Mission creep:NATO's come a long way from protecting Libyans
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The situation in the Libyan war, into which President Barack Obama took the United States back in March, is moving further away from its initially presented rationale.
The original idea, approved in a United Nations Security Council resolution from which five members abstained, was to authorize intervention to protect Libyan civilians from aggression by their government.
Now, nearly five months later, with NATO countries having carried out 19,000 air strikes, killing an unknown number of Libyan civilians, the objectives and outcome of the war are unclear. For the United States, the only certain result is that the war is costing millions of dollars a day, with the projected total to be $1 billion by September.
Moammar Gadhafi and his supporters, based in the capital Tripoli, are still holding onto roughly the western half of the country. Rebel forces based in Benghazi in the east, who are disorganized and ineffective despite NATO support, still have only the shifting framework of an alternative government called the National Transitional Council. France, the United Kingdom and the United States have more or less recognized it as the legitimate government of Libya in spite of its nature and are handing over to it billions in former Libyan government money.
Negotiations reportedly are now under way, which will allow Mr. Gadhafi to stay in Tripoli, in effect accepting the division of the country into two. The problem is that apparently the NTC will have to agree to this arrangement, yet the council already has been given its financial reward before reaching an accord. Its leadership is insisting that NATO provide troops to help them take the west of the country as well.
Mr. Obama's actions in the Libya affair are hard to understand. Americans are left to assume that the oil companies will get enough from the new arrangement for the war to be a net gain for the United States. In the meantime, the question of how many Libyans have been killed to achieve this remains overlooked in spite of the initial stated intention of U.S. actions.
First Published July 29, 2011 12:00 am
