Dispatch the Troops, But Protect Libyans

Under the authority of the UN Security Council, the United States, France, England and other allied forces started a large-scale military campaign against Gadhafi’s government last Saturday.

Since Libya broke out in huge political protest against Gadhafi’s dictatorship, the dictator has launched an iron-fisted suppression of those protesters. He has sent infantry to attack unarmed, protesting crowds. While carrying out military operations against the rebel army’s military bases he has shown no mercy to innocent bystanders.

Despite the fact that Libya is a sovereign country, these types of brutal massacres are in violation of modern society’s accepted values and convictions. On March 17, the UN Security Council agreed to establish a no-fly zone over Libya and authorized the international community to take all necessary measures to protect Libya’s people and their homes from the threat of armed militants. Believing that the purpose of the Security Council is to protect the Libyans, Russia and the never-meddling-in-other nations'-business country of China did not use the veto power granted to all permanent UN council members and instead abstained from voting. It is for this reason that China only yesterday made known its support of the Security Council resolution.

Due to Gadhafi’s violation of the UN Security Council cease-fire resolution (he continued to attack rebel troops in Benghazi), the multinational coalition has sent cruise missiles and fighter jets to destroy their air defense systems and to prevent Gadhafi’s forces from harming Libyan civilians. In this sense, the actions of the multinational coalition can be considered justified.

The problem, though, is that starting a war is easy, but finishing it is hard. The Security Council has only agreed to set up the no-fly zone, protect civilians, impose a stronger arms embargo, freeze Gadhafi’s assets and a few other sanctions; however, it has not authorized the coalition forces to send ground troops to occupy Libya. In this type of situation, if Gadhafi ignores the Security Council resolution and continues to suppress the rebel forces, it would seem that the only effective solution would be to make surgical strikes on ground targets.

If by some chance during the bombings of these targets, the coalition inadvertently harms Libyans who support Gadhafi, not only would this be inconsistent with the Security Council resolution, it would also cause Gadhafi to turn this into a much larger issue and would provoke pan-Arabist sentiments out of the already anti-Western Arabian world.

Actually, Gadhafi has already started to do this. Secretary General Amr Moussa of the Arab League, who was the first to recommend setting up a no-fly zone over Libya,has publicly criticized the coalition’s military actions, pointing out that: “What happened in Libya is different from the intended aim of imposing the no-fly zone. We want to protect civilians, not the bombing of more civilians."

There are also a variety of opinions inside the European Union concerning the bombing of Libya. German Foreign Minister Westerwelle yesterday quoted the Arab League’s criticism of the military attack on Libya and abstained from voting in the Security Council. He said that reservation is the correct attitude for Germany to take during this operation.

Lacking the support of the Arab League, the coalition’s military operation will have a hard time moving forward. In addition to that, President Obama expressed early on that launching a military operation was not his first choice. Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also said that in the coming days America will go behind the scenes (before this he repeatedly emphasized that America will not send ground troops into Libya) and hand command of this operation over to England and France. America is not planning on this affair to escalate any more. They absolutely do not intend for Libya to turn into a second Iraq or a second Afghanistan.

The Security Council’s lack of sufficient authority, the Arab League’s opposition, the European Union’s lack of consensus and America’s lack of long term leadership are all factors that will cause this military operation in Libya to be temporary, and a protracted war to be improbable.

The coalition’s military actions as of late should have already weakened the better part of Gadhafi’s military forces. Next, they will start with diplomacy. They will try to persuade Gadhafi to use peaceful methods to deal with the conflict in his country. However, whether this will be effective is impossible to tell; we can only watch it as it evolves before us. In the end, this is Libya’s issue, and it can only be resolved by the Libyans.