US Commander: No Risk of Mission Creep in Libya

Insists US Will Abide by UN Mandate

US Rear Admiral Peg Klein insisted Tuesday that there was absolutely no risk of “mission creep” in Libya, and that the US would abide entirely by the UN mandates with respect to the war.

“President Obama was very specific when he spoke about this recently,” Klein said. The admiral is one of a very select few who think this is the case, of course, as President Obama’s comments in Chile on Monday jumped back and forth between “support of an international mandate” and insisting that US policy was regime change in Libya.

Of course there were already accusations of “mission creep” on Saturday, just hours after the war began. The initial talk of a “no-fly zone,” then, quickly escalated into a massive air campaign aimed at destroying Libya’s military and possibly assassinating Moammar Gadhafi.

Even now, military officials concede that there is no “exit strategy” of any sort, and the goals of the war remain extremely ill-defined. With no concrete mission being articulated to the American public, it will be hard to decide whether that mission is expanding or not.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.