AGAINST THE CURRENT JULY 21, 2011
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Four months after American submarines began launching missiles and U.S. pilots began flying sorties, does anyone, perhaps even including President Obama, really know what we are trying to do in Libya? It is true that, compared to Afghanistan, a major war whose outcome is generally agreed to hang in the balance, and to Iraq, from which we have not yet completely withdrawn, and even to Somalia and Yemen, where the tempo of our counterinsurgency operations have been steadily increasing, both directly and by proxy, Libya may seem minor. But, if our military operations in that country are hardly the greatest burden our armed forces confront, they are also hardly trivial. Less than a month before he left office, outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates estimated the U.S. would spend $750 million on the Libyan operation, while a Department of Defense document published in May revealed the American contribution to Operation Unified Protector involved 75 aircraft (including drones), flying 70 percent of the reconnaissance missions, 75 of refueling missions, and more than one-quarter of all air sorties. And yet, from March 28, when President Obama announced Operation United Protector’s predecessor, Operation Odyssey Dawn, until now, the fog of incoherent justification for the war has been at least as thick of the proverbial fog of war itself.
Have we gone to war? Well, no, not exactly. We were, Obama said in that first speech, “[committing] resources to stop the killings” of innocent Libyan civilians by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. If the United States has initiated combat operations, this really amounted not to war-fighting, but to taking “all necessary measures to protect the Libyan people” and to “save lives.” And did our actions mean that the goal of the mission was regime change, Iraq- or Afghanistan-style? Not at all, the president insisted. Taking a predictable swipe at the Bush administration, he said dismissively that we had already gone “down that road in Iraq.” It was an apt metaphor, if, perhaps, unconsciously so, since regime change would have required just that: sending troops down the road, on the ground in Libya. And that, the president argued, would be far more dangerous than what he was ordering the military to do.
This may have sounded like the prudent thing, but what it was—what it is, for nothing has changed at all in this regard over the course of the past four months, even though we have officially recognized the Libyan rebels—is the incoherent, internally self-contradictory thing. We believe Qaddafi must go, and we will not let him make significant advances on the ground, but we refuse to take responsibility for his overthrow. So, to use a military term of art, we have an end state—Qaddafi’s ouster—but we are not willing to do what is needed to attain that goal expeditiously, which, of course, is why there is at least, for the moment, still a stalemate on the ground in Libya.
The stark fact is that the outcome Obama wants and the means he is willing to use to secure it are hopelessly mismatched. And this is leaving aside the fact that this “a donkey is a horse designed by a committee” intervention flies in the face of the sense of the War Powers Act and represents one more ornament in the crown of the imperial executive. Oh, for the days of a good old-fashioned congressional declaration of war!
I AM NOT joking. The U.S. involvement in Libya is the logical outcome of policies, pursued under both Republican and Democratic administrations (Somalia under President George H. W. Bush, Bosnia and Kosovo under President Bill Clinton), in which war was never fully acknowledged to be war, with all the gravity that such an acknowledgment would have implied. Instead, we were told that what was taking place was a so-called humanitarian intervention, a kind of armed emergency relief operation (as in Somalia in 1991), or armed human rights intervention (in the Balkans and, now, in Libya). The latest version of this delusion is the so-called Responsibility to Protect doctrine, or R2P, as it is almost universally known, that was adopted by the United Nations World Summit in 2005 and ratified by the General Assembly in 2008 with the support of George W. Bush’s administration. R2P states that sovereignty is not absolute and, when a nation is committing crimes against its own population, where feasible and in those cases where all other (non-military) means are believed to have failed, outside powers not only may, but actually have a duty, to intervene. R2P is cited explicitly in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973—the same resolution Obama cited in his speech announcing that he had ordered U.S. military action in Libya.
Those who took a decent English 101 class in college may remember being instructed that a failure of language usually reflects a failure of thought. The truth is that doctrines like humanitarian intervention and R2P are ways of waging war without taking responsibility (or accepting accountability, both moral and democratic) for doing so. That is why they are so pernicious, and why, even in cases where an intervention may be warranted, far from being an improvement on the traditional way that nations and coalitions of states have come to the decision to go to war and how they have waged war, they are actually a very large step in the wrong direction. They allow us to pretend we are not going to war, but, instead, are just trying to protect the civilian population from harm. War, however, is not police work, not armed humanitarianism, not human rights activism with an air force, and it should not be allowed to become anything of the kind. The Libyan precedent is so disturbing precisely because, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, or (again) Somalia, whether one supports U.S. actions in these places or instead favors withdrawal, it reflects such tendencies.
Of course, there are good reasons why humanitarian, democracy-building, and human rights justifications are so attractive to policymakers. In the past, nations went to war for four reasons: out of interest (including wars of conquest); because they were bound by alliances (World War I, to use an obvious example); in self-defense; and out of a belief that it was just to uphold some cause. War is still with us, but, with the exception of self-defense in the broad sense, all these justifications have been increasingly set aside. When the time comes for war, there is only the possibility of state violence couched in the language of peacemaking and peacekeeping. It is a world that George Orwell would have had no trouble recognizing, and the fact that those who champion R2P and other forms of humanitarian intervention have good intentions and are, to use an old-fashioned term, good people, does not make their demarche any less Orwellian.
There is an alternative. It is called just war, and it has existed since the days of St. Thomas Aquinas. If he had thought it right to go to war in Libya, Obama could easily have said something like this:
The insurrection in Libya is a just and decent cause in which the Libyan people have risen up to overthrow the Qaddafi dictatorship. We can’t overthrow every dictatorship, either because they are too powerful, as is the case with China, or because American interests run too deep, as is the case with Saudi Arabia. But, when it is feasible to assist a popular uprising against a tyrant, America should do so. And that is what I have now ordered our armed forces to do in Libya.
Americans might have disagreed with such an assessment. Principled interventionists and principled anti-interventionists would have known where they stood. But neither side, nor, indeed, the great American middle, could have faulted the president for trying to have it both ways, as he has tried to do with the current policy of Regime Change Lite.
Just wars don’t have to be defensive. But they have to be wars, and the dismal folly of R2P and the Obama administration’s use of it in Libya, is that it involves war-fighting without either the seriousness (and the serious will to win) or the moral gravitas that war requires. It turns war into police work, not to say social work (“we’re just protecting innocent civilians,” and all that). Under its aegis (or that of so-called humanitarian intervention), it can’t be fought seriously and to the end.
For anyone but a pacifist, fighting is always an option of last resort. So is standing down. What should not be an option is the unholy compromise between the two that is embodied in R2P and is now having its test run in Libya.
David Rieff is the author of eight books including A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis.
18 comments
What is really pernicious is the doctrine of "just war?" Which nation goes to war believing that its cause is unjust? This is nothing but a return to the day when the law of war dealt only with the means of war leaving it entirely to states to go to war or not as they chose. The UN Charter has it right: self-defense of authorization of the Security Council as the only legal justifications for war. The "evolving doctrine" of humanitarian intervention to stop war crimes does make sense, except that, apparently, it cannot be used for its stated purpose without immediately morphing into something clearly beyond the boundaries of that doctrine, regime change. The Obama administration has, wittingly or unwittingly and by degrees, used humanitarian intervention as a subterfuge and hence made a hash of it. At least, however, Obama, while in flagrant violation of the War Powers Act, has a teeny, tiny fig leaf with which to claim the US is not in violation of the UN Charter. One can doubt whether, in light of the history, the UNSC will ever again issue such an authorization.
- roidubouloi
July 21, 2011 at 2:55am
"self defense or authorization of the Security Council"
- roidubouloi
July 21, 2011 at 2:56am
I thought "just war" isn't a separate "reason" for going to war (Rief lists four reasons), but rather a war that satisfies certain conditions of philosophical, religious or political justice. Is Rief suggesting we label a conflict a "just war" and we're done with it? Orwell would be proud.
- rayward
July 21, 2011 at 8:14am
absolute rubbish of an article. "We believe Qaddafi must go, and we will not let him make significant advances on the ground, but we refuse to take responsibility for his overthrow." This is not self contradictory at all, but realistic. I believe that there should not be world hunger, but I don't believe that the US is alone responsible to see there is none. And the reason this article is a disgrace is it goes right to the philosophical mumbo jumbo instead of talking about the actual conflict itself. Does Rieff know of Gharyan or the Nafusa mountains? Does he even mention the TNC? Nope, they seem irrelevant to his article, an abstraction. How about actually talking about the war itself? The United States and Nato has explicit authorization to protect civilians in Libya, whom only a fool would not know that Gadhafi would slaughter every rebel and their families. We have done just that. Now we could have invaded but we would then have been in the dubious position of owning Libya, having to develop institutions, finding people to run them...etc. Has Rieff ever heard of our own revolution? The US went it alone until the French came along and helped us win it. It is something we regard as our victory, the French an afterthought though they themselves were absolutely essential in bringing the war to a conclusion. The French did not invade America, get rid of loyalists, pick and choose who our leaders are. As to Libya, it is about as ideal as it can be and Rieff never discusses strategy. It was the hope of Nato that people around Gadhafi would get rid of that family so that later on there could be a broad based government, we could have blown the hell out of the Gadhafi front lines in Brega and Zliten and Gharyan, but there would have been far more civilian casualties. Instead it is a death by a thousand cuts for Ghadafi, few civilians in Ghadafi held area have been killed, so few that Ghadafi has had to claim victims of car crashes were bombing victims. We have also held back the rebels from moving too quickly onto Gadhafi held territory as was the case in Brega. The fear in Nato was that the rebels in Benghazi would then move in force towards Sirte in which case Nato would have had a far more difficult situation as the army besieging Sirte would have been an allied one, therefore we have not supplied Benghazi with offensive military equipment. So where do we stand now? The rebels in the Nafusa mountains stand at the doorway of Gharyan, when that falls Gadhafi will lose his only north south conduit to Algeria and Chad. He has also lost the pipeline bringing oil to Zawiya, his oil supplies are dwindling. Near Misrata the city is secure and nearly outside the range of all of Gadhafi weapons and life is returning to normal. Brega has just fallen to Benghazi, and with that a major oil port. The government in Benghazi can begin to export oil. In short, Gadhafi's days are numbered and when he falls it will be his own people, hell his own inner circle, that will bring it about. Benghazi has developed many new institutions and the leadership seems far more rational. In the Nafusa mountains Berbers and Arabs are fighting side by side, wiping out millenia of distrust, something that would never have happened if we just invaded. And the people of Libya will view this revolution as we have viewed our own and it is not something that they will allow to be usurped by another dictator. Why Rieff never mentions any of this is obvious. Libya is beside the point to him...it is nothing more than verbal diarrhea. The US and Nato have accomplished two great things, they have saved tens of thousands of lives and they have helped the rebels become a government worthy of their people. Does this mean that Libya will forever be free? Well, could the French answer that in 1781?
- blackton
July 21, 2011 at 8:52am
let me also say, not only have very few civilians died (apart from the ones Gadhafi slaughtered) so too have very few soldiers. Gadhafi soldiers see our jets, get out of their tanks and Grad rocket launchers and run away, Nato then bombs them depriving Gadhafi of the means to wage offensive war, as was the case in the Nafusa mountains, most Gadfafi soldiers then run away and the rebels secure the new areas. It has been slow going but steady. Yes, soldiers in both sides are dying but as far as wars go, very few are. And when Gharyan does fall, as it will. It truly will be lights out for the Gadhafi regime. Without resupply and oil, it will be a matter of weeks.
- blackton
July 21, 2011 at 9:01am
Good comment, Blackton. As the cliche goes, victors write the history books. A few years from now we will be reading about how wonderful it was that NATO saved the Libyan people from far worse suffering, or how awful it was that the NATO action failed to prevent the Libyan genocide. No one can predict the future. As the Bible says, We see through a glass darkly. When trouble starts, we have to act, and it may turn out well and it may not.
- skahn
July 21, 2011 at 9:03am
and another thing, more and more countries are recognizing the TNC as the legitimate government. No one is accusing them of being a Nato puppet government (nor how could they be) For those interested in reading articles by people who actually know about Libya, this is a great website http://feb17.info/
- blackton
July 21, 2011 at 9:12am
Great comments by blackton.
- sburke
July 21, 2011 at 9:18am
It's the same crowd of historical revisionists who describe WWII as a War of Liberation. Liberation of Germany.
- rayward
July 21, 2011 at 9:18am
Obama did make the just war argument. You can disagree with him, but listen to him first. It is true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs. And given the costs and risks of intervention, we must always measure our interests against the need for action. But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what's right. In this particular country — Libya — at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale. We had a unique ability to stop that violence: an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves. We also had the ability to stop Gadhafi's forces in their tracks without putting American troops on the ground. To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader and — more profoundly — our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action. Moreover, America has an important strategic interest in preventing Gadhafi from overrunning those who oppose him. A massacre would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya's borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful — yet fragile — transitions in Egypt and Tunisia. The democratic impulses that are dawning across the region would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship, as repressive leaders concluded that violence is the best strategy to cling to power. The writ of the United Nations Security Council would have been shown to be little more than empty words, crippling that institution's future credibility to uphold global peace and security. So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.
- dfrank@uoregon.edu-old
July 21, 2011 at 9:46am
Thanks, blackie, for your comments here, and for the insight (and links) you've given us on Libya over the last few months. This was a drive-by, nonsensical, and frankly a little dishonest, hit job by David Rieff. Absolute rubbish indeed!
- scrubby
July 21, 2011 at 10:07am
The U.S. is not doing counter-insurgency in Somalia and Yemen. It is doing some highly selective, intermittent raids to take out hopefully-identified al Qaeda types who are plotting (pathetically) to attack the U.S. Otherwise, the U.S. is simply not intervening in the turmoils of those two countries. We'd need to put 400,000 troops in both or either country to make any difference, which, as the Egyptians can tell us, is highly unlikely.
- gaffneyh
July 21, 2011 at 10:47am
I agree with Mr Rieff. We ought to acknowledge that we are at war in Libya. We have not sent in an army, but we are supplying the air power and fancy weaponry that our NATO allies lack, which is to say the most important part of the war effort is in our hands and under our control. Whatever the justification for our actions, and I think they were fundamentally unwise from the start, the fact is that we are not well-served by this president's embrace of an increasingly empowered executive power to engage this nation in wars without an act of Congress. Were it not for the sheer idiocy and mean-spiritedness of the Tea Party Republicans, I would be working to unseat Mr Obama for his efforts to expand the power of the President to start a war. There are no good choices today. But at least we should be honest in our terms. What we are doing in Libya should be called war. Neil
- purcellneil@aol.com
July 21, 2011 at 12:04pm
Just as desperate conditions can call for desperate measures, half-assed conflicts can sometimes call for half-assed measures. Obama was dragged reluctantly into our participation in Libya. Whether giving in to France and the UK's persuasion was a good idea or not, it did not justify going to Congresss for a full scale declaration of war. Doing so would put the full faith and credibility of the US on the line, and that's not something any president should do. I would prefer that the President at least fulfill his obligations under the War Powers Act, and the justification for not doing so makes me cringe. (We're not involving Congress because the bad guys can't shoot back at us?? So a successful nuclear first strike would thus not be covered by the War Powers Act???). But given the sheer venomous lunacy of the current GOP, I can see why he hasn't done so.
- gwcross
July 21, 2011 at 3:25pm
All this is the result of the end of the draft.
- jneuberg
July 21, 2011 at 4:20pm
neil, how is it war when Nato has ZERO casualties (maybe some papercuts here and there), what we are doing is supporting an insurgency, one that seeks to end the regime of a man who killed hundreds of Americans in Lockerbie. And as I pointed out above, what kind of war would we be in since we are so determined to prevent any casualities. For the most part, the most successful revolutions were organic and arose from the people and not a foreign power. We failed in Iraq because Bush thought he could turn it into Texas, we are not trying to rebuild Libya, we are only aiding insurgents that are a hell of a lot better than the sociopath that exists now. To call what we are doing "War" cheapens the word. What the Libyans are doing is war, they are the ones fighting and dying, and Algeria, Chad, etc. are perfectly happy to supply Gadhafi with supplies and mercenaries, Nato destroying a generally empty tank is nothing compared to that, beyond this, the US involvement is less than that of the French and British, they have helped us in Afghanistan, they needed our aid in Libya because they knew that a Gadhafi genocide would have lead to hundreds of thousands of refugees and a Gadhafi without any restraints. Finally, our declaring war on Gadhafi would have been nuts, we would have been viewed as trying to take over Libya for its oil. Ultimately everyone in the world will acknowledge the TNC and from there the onus will be on them, not the US. At the very least I am confident they will be far superior to Gadhafi.
- blackton
July 21, 2011 at 8:36pm
Interesting comments by Blackton! As for Somalia and Yemen, both those countries face a terrible enemy which soldiers cannot fight: drought. It's unfashionable to discuss in these days of the deficit hawk, but entire countries, including this one, are being devastated by violent and terrible weather. Many of the conflicts of the future may involve a severe lack of basic resources. Egypt is already in such a situation is it not? with a population heavily dependent upon wheat imports - and the crop in the US is threatened this year. As it is, the Egyptian economy has suffered since the Arab spring and animals there are starving. It is really an awful thing, the families who depended upon tourists can't feed their horses and donkeys, who are dying. We need to think, if we're thinking of saving lives, in terms of saving ecological systems and building the necessary infrastructure to help bring water and other resources to places like Yemen and Somalia. We need to think about what's really important, when we pontificate and opine on the world stage - all too often we forget that real people, real animals depend upon something as basic and seemingly irrelevant as tourists going to see the pyramids in order to scrape out a living. In areas like Somalia and Yemen, it's even worse. The water situation is truly dire, indeed one could look at the Sahara, the Arabian deserts, drought in Syria, the rivers turning to mud in Iraq, fires in Israeli forests, giant sandstorms in Arizona, soil so tough in the American south entire crops are being lost because the little plants can't push their way toward the sun. We're arguing over small stuff really. Shouldn't we agree that life and planet are worth saving and go from there? Nowhere is the need more immediate and dire than in Africa and the Middle East, but it's all connected to our own well-being here in the US - so it behooves us to get to work on these issues.
- Sophia
July 21, 2011 at 9:07pm
Probably too late, but ditto blackton. What we're doing is worth doing if only to reinforce the idea that our allies may have some utility beyond vacation destinations.
- Robert Powell
July 24, 2011 at 1:58pm