Will the U.S. Arm the Libyan Opposition?

Internal pressures on Barack Obama to have the U.S. intervene militarily alongside the Libyan opponents to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi have not decreased. On the contrary, they have increased.

Three important characters on Capitol Hill, three of the most popular and influential senators in Congress — namely John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John McCain and Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader — asked the president for military action against Col. Gadhafi.

In many television interviews, the three clearly spoke about the need to bomb the airports from which Gadhafi launches his military jets to hit his opponents. “We can’t risk allowing Gadhafi to massacre people,” Mitch McConnell said in an interview with Christiane Amanpour, ABC’s famous anchorwoman.*

Nevertheless, the White House does not want to get involved in unilateral U.S. military action, even though the option of armed intervention is always on the table for the president.

White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley said that it is far from being realized at the moment.

High-ranking Pentagon officials and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pointed out to Obama that the U.S. cannot afford to open another front in the war in the Middle East and that even the creation of a no-fly zone over Libyan skies would be a real and true act of war.

Indeed, to achieve it, the Americans first need to bomb Libyan anti-aircraft defenses, “[w]hich are effective, because the Russians sold them to him,” Daley said in a television interview.** “Lots of people throw around phrases of no-fly zone, and they talk about it as though it’s just a — a game on a video game or something,” Obama’s right hand man pointed out.

The White House would get international endorsement for the creation of a no-fly zone, but Russia, China (which has veto power in the U.N. Security Council) and the Arab League have declared that they are against it. So, for the moment, this way seems barred.

On the other hand, the administration does not want to run the risk of Moammar Gadhafi regaining control of the country (remote possibility) or of the Libyan civil war going on for a long time, causing instability in the region (a much more concrete possibility).

In order to avoid these two scenarios, the U.S. administration knows that it must militarily help the insurgents to overcome Gadhafi’s troops. Stephen Hadley, a former member of the National Security Council from the time of George W. Bush, has started an idea: sending weapons to the insurgents, having them arrive at Benghazi Airport.

[This is an] option – according to the newspaper The Independent – that the White House already has thought of. However, the idea is to not provide the weapons directly (to avoid political repercussions) but to make them arrive through a third country: Saudi Arabia.

According to the reconstruction by [The Independent’s] Robert Fisk, the administration already asked Riyadh to send heavy weapons to the insurgents last Friday. But Saudi authorities have taken time [to respond] (also) because they were involved in the day of rage of the Shiite minority.

If King Abdullah (who has an old score to settle with Gadhafi) gives the green light, the first deliveries could be carried out within a few days. The opposition needs anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to prevent a successful Gadhafi counter-offensive.

For the White House, which wants the colonel’s fall, this would be the first major move to exit the military-political deadlock of the Libyan situation.

*Editor’s note: This quote is actually from McCain, not McConnell.

**Editor’s note: This quote, while accurately translated, could not be verified.