Long War: Today Gaddafi received two powerful body blows, sending him reeling into the ropes. The first blow was NATO launching an official military campaign against Gaddafi. NATO is now patrolling the Libyan coast, enforcing a sea blockade of weapons and supplies against the bad guys. Until today Turkey had been diplomatically hammering the US for starting an air war in Libya. Today Turkey did a 180 and is now making a major naval contribution to the new NATO mission. More to the point, Turkey is suddenly leading NATO to the trough, not the other way around.
Turkey has the most powerful military of any Muslim-majority nation. Turkey has one of the most powerful militaries of any nation. If Turkey had joined the Gulf War, it would have gone much better. Turkey is an 800-lbs. gorilla. Because of Turkey's declaration of war against Gaddafi several Arab states also joined the war. Active military participation in the alliance against Gaddafi now includes Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, and Jordan. And it looks as though NATO's sea campaign will eventually morph into NATO assuming control over the entire Libya War. In that case, NATO will be officially running the two biggest Long War hotspots: Afghanistan and Libya. It also means that the alliance against Gaddafi would include 33 countries. This unfolding diplomatic tour de force comes courtesy of Hillary Clinton and the State Department. Hillary is the ultimate leader of all aspects of the Libya War, not just diplomatic aspects.
The second blow Gaddafi received today was on the battlefield where the good guys knocked back his army as alliance fighter planes pulverized his armor and artillery.
The alliance has been saying many different things, "We are taking out Gaddafi" and "We are not taking out Gaddafi." But it has been saying with one voice that Odyssey Dawn is only an air campaign and the Rebel ground campaign is not being directly helped by the Western allies, however huge military cargo planes are seen leaving NATO bases in southern Europe, heading to Libya obviously to drop off equipment for a ground campaign.
And there is good news out of Yemen as Saudi Arabia begins to assert control over the situation there, possibly easing Saleh out of power and setting up a Saudi puppet government. If Saudi Arabia is able to assert military and even political control over Yemen and Bahrain, then the fact that the US has essentially closed down 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain doesn't look so bad, only a temporary shift. Saudi Arabia will have a tough row to hoe in all this and could (of course) fail; nevertheless things look better today than yesterday.
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