Intel Chief gets it right on Libya

By BJ Bjornson

And of course in doing so, finds himself under attack by the usual suspects, but it�s better to have an Intel community that tells you what is rather than what you want to hear.

The nation's top intelligence official told Congress Thursday that Moammar Gadhafi will eventually prevail in his war with Libya's rebels, provoking a rare public dispute with the White House, which says its policy is intended to force the Libyan leader from power.

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 Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Libyan civil war was descending into a "kind of stalemate back and forth," but that in the long term "the regime will prevail." As the top U.S. intelligence official, Clapper oversees the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies and his assessments generally reflect the community's consensus judgments.

Army Gen. Ronald Burgess, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, endorsed Clapper's assessment, saying momentum was shifting to Gadhafi's forces after initially being with the opposition.

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Later, enumerating his reasons for believing that Gadhafi would prevail, Clapper said that the regime has more military supplies and can count on the army's best trained, "most robustly equipped" units, including the 32nd Brigade, which is commanded by Gadhafi's son, Khamis, and the 9th Brigade

While I haven�t been following the events as closely as some, this does seem to match what news I have been reading.  While the rebels were able to sweep through much of the country early on, thanks, I�m guessing, in large part to Qaddafi�s forces being unprepared for the scale of the uprising, once the initial wave was blunted and the Qaddafi loyalists were able to regroup, the battle became, as Steve has noted, more of a conventional civil war than the populist and relatively peaceful uprisings that swept the neighbouring regimes of Tunisia and Egypt from power.  And as a conventional war, the balance of forces greatly favours the Qaddafi loyalists, loyalists who are motivated to fight by the very real prospect of what might happen to them and their families should they lose.

I�m also of the belief that the conventional phase of this war will decide the matter for the foreseeable future.  While the greater Middle East has become practically synonymous with term insurgency, in every case where one has actually developed, it has involved a foreign occupation force.  When the Arab autocrats have had free reign to suppress their own people, and haven�t lost the support of the military as Qaddafi�s immediate neighbours did, the results have been swift and brutal to the point that further resistance isn�t a real possibility.  Think Saddam Hussein�s suppression of the Shiite uprising after the first Gulf War, or the elder Assad�s massacre of Islamic fundamentalists in Hama.  From the reports coming out of Zawiya, Qaddafi�s forces aren�t worrying too much about the collateral damage they cause in suppressing the rebel forces. Also note that Saddam was able to carry out his suppression despite the recent drubbing of his military and a US-imposed �no-fly� zone.  Short of a mountain redoubt like that which allowed the Kurds to survive similar attempts, there isn�t much hope a similar �no-fly� zone by itself will be enough to stop Qaddafi from doing much the same to the Libyan rebels. At this point, I suspect it would require something along the lines of the NATO bombardment of Serbia during the Kosovo campaign to stop Qaddafi�s forces from further advancement.

It is perhaps one of the great ironies of this situation that a relatively painless intervention might have actually been possible when the rebellion first began and set the regime back on its heels.  At that point, some swift military action from outside may have been enough to break the back of the shaken loyalists and led to Qaddafi�s overthrow.  Of course, such an intervention would have been problematic logistically, given the only country with significant expeditionary forces already has most of them engaged in various other battles in the Islamic world, not to mention the fact that at that point, the rebels were high on their own success and expecting to be able to toss the regime out on their own as their neighbours had, making it clear that any foreign intervention would be unwelcome.

Getting pounded by the Libyan air force and tank columns for the last several days has made the rebels feelings regarding possible foreign intervention take a pretty abrupt turnaround, but such an intervention now that Qaddafi�s forces are dug in and prepared to fight it out will be a lot tougher to pull off successfully. I have no doubt that the US and its allies could quite easily ground or destroy Libya�s Air Force, and a more, shall we say, robust intervention such as the Kosovo campaign could keep Qaddafi�s heavy weapons and tanks bottled up and unable to move on rebel positions, but that only works so long as the pressure remains on, and as we saw with the Kosovo campaign or the more recent Israeli campaign against Lebanon, it doesn�t take too long before the inability of airpower alone to actually destroy or defeat a well dug-in ground force to cause frustration and an ever-widening target list, with its corresponding ever-increasing civilian body-count and outrage, in the hopes of somehow forcing capitulation. Never a good scenario to find yourself drawn into.

Not that such difficulties have slowed down the calls for the US start muscling its way in on another Arab country, and for Clapper to step down for unhelpfully pointing out that the Qaddafi regime won�t be overthrown by the rebels.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an Armed Services Committee member and a prominent GOP voice on security issues, urged the president to replace Clapper, saying his comments were "not helpful to our national security interests."

"His comments will make the situation more difficult for those opposing Gadhafi. It also undercuts our national efforts to bring about the desired result of Libya moving from dictator to democracy," Graham said in a statement. "Some of his analysis could prove to be accurate, but it should not have been made in such a public forum." Graham didn't attend the hearing.

That latter statement from Graham can�t help but remind me of the reaction of the neocons to General Shinseki�s testimony during the lead-up to the Iraq War. They really do hate it when the military and intelligence community has the gall to go off and tell the truth rather than sugar-coat things to match their desired goals, don�t they? �I don�t care if its accurate, just don�t say it in public! I mean, how dare you inform the people that our desired outcome won�t be a cakewalk like we�ve promised!� Lovely to see how they�ve learned their lessons, isn�t it?

How much of the US�s national security interests are actually at stake in Libya is debatable, but it is nice to see that the appetite to start or get involved in ever more conflicts is alive and well with Washington�s elite. I suppose it is a lot easier to be eager for such things when you don�t have to worry about finding the men or material to pull such interventions off, or even, horror of horrors, pay a little extra in taxes to actually pay for the material outlays. When all you have to contribute to the war effort is a catchy slogan or two, it�s little wonder they find themselves more worried about people telling the truth about the practical difficulties of such conflicts than the conflicts themselves.

Now believe me, I�d love to see Qaddafi�s regime relegated to the dust-bin of history, and it is more than tempting to want to help move him there, but if recent history hasn�t taught us anything else, it is that a high-minded ideal isn�t enough to ensure that an intervention is going to go well. Not to mention that it is a lot harder to disengage yourself from a situation, even one your very presence makes worse, than it is to get involved in the first place.