security, reconstruction and nation-building will likely fall to the United Nations, which would mean deploying a multinational peacekeeping force in Libya, including troops from the United States, NATO and Arab nations. Washington must start planning and preparing for this complex and expensive contingency and muster the substantial political will required to see it through. While there is no guarantee that such a project will be any more efficient or effective than in Iraq or Afghanistan, failing to plan for it would be disastrous.

Did the last ten years not happen? How does committing the United States to stabilization operations in a country of six million people with barely 3% of the world's oil reserves make any strategic sense given current committments and spending priorities elsewhere? Why does the United States have a responsibility to provide peacekeeping forces?

Also, I do not think LTG Dubik fully realizes the challenges Libya will face after Gadhafi, which Lisa Anderson has done the best job of explaining here and here. Libya has no effective national institutions. LTG Dubik knows a lot about security sector reform, but the challenge of Libya will not be the same as the challenges facing Egypt and Tunisia, which is to reform existing institutions to make them more responsive to the will of the people. The challenge of Libya is one of state formation ex nihilo. The United States needs to stay the hell away from that for strategic reasons, but there is an argument to be made that all nation-states should stay out of Libya's affairs. Anderson:

...insofar as possible, advice should come from those who do not seek power or profit, which means not from foreign governments or international businesses and consulting companies. Fortunately, Libya does not need financial help, so its leaders can be very selective about where they seek advice and counsel. This means that there may be an opportunity, and perhaps an obligation, for international organisations, including the World Bank and UN bodies like UNESCO, UNICEF and the International Labour Organisation, to play an important role in Libya’s reconstruction. But perhaps more importantly, the non-official organisations of global civil society should be prepared to deploy their expertise. The hard-earned practical knowledge and pragmatic skill of the 70 former leaders of democratic countries represented in the Club of Madrid, which describes itself as seeking “to leverage the first-hand experience of its members to assist countries with critical elements of their democratic transition or consolidation,” could be put to good use, for example, as could the collective wisdom of organisations like Amnesty International, or Human Rights Watch.

Sounds like good counsel to me. Committing U.S. troops to another Afghanistan, Kosovo, or Iraq, by contrast, strikes me as a very bad idea.

Hey, Amal and Hizballah! Having that Lebanese seat on the U.N. Security Council sure was fun when it allowed you to get Moammar Gadhafi back for what happened to Musa Sadr all those years ago, wasn't it? But now that one of your patrons is brutally cracking down on his people in more or less the same manner as Gadhafi, we should probably go ahead and reject that draft resolution condemning the mass murder of political protesters, eh? I thought so.

Boy, I would love to hear Hassan Nasrallah give some morally sanctimonious speech in which he explains why Gadhafi must be driven from office but that conspiracies against Bashar al-Asad are a Anglo-Zionist plot. And I suspect I am going to get that opportunity.