Allies’ Lack of Exit Plan Risks Dividing Libya With Qaddafi Keeping Power

[dkf]

Allied military leaders said the attack on Libya may end without dislodging Muammar Qaddafi, highlighting the risk of splitting the country and the absence of a clear exit strategy.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said Qaddafi’s ouster wasn’t the aim of the campaign, whose stated goal is to protect civilians from a potential onslaught.

“It’s like someone rushing to action in the movies -- It looks good but it doesn’t work in real life,” Jan Techau, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Brussels and a former analyst at the NATO Defense College in Rome, said in an interview. “You can’t have an exit strategy without having goals, and we don’t know what the goals are in Libya.”

The conflict might lead to the division of Libya, the holder of Africa’s biggest oil reserves, between liberated parts and Qaddafi-ruled territory, said Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.

“There’s an historic analogy to this: The no-fly zones set up in northern Iraq after the first Gulf War which allowed the Kurds to set up an autonomous region,” Perthes said.


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-21/allies-lack-of-exit-plan-risks-dividing-libya-with-qaddafi-keeping-power.html

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. They never had any plan beyond making Obama look strong and decisive

while he was away on a half assed trade junket to see the Jesus statue with his family.
Plans? I don't need no stinking plans, I've got cruise missles...who needs plans?

[leftstreet]

2. FFS Just get to the partitioning already. Save lives and money n/t

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. Another war. Another FUBAR. Kinda like water and wet.

[damntexdem]

4. No, Gaddafi risks dividing Libya with no exit plan.

Without the Allied actions, the risk was that Gaddafi would reunite Libya under his murderous regime.

[kenny blankenship]

5. Maybe there is a gap between the Allies' goal and what they can say about the goal publicly

thanks to the very limited unrealistic goals expressed in the UN Security Council Resolution authorizing force to protect Libyan civilians. I'd like to think so.

I can't believe the Brit, French and US leadership does not understand that removing Gaddafy from power HAS TO BE their goal. It's true that Obama is nearly compulsive about embracing half-measures. But someone surely must have cornered him and explained that there's no such thing as being half-way at war. The only way he can come out of this looking good is to produce a SWIFT DECISIVE ASSKICKING for Gaddafy and victory for the rebel side. If it drags out, it will be a disaster and a disgrace. All the bad shit that was to befall Benghazi and the rebel side will happen anyway, and Obama and the west will look scatterbrained and impotent.

Hopefully we will "protect civilians from Gaddafy's murderous vengeance" all the way to Tripoli.