Widening the war in Libya

Facing a possible military standoff, NATO forces this week stepped up the pressure on Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime by bombing his residential compounds in Tripoli and warning of further attacks on Libyan government buildings and military headquarters. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said there would be no attempt to kill Qaddafi himself, but that “command-and-control” centers were “legitimate targets.”

NATO, meanwhile, aimed much of its air power at pro-Qaddafi troops besieging Misurata, currently held by rebels. The Western alliance has found it difficult to take out the armor and artillery that have been shelling the city, because those heavy weapons have been placed in residential neighborhoods. But last week, the U.S. decided to provide NATO with two unmanned Predator drones, which can more precisely hit targets in urban areas.

Those drones are “the best tool for the job,” said Steven Metz in The New Republic. They can linger in the sky for up to 40 hours, and also have a “video feed that allows for more accurate target assessment than conventional bombers.” Such capabilities will help minimize civilian casualties, and “prevent the Libyan military from launching quick strikes when NATO aircraft are not around.”

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But “drones and cruise missiles” will never “modify the regime’s behavior,” said Christopher Hitchens in Slate.com. If the allies really want to alleviate the suffering of Misurata’s “wretched inhabitants,” they should scrap their self-imposed operational limits and send special forces to kill Qaddafi. If this tyrant is left in command of a “depraved armed force,” we’ll continue to see an “increasing flow of civilian deaths.”

And after regime change, what then? asked Michael Chertoff and Michael Hayden in The Washington Post. “We may tell ourselves that Qaddafi’s ouster will end our mission.” But as we learned in Iraq, toppling a dictator is the easy part. The real work will be stopping a leaderless Libya from descending into tribal warfare or becoming a terrorist hub. So no matter what you think about our involvement in Libya, “prudence suggests we begin serious planning about what happens when we win.”