Pressure mounts for a U.S. intervention in Libya

What happened

Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi this week launched a fierce counterattack on rebels who have seized control of half the country, smashing their positions with airstrikes, armor, and artillery. Residents in Zawiya, 30 miles west of the capital, Tripoli, said their city had been “wiped off the face of the earth” after tanks and fighter jets bombarded the opposition-held town. Huge blasts also rocked the oil port of Ras Lanuf in east Libya—much of which is in rebel hands—as warplanes hit anti-Qaddafi rebels and pipelines supplying the desert town with fresh water. Unable to stop attacks from above, Libya’s poorly armed rebels are now asking foreign powers to set up a no-fly zone over the country. “We will fight our own battles on the ground,” said one fighter in Ras Lanuf, “but we need their help from the sky.”

With the rebel offensive floundering and casualties mounting—up to 2,000 people are estimated to have died in the three-week conflict—the Obama administration and the United Nations faced growing pressure to come to the rebels’ aid. Washington was weighing its options as The Week went to press, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that setting up a no-fly zone “begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses.” Direct military intervention, Gates said, could easily escalate and drag the U.S. into Libya’s civil war.

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What the editorials said

Gates is right to caution against a no-fly zone, said The Boston Globe, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the Arab world deeply distrustful of any American intervention. The “great strength” of the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt is that they were entirely “home grown.” Similarly, the Libyans now fighting Qaddafi will ultimately enjoy greater legitimacy at home and abroad if they can topple the tyrant “without bombing runs by American fighter jets.” And we can’t ignore the very real risks that would be faced by the pilots flying those planes, said The Providence Journal-Bulletin. If a U.S. airman gets shot down and is held hostage, “the result could be catastrophic. Do not forget Mogadishu and Black Hawk Down.”

Those dangers have been overstated, said The Washington Post. Parts of the Libyan air force have already defected, and the opposition has captured several of its bases. Grounding the rest should be a “manageable undertaking” for U.S. and allied forces. Let’s not forget that we established, and enforced, a no-fly zone over Iraqi Kurdistan for more than a decade without eliminating Saddam Hussein’s air defenses.

What the commentators said

Libya is the perfect location for a no-fly zone, said James Thomas and Zachary Cooper in The Wall Street Journal. Most of the country’s key cities are situated within 10 miles of the coast. So “rather than putting combat air patrols over Libya”—where they could encounter resistance from Qaddafi’s air defenses—Libyan jets could instead be safely intercepted by missiles launched from Western warships or fighter planes operating offshore. There’s another option, said Marc Thiessen in The Washington Post. We could provide arms, intelligence, and training to the rebels, just as President Reagan did in helping resistance fighters topple regimes in Nicaragua and Afghanistan.

Better yet, “let’s kill Qaddafi,” said Phil Bronstein in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Our feral Special Forces and unblinking drones” eliminate terrorists every day along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, so why doesn’t President Barack Obama task them with taking out the madman in Tripoli, before he slaughters more Libyans?

For Obama, Libya presents a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation, said Mark Landler in The New York Times. Past presidents who intervened in Lebanon and Somalia were rewarded with a terrible loss of American life and an international black eye. Yet not acting to stop the genocide in Rwanda, Bill Clinton has said, was his greatest mistake. If the bloodshed grows and the rebels plead for help, said Doyle McManus in the Los Angeles Times, doing nothing won’t be an option. “But it’s also worth counting to 10, slowly, before starting any war.”