The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #136495 Message #3136950
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
17-Apr-11 - 02:48 PM
Thread Name: BS: Bombing of Tripoli March-April, 2011
Subject: RE: BS: Bombing of Tripoli March-April, 2011
Thanks for the good wishes, Ron.
I'm not intending to misrepresent your position. What I'm concerned about is the process that is referred to as "mission drift" - what starts as minimal intervention builds into full scale involvement, because minimal intervention just won't do the job.
There is no process by which the rebel administration in Benghazi can be recognised as "the only legitimate government in Libya" except a vote by the Security Council to that effect. And that is not going to happen.
This means that the level and nature of the intervention is severely restricted. Going further than those limitations would involve an effective breach with the UN, as happened in the case of Iraq.
"More timely support from the air" - there are real limits on how effective air support can be in countering ground troops who are not using heavy transport and heavy weapons, but using mortars and hand held guns. I doubt if frozen funds are a major problem in the short run. Similarly supplying arms and even training for rebel troops is not going to tun them into an effective fighting force with any prospect of defeating the Tripoli based army for quite some time. I doubt if it would make much difference at this point.
A ceasefire without preconditions and an attempt to negotiate seems to me the only realistic way of stopping the killing. And if it turned put to be temporary, with the fighting starting again, I think it likely that this would very likely actually put the rebels in a stronger military position.