Anthony Cordesman factual analysis tends to be better than those of other experts. On Libya he rightly writes:
French, British, and US leaders do not seem to have fully coordinated, but it is clear that they sought and got international cover from the UN by claiming a no fly zone could protect civilians when their real objective was to use force as a catalyst to drive Qaddafi out of power. They seem to have assumed that a largely unknown, divided, and fractured group of rebels could win through sheer political momentum and could then be turned into a successful government. They clearly planned a limited air campaign that called for a politically safe set of strikes again against Qaddafi’s air defense and air force, and only limited follow-up in terms of ground strikes against his forces. And then, they waited for success…
[…]
Yesterday’s announcement that British and French military advisors are going to help is not going to alter that situation quickly. It will take months more – at a minimum – to properly train and equip them and it will take a radical shift in rebel leadership to give them meaningful unity and discipline.In the interim an enduring war of attrition will turn a minor humanitarian crisis into a major one [..]
With those facts on the table, one might expect a call to end the war. Negotiate some some ceasefire, Gaddafi already accepted the African Union’s proposal, and press the rebels who first rejected it to agree to it. End the war, start the politics.
But Cordesman instead goes nuts and calls for massive escalation, killing of more people and years of nation building:
France, Britain, the US and other participating members of the Coalition need to shift to the kind of bombing campaign that targets and hunts down Qaddafi’s military and security forces in their bases and as they move – as long before they engage rebel forces as possible. Qaddafi, his extended family, and his key supporters need to be targeted for their attacks on Libyan civilians, even if they are collocated in civilian areas. They need to be confronted with the choice between exile or death, and bombing needs to be intense enough so it is clear to them that they must make a choice as soon as possible.
This kind of operation cannot be “surgical’ – if “surgical” now means minimizing bloodshed regardless of whether the patient dies. Hard, and sometimes brutal, choices need to be made between limited civilian casualties and collateral damage during the decisive use of force and an open-ended war of attrition that will produce far higher cumulative civilian casualties and collateral damage. The Coalition will also need to avoid the trap of blundering into some kind of ceasefire, where Qaddafi’s forces and unity will give him the advantage. This will be a “peace” that simply becomes a war of attrition and terror campaign by other means.
At the same time, France, Britain, and the US now have a special obligation to both finish what they started in military terms, and deal with the aftermath. A post-conflict Libya will need extensive help in building a workable political system, in rebuilding the capability to govern, in both rebuilding the existing economy and correcting for decades of Qaddafi’s reckless and constantly shifting eccentricities. It will need coordinated humanitarian relief. Force alone will simply be another form of farce.
Does he really believe Gaddafi can be removed by more bombing? How many wars have been won from the air? Not one. He does not say so but Cordesman surly knows that. A massive escalation of the bombing campaign now would clearly lead to a massive ground war.
It would of course also be far beyond the UN resolution and illegal. The principles of the Law of Armed Conflict are that use of force must be reasonable, necessary, proportionate and discriminate. Bombing Tripoli to prevent killing in Misurata is neither.
To the Sarkozy/Cameron/Obama lunacy of supporting one hardly definable party in a civil war Cordesman adds the lunacy of calling for another total and illegal war in Libya.