The Obama Administration has made very public their intention to get heavily involved in Libya for months on end, and finally started doing so last Monday, with airstrikes launched at the request of the “unity government” against the city of Sirte.
It’s still early going, but with the US keen to get heavily invested in Libya, the “unity government” could prove a major hindrance, as the faction has little territory, very little capacity for offensives to justify US air support, and a very rudimentary system of organization to grow that involvement.
The capture of Sirte has been seen as a major goal for all the different would-be governments in Libya, and the “unity government” didn’t seem particularly likely to take it on their own, which led to them asking for US help. It was the excuse to intervene that the US had been waiting for, but came at the price of throwing their weight behind one of the least formidable of the many limited Libyan factions.
The “unity government” hasn’t really fleshed out plans for what comes after Sirte, because winning Sirte was such a centerpiece goal and their forces so limited, it didn’t pay to look past that fight. At the same time, France and Italy have ground troops in Libya, part of what was being positioned as a Western intervention, and they’re backing another government, the Tobruk Parliament.
Western plans for overt intervention in Libya have been growing for awhile, but weren’t meant to start this soon. The US military involvement, and their choosing of a side so quickly is likely throwing a wrench into a lot of those plans, forcing rethinks.
So the US has gotten its wish, and ended up in Libya. That military intervention is sure to last a long, long time, but the justification for the sort of endless escalations we’ve seen in their other wars just aren’t in place yet, which could leave them spinning their wheels for some time.
Lets ask the Syrians just how much the opposition to air strikes by the local government matters when the US really wants to bomb something in an election season?
Seems like the Clinton/Obama Democrats have moved well beyond getting either the representative democracy within the US nor the countries they wish to bomb to actually approve of the bombing. Its pretty much just royal fiat that they bomb whomever they want to bomb. Which seems to be mainly people who are fighting either fascism or terrorists.
General Wesley Clark: Wars Were Planned – Seven Countries In Five Years
“This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”
https://youtu.be/9RC1Mepk_Sw
05/14/2015 Former ‘NATO’ Commander, Presidential Candidate Makes Millions Pushing Penny Stocks
Plato-quoting, West Point valedictorian, Rhodes scholar, former NATO Supreme allied commander, and one-time Presidential hopeful Gen. Wesley Clark had a carefully laid, three-point plan for life after public service.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-14/former-nato-commander-presidential-candidate-makes-millions-pushing-penny-stocks