Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who led the U.S. forces in World War II against Japan, said once that “any future defense secretary who advises the [American] president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined'”. I had not heard of this view before, expressed by one of the heroes of the Second World War in 1950, until I read it in the transcript of the speech given by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates at West Point military academy on February 25. I was reminded of MacArthur's saying, as quoted by Gates, as I heard President Barack Obama speak on Monday night about U.S. intervention in Libya. He spoke of a limited operation, and did not use the word ‘war' in a speech that lasted 28 minutes. He thus repeated what the White House had stressed since the beginning of U.S. airstrikes, in implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, which is the assertion that the military intervention is limited, that it has a limited scope, and a limited timeframe. Obama knows better than to involve his country in wars, as did George W. Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, his alternative plan is not very reassuring. While I have wanted (for years before Obama) for Muammar Gaddafi to leave, so that the nightmare that he is would cease to burden the Libyan people, I do not believe that the way forward to accomplish this is imposing an economic embargo, a no-fly zone and aiding the rebels. Short-term wars often turn into the most protracted of wars. Instead, what is needed is targeting Gaddafi and the mercenaries directly surrounding him, in Tripoli and in Al-Zawiya in particular. In Libya, the regime shoots to kill, and the departure of Gaddafi would mean that this regime will depart with him. The National Transitional Council must no doubt be able to lead Libya to safety, and I probably will face little disagreement when I say that any regime that succeeds the Gaddafi regime in Libya will be better, as it is impossible to have anything worse. Here, I find myself at odds with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, perhaps for the first time ever. I read an interview with him in the press in which he warned that the continuation of the conflict may turn Libya into a ‘second Iraq', and offered for this reason to mediate a cease-fire in Libya. But I hope that fire will not cease until the Gaddafi regime collapses completely and irreversibly. Libya will not become a second Iraq simply because there is no sectarian division there. All Libyans are Sunnis, and we will not see a monopoly of power by one party alone, and claims of being persecuted and excluded by another. Also, Libyan tribalism is overblown, and we have not heard anything about tribal divisions under the monarchy. President Obama had said at the beginning of the Libyan popular uprising that Gaddafi must leave immediately. At least he did not change his position during the speech that he gave on the eve of NATO's assumption of leading military action in implementation of the UN resolution to close Libyan airspace. Nevertheless, I found him to be less determined than President Sarkozy and Prime Minister David Cameron, who both demanded in clear terms at the London Conference – which coincided with Obama's speech – that Gaddafi leave immediately and said that there can be no solution without his departure first. Perhaps Obama is in a more difficult position than his European counterparts. His party, the Democratic Party, is against foreign military intervention, while the Republican Party supports intervention everywhere, despite all the disasters caused by the Bush administration, to the point that they have asked Obama to rush to the aid of the opposition in Iran. In reality, Obama was closer to the Republicans in the Libyan issue even if he denies this, because the UN Security Council resolution was issued to protect civilians, not to aid the rebels. Nonetheless, coalition airstrikes have indeed managed to halt the march of Gaddafi's forces in the East, prompting the rebels to pursue them westwards. Perhaps President Obama was referring to this in his speech when he justified the intervention, by saying that he wanted to stop a potential massacre that would have “stained the conscience of the world”, and said that he refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action. I would like to say here, since I don't trust the goodwill of Western countries too much, that Gaddafi must step down before Libya can rise up from destruction, and then note an important point in Obama's speech, which is important because of its lack thereof: He did not mention Yemen, Syria or Bahrain in his speech, which confirms that the U.S. administration's approach to these countries is very different from its approach to the Libyan issue. [email protected]
