NATO's Savage Aggression

Long War: Over the weekend Libyan rebels recaptured 4 cities from Gaddafi's army. These cities represent a big chunk of the country's energy infrastructure. Qatar says it will market Libyan oil to the outside world for the rebels, giving them a ready source of funds. The rebels' rapid advance over the past 48 hours is due to a savage prosecution of the air war by NATO forces, not any special effort by the rebels. Allied warplanes are attacking Gaddafi's soldiers as they sleep in barracks, especially battalions that are being activated and slated to move up to the front. This means that the allies are getting good intelligence from the ground. Allied warplanes are also strafing Gaddafi's army as it retreats, chewing it up before it can dig in to new positions. This is an unusual degree of aggression for western military powers, who typically refuse to attack a weaker opponent that is retreating. In the cold calculus of war this savage aggression on the part of NATO is a good thing. It opens the possibility of the war ending sooner, rather than later. This is important because NATO is not yet commanding NATO forces, as goofy as that sounds. An American general is still the operational commander of Odyssey Dawn. In a few days a committee-selected Canadian general will take over and the tempo of the air war will probably slow down. If that happens it will be a bad thing because the entire Mideast and north Africa continue to heave with Rage Rebellion, Al-Qaeda is starting to make inroads among the chaos, and that issue needs to be addressed very quickly. In Yemen, pro-American dictator Saleh is on the verge of launching a civil war. Half the Yemeni Army is now aligned with Rage Rebels and the other half is loyal to Saleh. There had been active and ongoing counter-insurgency operations against AQAP in Yemen. Because of the Rage these operations have halted and AQAP (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) has seized control of a town and a Yemeni weapons factory. This is almost certainly the tip of the iceberg because across the entire region virtually all Al-Qaeda counter-insurgency operations have ground to a halt. When and if the entire Rage Rebellion is brought under US control and democratic elections are successfully held, then a huge CIA drone campaign will have to be launched across all of the Mideast and north Africa to clean up the aftermath of the Rage. This is a best case scenario. The Long War will grind forward for decades no matter what, but setting the stage for market-friendly slow and steady progress will be realized over the next few days. On Monday Obama makes a speech to the nation about the Libya War. He better make it a good speech. The first opinion poll to come out at the beginning of the Libya War showed 70% of Americans in favor of US involvement. In just a few days that has dropped to 47%. A drop that fast has never happened before. Opinion polls during the Iraq War dropped at a pace similar to Vietnam, only a few percentage points dropping every year, a slow and manageable drop. The reason for the plummeting drop in the Libya War is Obama refusing to take a leadership role and his bizarre policy of disavowing overall American leadership. Also, Team Obama is attacking itself. Right now Sec. of State Clinton is saying the Libya War is in America's interest and Sec. of Defense Gates is saying that the war is not in America's interest. Obama is chiming in here and there as though he were just another cabinet secretary, not President of the United States.