Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Rebels Get Knocked Back. Wake-Up Call For NATO
Long War: Because of bad weather allied warplanes did not fly over Libya yesterday. Without air support the rebels were knocked back about 100 miles until they made a stand at Ajdabiya, an eastern city with friendly tribes. In the central part of the theater the tribes are loyal to Gaddafi and they rose up against the rebels as Gaddafi's forces launched their counter-offensive. Gaddafi's army has laid down minefields in the territory that it reconquered, which will make the next rebel advance very difficult, if not impossible, without NATO getting more involved on the ground. While all this was going on America's major allies were meeting to discuss the Libya War. The defeat of rebel forces woke up the allies to some degree, focusing them on the need to arm the rebels and put large numbers of Western Special Forces soldiers in amongst the rebels to train and lead them. The rebels have no strategy or even the inkling that such a thing as strategy exists. For instance, they should never have rushed into the heart of pro-Gaddafi tribes and allowed themselves to get chewed up. Instead, they should have bypassed this snake pit and mounted an offensive against Misurata to break Gaddafi's siege there. Also, they should look at weather reports and be aware of when NATO will be able to provide air cover. But this is probably a blessing in disguise. It opens the door to NATO putting boots on the ground. Bear in mind that NATO already has boots on the ground. There are small numbers of US Special Forces in Libya acting as spotters for allied war planes. Canada has sent Special Forces to Libya and did not do a good job of preventing this information from reaching the media. The Pentagon tells us that it knows there are Al-Qaeda fighters within the ranks of the Libyan rebels. If they are saying this publicly, then they are probably aware of the need to take over the rebel militia. America/NATO is a big slow-moving bureaucratic monster. It moves much slower than we would like, but the important thing in the Long War is movement in the right direction more than the speed of the movement. Instead of the Long War, we might as well call it the Slow War, both terms amount to the same thing.
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