Spin Coalition
by digby
Apparently, the Libyan coalition of the willing isn’t really a military coalition so much as a public relations coalition. Obama is seemingly only semi-involved, making rousing speeches from Rio and affecting a secondary role while Sarkozy and Cameron take the lead, the US is firmly in charge. That’s an improvement from the defiant go-it-alone posture of the Bush years, but I doubt that anyone will be fooled for long unfortunately. Here’s Jim Miklasewski of NBC:
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This isn’t really surprising. The US spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined for a reason. They want to run all military operations.
Justin Elliot of Salon writes that Admiral Mullen suggested that the US was going to hand off responsibility as soon as possible. As he says: “It will be interesting to see if that happens.”
Update: It’s hard to know if this is spin or not, but let’s just say it wasn’t exactly unpredictable:
Western forces pounded Libya’s air defenses and patrolled its skies on Sunday, but their day-old intervention hit a serious diplomatic setback as the Arab League chief condemned the “bombardment of civilians.”
As European and U.S. forces unleashed warplanes and cruise missiles against Muammar Gaddafi’s air defenses and armor, the Libyan leader said the air strikes amounted to terrorism and vowed to fight to the death.
While his eastern forces fled from the outskirts of Benghazi in the face of the allied air attacks, Gaddafi sent tanks into Misrata, the last rebel city in western Libya. Among the densely packed houses they were less vulnerable to attack from the air without the risk of killing innocent civilians.
Sixty-four people were killed in the Western bombardment overnight, a Libyan government health official said, but it was impossible to verify the report as government minders refused to take reporters in Tripoli to the sites of the bombings.
Arab League chief Amr Moussa called for an emergency meeting of the group of 22 states to discuss Libya. He requested a report into the bombardment which he said had “led to the deaths and injuries of many Libyan civilians.”
Maybe they only expected the “coalition” to hold together for a day, but it’s hard to imagine that they wouldn’t have preferred them to stick with them for at least a little bit longer.
Update II: What Fallows said.
And again, while “adult conversations” are supposedly all the rage, perhaps we could have one about our dependence on oil and the costs involved. These wars are expensive. Do people realize what they are actually paying per gallon for gas?
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