Libya's Civil War Drags On

NATO’s Libya Campaign Drags On -- Washington Post

NAPLES — As NATO bombs began to rain on Libya in March, President Obama and other Western leaders assured their war-weary publics that the campaign to protect civilians from Moammar Gaddafi’s crackdown would be over within weeks.

Now the coalition’s springtime incursion has stretched to summer and Gaddafi’s resilience has startled the leaders who committed to the operation. Calls are growing to end it even as NATO pleads for more time.

As the campaign enters its fourth month, NATO officials insist that it is succeeding and that Gaddafi will become the Arab Spring’s third casualty. But that will happen, they say, only in a slow and steady advance on the capital as his troops run out of supplies, not in a flash of pyrotechnics that puts him out of power in an instant.

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My Comment: I scoffed in March at the public pronouncements from European capitals and the White House that the Libyan civil war would be over very quickly, and I scoff today at those who are saying that the end is coming, and Gaddafi will eventually be overthrown. Sighhhh .... yes .... Gadaffi will eventually be overthrown as the "noose around him" slowly tightens .... but even with his "departure", the fragility of the Libyan state and the many tribes that make up this country will be so fractured that a long term international presence will need to be established in order to avert the humanitarian disaster that will come when Tripoli finally falls to the rebels. Everyone is fighting this war with little if any focus on what will Libya be like when it finally ends .... and for those who are trying to look ahead, what they see is a long term foreign occupation that will be necessary to minimize the bitterness, resentment, and desperation that will be pervasive not only among the defeated but also among the victors who will be fighting over the spoils.

In short .... my prediction is the following. By the end of this year Gaddafi will be gone, but a foreign presence of thousands (if not more) soldiers will be necessary to keep the peace, stabilize the interim government, and to insure humanitarian aid goes to those who need it. This presence of Europeans and American soldiers will last 5 to 10 years .... but a preferable status than the alternative which would be a Libyan state that is fractured and .... for all intents and purposes .... a failed state.