The Lingering Repercussions of NATO’s Stupid War in Libya

Libyan rebels gathered in Ajdabiya, March 2011. Credit: Al Jazeera English
Libyan rebels gathered in Ajdabiya, March 2011. Credit: Al Jazeera English

From the beginning, Antiwar.com warned of the inevitable blowback that would result from the US-NATO war in Libya. Eager to prove itself on the side of Arab Spring protests, America chose sides in a civil war on trumped up pretenses of humanitarian intervention. Helping to overthrow Muammar Gadhafi, a dispensable ally at the time, ended up bolstering the power and influence of dangerous armed Islamist groups and destabilizing much of North Africa, most notably spawning a coup in Mali.

A new piece from the Guardian reports that, as Walter Russell Mead summarizes it, “The Mali War was blowback from the Libya War; now we have blowback from the Mali War… in Libya.”

The impetus for this uprising [in Mali] came from ethnic Tuareg soldiers who had fought alongside Muammar Gaddafi and fled south when his regime fell. They were later augmented by jihadists from Libya and across north Africa, who triggered international condemnation for their destruction of ancient Sufi Muslim shrines in Timbuktu. The fear across the Maghreb is that the French operation that has pushed them out of the northern cities has inadvertently compounded problems elsewhere in north Africa as jihadist units disperse.

“If you squeeze a balloon in one part, it bulges out in another,” said Bill Lawrence, of International Crisis Group, a political consultancy. “There’s no question that the French actions in Mali had the effect of squeezing that balloon towards Algeria and Libya.”

So the US-NATO war in Libya bolstered Islamist militias and scattered jihadists around to neighboring countries, and now it’s coming full circle back to Libya. As usual, US interventionism generates unintended consequences which are then used to justify more interventionism.

But the truth is, things never fully quieted down in Libya. The current government, hailed by Barack Obama as on the path to secularism and democracy, has allied with jihadist groups like Ansar al-Sharia, one of many that refuse to disarm and recognize the government (or whatever you call it).

“This leaves us wondering exactly how all those clever humanitarians in the White House run the numbers these days,” Mead writes. “Do they calculate that our Libyan excursion saved more lives than have been lost in the subsequent chaos in not one but now several northern African countries? We certainly hope that whatever accounting they use is very clever, because from our back-of-the-envelope arithmetic, there has been zero benefit to the national interest from this poorly judged, poorly prepared, poorly handled war.”

Beyond having no benefit to the “national interest,” this convoluted mess has been a net loss for US interests and for the well-being of most in the region.

Why Obama’s Chemical Weapons ‘Red Line’ in Syria Is Bogus

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After months of being reluctant to address it, the White House today announced it now believes the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons in its bloody, two-year civil war.

“Our intelligence community does asses with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent Sarin,” the administration said in a letter.

This seems to violate President Obama’s “red line,” triggering some unspecified action presumed to be military in nature. Commentators are now saying the likelihood of a direct US military intervention is greater than ever. While it’s not clear whether that’s true, this talk about a “red line” is bogus.

Obama’s ‘Red Line’ Has Shifted Before

Last year, President Obama outlined what would be a “red line” for his administration, beyond which arguments against going to war in Syria would lose their weight. In August 2012 he said, “A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.”

And then in December when reports came out about the Assad regime “moving around” stockpiles of chemicals, with some analysts saying they were being mixed and possibly weaponized, the Obama administration stayed silent.

“Mr. Obama’s ‘red line’ appears to have shifted,” The New York Times reported. “His warning against ‘moving’ weapons has disappeared from his public pronouncements,” being replaced with a “new warning” that “if Mr. Assad makes use of those weapons, presumably against his own people or his neighbors, he will face unspecified consequences.”

The Obama administration has consistently noted the overwhelming costs of military action in Syria. The “red line” is just an obligatory warning meant to make them seem concerned about humanitarian suffering and to maintain the credibility of their threats of war. It has proven malleable before, and the administration could just as easily back out of it again.

Chemical Weapons Are Not a Game Changer

The supposed line that chemical weapons cross is almost entirely fictional. Consider Bilal Y. Saab, Executive Director of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, on why Obama’s supposed red line on the use of chemical weapons “lacks credibility.”

Why has the United States drawn a red line here and not elsewhere?

Obama’s words could reflect a humanitarian concern and a moral responsibility to prevent the further loss of life in Syria. Yet the president has not reacted forcefully to the tens of thousands who have already perished without a single poison being used. Chemical weapons are considered weapons of mass destruction, and if used effectively, could kill in the thousands. But so can fighter jets, helicopters, tanks and artillery—and they already have.

Indeed, chemical weapons hold a special place in the international psyche, but they are no more a threat to civilian life really than what has already been going on in Syria. If too much mass death were really the trigger for US intervention, why wasn’t the line drawn at 10,000? 30,000? UN estimates go as high as 70,000 dead. Any of these figures could have been used by the administration as a last straw, but there hasn’t been any intervention.

Obama Sees the Military Options as Too Costly

US military officials have been quick to point out the costs of war in Syria. A year ago, White House spokesman Jay Carney told a press conference, “We do not believe that militarization, further militarization of the situation in Syria at this point is the right course of action. We believe that it would lead to greater chaos, greater carnage.”

“We do nobody a service when we leap before we look, where we…take on things without having thought through all the consequences of it,” Obama said in a January 2013 interview with CBS. “We are not going to be able to control every aspect of every transition and transformation” in conflicts around the world, he added.

“In a situation like Syria,” he said in a separate interview with The New Republic, “I have to ask, can we make a difference in that situation? Would a military intervention have an impact? How would it affect our ability to support troops who are still in Afghanistan? What would be the aftermath of our involvement on the ground? Could it trigger even worse violence or the use of chemical weapons? What offers the best prospect of a stable post-Assad regime?”

And of the humanitarian rationale: “How do I weigh tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria,” he said, “versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?”

In Senate testimony earlier this month, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said “military intervention at this point could hinder humanitarian relief operations. It could embroil the United States in a significant, lengthy, and uncertain military commitment. Unilateral military action could strain other key international partnerships, as no international or regional consensus on supporting armed intervention now exists. And finally, military intervention could have the unintended consequence of bring the United States into a broader regional conflict or proxy war.”

The truth is, the US lacks feasible military options. A no-fly zone is likely to put more civilians at risk, and bombing the chemical stockpiles would be about as bad as Assad unleashing them on his own targets. If the US were to move in with ground forces to secure the weapons, it would take at least 75,000 troops, and any limited mission to secure the weapons would lend itself to mission creep and eventually turn into regime change with no viable interim government, which would then turn into a long and bloody occupation costing hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars as it did in Iraq. Finally, the intervention would lack both domestic and international legal legitimacy. This doesn’t even get me started on the far-reaching geo-political consequences.

Maybe the Obama administration will be goaded into war in Syria because of pressure from European allies (who won’t be doing the heavy lifting themselves) and from rabid interventionists in Congress of the John McCain type. But US reluctance thus far should temper fears that such a scenario is imminent.

The Convoluted Path to ‘Chemical Weapons’ Belief

The path from Monday to today, which has brought the US to believe Syria’s chemical weapons use is unusual. This timeline may help us better get a grip on how (though not why) officials got from A to B.

Monday: Chuck Hagel is in Israel speaking with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe ‘Bogie‘ Ya’alon. According to Hagel, Syrian chemical weapons didn’t come up.

Tuesday: Israeli Brigadier General Itai Brun delivers a speech in Tel Aviv claiming that Syria has “repeatedly” used chemical weapons.

Later Tuesday: Secretary of State John Kerry calls Benjamin Netanyahu to specifically press him on Brun’s claim. Kerry says Netanyahu was unable to confirm the allegation at all, while Netanyahu’s office refuses to make any public comments on the call or Brun’s claim. Kerry follows up with this non-proof by pushing NATO to send more aid to Syria’s rebels.

Wednesday: Hagel points out how weird it is that no one in Israel told him any of this stuff during his visit, in which he (civilian leader of the US military) met with Israeli military officials.

Thursday: The White House says it believes Syria has used chemical weapons on a “small scale.” Hagel says he believes that too.

The holes in the story:

1. Israel’s military claims to have provided the evidence on which Brun makes his statement to the US, even though Hagel has apparently never heard of it.

2. Conversely, Israel’s military suggests that Brun’s assessment is based in large measure on “visual evidence” i.e. photographs from Syria’s rebels of people foaming at the mouth. This “evidence” was certainly familiar to the US before Monday, and they still had repeatedly said over the past weeks that they didn’t believe Syria had actually used chemical weapons.

Other things worth noting:

3. Brun claims Syria used chemical weapons five times. The US “assessment” says twice. Media reports of rebels claiming chemical weapons use are common, but only twice did the reports get major coverage. The more recent of the two saw Syrian troops killed by suffocating gas, leading analysts to believe that the rebels had used a make-shift lachrymatory agent as a weapon, not the “nerve agent” that Syria’s arsenal consists of and is accused of using. The US ended both of the major reports claiming that they didn’t believe chemical weapons were used, but now say they do, based only on “evidence” that they already had and already dismissed.

More Bush-Inspired Epigrams for his Library Day

In honor of Bush’s library dedication today, here are some more epigrams he inspired from my 2003 book, Terrorism & Tyranny:

Killing foreigners is no substitute for protecting Americans.

Habeas corpus is an insurance policy to prevent governments from going berserk.

Most of the homeland security successes in the war on terrorism have been farces or frauds.

Perpetual war inevitably begets perpetual repression. It is impossible to destroy all alleged enemies of freedom everywhere without also destroying freedom in the United States.

The Patriot Act treats every citizen like a suspected terrorist and every federal agent like a proven angel.

The more information government gathers on people, the more power it has over them. The more government surveillance, the more intimidated Americans become.

Nothing happened on 9/11 that made the federal government more trustworthy.

There is no technological magic bullet that will make the government as smart as it is powerful.

Citizens should distrust politicians who distrust freedom.

In the long run, people have more to fear from governments than from terrorists. Terrorists come and go, but power-hungry politicians will always be with us.
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For epigrams on freedom, government, & terrorism, click here.

White House to Meet With Yemeni Anti-Drone Activist

Farea al-Muslimi, the Yemeni youth activist and journalist who testified at the Senate Judiciary Hearing this week on the drone war, will be meeting with White House officials to tell them too about how the drone war terrorizes civilians and helps al-Qaeda recruitment.

Danger Room:

Danger Room has confirmed that before he leaves Washington D.C. on Friday, al-Muslimi will meet with White House officials to tell them what he told a Senate subcommittee yesterday: CIA and military drone strikes are strengthening al-Qaida’s Yemeni affiliate and making average Yemenis hate America.

“He will meet with a working-level expert on Yemen policy,” a White House official confirms, declining to provide the name of the official or the time of the meeting. In other words, he shouldn’t count on an Oval Office sit-down with the President — or even a quick meet with Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco. And the meeting isn’t a response to al-Muslimi’s testimony yesterday.

But there’s buzz now around al-Muslimi, a Sana’a-based freelance writer on public policy. And that didn’t exist the last time he came to Washington — when al-Muslimi also had a White House meeting. In September, he recalls to Danger Room, al-Muslimi trudged from one drab policymaker’s office to another — he declines to give specifics — while his interlocutors grew uncomfortable when he wanted to talk about the human costs of the drones. “It was a taboo,” al-Muslimi says, “like if you’re talking in a conservative society about sex.”

In other words, don’t hold your breath that the Obama White House cares about al-Muslimi’s eye-witness testimony of the human costs of the secret bombing campaign in Yemen.

Here is al-Muslimi’s powerful testimony to the Senate committee this week: