American air forces are being pulled from attack missions in Libya. While the air armada that has been taking part in the curb stomping of Qaddafi's air, artillery, and armor assets will be on standby, other U.S. assets will continue to provide support to NATO forces who will continue that mission.
For once, and I should mark this day on the calendar, I agree with the President's actions.
My opinion on this should be pretty clear to anyone: We don't have a dog in the Libyan fight. The President has been taking Qaddafi's press releases at face value, and says that the air campaign prevented a bloodbath in Benghazi. Since he can't prove the negative, I'll have to take his word on that one. But if I agree, for the sake of the argument, that we needed to get involved in an internal Libyan conflict, then I agree with President Obama that we should be providing support to NATO and that's it.
There is no plus to the United States in this war. If Qaddafi wins, he hates us. If the 'rebels' win, they will hate us. France, Italy, and the rest of Europe will gain after the war when the crude starts flowing northward, but we haven't used Libyan oil for decades.
So today I agree with President Obama. Keep our men and women out of harm's way and let the Europeans shed blood, theirs or that of Libyan soldiers, for their oil. Heck, maybe he'll even get the Arab countries to contribute more planes than can be counted on two hands.
2 comments:
I think you forgot something Papa Bear.
NATO doesn't have it's own armed forces, and with the UK we supply 2/3 of NATOs military forces. How can we not be at the sharp end of the stick?
My understanding is that the armed forces of the European countries, (UK, France, Italy, etc.) will be providing the strike aircraft, while we will be providing support platforms, like recon, refueling, and such. Of course, in case bad things happen, our planes will be in Sicily just waiting for the word to launch. And no-one's said that the USN is going to stop lobbing cruise missiles into Libya.
Remember, most of the heavy lifting is already done. We've obliterated the static AD threat, shot up the command and control infrastructure, and disrupted the supply chain. All that's left is to basically do aerial search and destroy. I'm pretty sure the Confederate Air Force could do that if left to their own devices after the pasting we've given Qaddafi in the past couple of weeks.
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