The U.S. in Libya: Like it or not, we’re in for the long haul

Right now, it really does seem as though the Administration is fighting this war by the seat of its pants. It really does feel as though people expected that the initial Nato involvement would serve as the decisive factor, allowing the rebels to defeat Kazzafi without the need for added military aid. I don’t think that was ever going to happen, nor was I the only one.

So now, the next stage of the debate is going to take place. The longer the rebels take to defeat Qadhdhafi, the greater the chances are that you’ll see ground forces deployed to Libya, regardless of what President Obama says. I’m already seeing the precursors of the arguments for that eventuality being made by folks like Anne-Marie Slaughter and John Judis, among others.

That’s why I stated earlier that maybe that disclosure of CIA presence in Libya was a planned leak. Now we have CIA on the ground. The next step will be disclosing that Special Forces are on the ground. Let’s say that it’s June of 2011, and we’re still watching the rebels futz around, which wouldn’t be surprising. You’ll see the President make another address, saying that we’re now deploying Nato forces to assist the Libyan rebels in a final push against Gheddafi’s forces…

But I digress. The bottom line is that we own Libya now, for the long term. We won’t abandon the rebels, regardless of how utterly feckless they are. We also own the Libyan aftermath – and we have no idea of how that looks like. We have a lot of hopes for what it may look like, but as we learned in Iraq, hope is not a plan. And that’s why those of us who served in Iraq and Afghanistan were so bloody reluctant to get involved in Libya – because in some key respects, it bore a highly uncomfortable resemblance to what we experienced.

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