US officials have confirmed that American war planes, ground-attack aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles will be pulled out the Libya operation, starting this weekend. In addition, US naval ships and submarines are being withdrawn from the seas off Libya according to AFP.
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| Rebel fighters gather around two of their dead on the road to Brega in Libya (Telegraph) |
These steps are being taken, now that NATO took command of the entire coalition effort on Thursday.
The US will continue to play a supporting role – providing planes for mid-air refueling, jamming and surveillance. However, air support for the rebels will have to be provided by the remaining coalistion forces, including Qatar, UAE, Sweden, Britain, and France.
In Libya on Friday, rebels called for a ceasefire, after they were driven back by Gaddafi’s forces for the third day in a row. Gaddafi’s forces have rejected the ceasefire request, according to the Telegraph.
There’s an opinion column that asks the question, “Will Libya become Obama’s Iraq?”, in Friday’s Washington Post.
That’s the wrong question. The right question is, “Will Libya become Obama’s Vietnam?”
As I wrote several days ago, from the point of view of Generational Dynamics, the Iraq war could never have been “another Vietnam,” because the Vietnam was in a generational Crisis era during that war, while Iraq was in a generational Awakening era during the Iraq war. (See “31-Mar-11 News — US deepens involvement in Libya, as rebels suffer decisive reversal.”)
Libya is in a generation Crisis era, meaning that, as in Vietnam, the old ethnic civil wars of the past are going to be repeated, and the U.S. can neither cause nor prevent a new crisis civil war. All the U.S. can do is get caught in the middle, as happened in Vietnam.
The talk of a ceasefire offers a thin reed of hope that the U.S. might be able to extract itself. Every crisis civil war always begins with peace agreements alternating with periods of violence, until finally both sides tire of peace agreements and the real slaughter begins.
Libya currently appears to be headed towards a stalemate. If that can be translated into a peace agreement, then the U.S. and the West can extricate itself. Once we’re out, the Libyans can then go ahead and massacre each other, which is what’s going to happen anyway, whether we’re there or not.
This proposal is all fantasy, of course. The people of the U.S., France and Britain have become highly nationalistic about the Libyan uprising. (Though, as many people are pointing out, not about the Syrian,
Bahrani or Yemeni uprisings, nor the Ivory Coast war.) So we’re not about to let Gaddafi get the upper hand against the rebels.
However, the most interesting news today is the withdrawal of America’s war planes, missiles and ships form the battle. This will substantially reduce the firepower available to Nato and the rebels. There are powerful nationalistic forces at play in America today, and it will be interesting to see whether those nationalistic attitudes end up overriding the decision to keep America in a supporting role for long.
Big Peace
