[Gunnair]

Quote:

National Post Aug 19, 2011 – 11:17 AM ET | Last Updated: Aug 19, 2011 11:58 AM ET


Canada’s forces are due to leave Libya by the end of September unless Parliament agrees to another extension. Though rebels claim they are close to ousting Muammar Gaddafi, the conflict has already dragged on longer than anyone hoped, at considerable cost to Canada at a time the government is trying to contain expenditures. Critics question what Canada is doing there in the first place, given Libya’s limited strategic value. Is it time to pull out, whether or not Gaddafi is defeated?

Lorne Gunter in Edmonton: Sure it’s time to get out. Canada should never have gotten in – or the U.S., France, Italy, Germany or Britain. There was little to be gained (except for the Libyans) by the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi. Even those European countries that rely on Libyan oil weren’t likely to see much disruption of supply if the rebels had managed to remove the Colonel from power on their own. What was behind this from the start was irrational Western optimism that with a little help, the rebels would overthrow Gaddafi and quickly establish a pluralistic Western democracy in North Africa. This is very little different from the exuberant thinking of the Bush administration that Iraq, if invaded, would quickly become a harmonious, multicultural state. It proves left-leaning administrations are just as capable of deluding themselves into foreign adventures are right-leaning ones.

All that said, though, I don’t see how we can leave until Gaddafi is gone. As Shakespeare has Macbeth say, “I am in blood stepped in so far … returning were as tedious as go o’er.” Were we to leave now, Gaddafi would remain in power and exact revenge on the rebels. The situation would be worse than when we arrived on scene. If the West were to pack up and go home now, it would be a repeat of the betrayal of the Kurds following the first Gulf War in 1991. They were encouraged by promises of Western intervention to rise up against Saddam Hussein. When they did, the West (mostly the first Bush administration) failed to provide the air cover it had promised and Hussein slaughtered the rebels, their families and thousands of random Kurds in retaliation.

We’re stuck in Libya for the time being, like it or not.

Matt Gurney in Toronto: Well, yes and no, Lorne. I agree that since NATO offered support to the rebels, thus prolonging a war that could very well have ended (one way or the other) by now, we have to respect the time-honoured “You broke it, you bought it” rule of geopolitics. But I’m referring to NATO. It was the British and French who pushed for this, more so the latter. Yes, we jumped in with both feet — and a warship, too — but Canada could begin winding down our role in Libya in good conscience if we had assurances from our European allies that air support for the rebels would continue. Canada should probably maintain some role til the bitter end, I suppose — but it’s not wrong for us to start wondering if the fighter jets and frigate can come home. We can continue offering command and control support, patrol planes and air-to-air refuelling but stop dropping bombs.

But we won’t. There’s no constituency in Canada that particularly cares that we’re blasting a thuggish Arab dictator, and anyone that does care is more likely to cheer our renewed pluck on the world stage than bemoan our imperialism. This is a fairly low-risk operation for the government (barring a collateral damage incident or loss of a jet/warship, which seems unlikely at this late point) and it plays into the Conservatives’ desire to be all big and tough globally. And I’m sure the air force — pardon me, the Royal Canadian Air Force — appreciates the target practice.

Perhaps the bigger issue is whether or not NATO’s frustration and half-hearted measures have finally proven the Responsibility to Protect to be a crock, but I’ll turn it over to Kevin.

Kevin Libin in Calgary: Considerable cost to Canada? Last I checked, the mission’s tab was approaching $30 million, projected to hit $60 million if we stay put till the end of September. For a bill not much more than the gazebo and “tree upgrade” tab for Tony Clement’s Muskoka riding we get to topple one of the world’s nastiest mass murdering petro-tyrants. Sounds like a bargain to me.

For 10 years we fought in Afghanistan, supposedly to make the world safer from terrorism and to improve the lives of people there while, all along, wishing away persistent indications that the place was irredeemable and just as likely to be a failed state after we’d left as it was before we arrived. Yet, I don’t recall any of us Posties demanding withdrawal. In Libya, by contrast, we’ve had a relatively easy time of things, with no Canadian casualties compared to the 157 soldiers killed in the Afghan theatre. A few bloodless months and a few million bucks in Libya, and with some actual progress in sight, and we’re getting cold feet?

Not me. While I’m not naïve enough to assume, as optimists might, that Libya will become a pluralistic, Western-style democracy, I do believe there’s something to be said for giving the world’s bastards a good thrashing once in awhile just to remind them that they’d better watch it. And Gaddafi’s was long overdue. Really, he should have been dealt with in the Lockerbie era, but this year we had the perfect opportunity: a domestic uprising that we could endorse and assist, without actually physically invading the country. To me, that’s an even more justifiable form of intervention than what went on in Iraq or Afghanistan. If things weren’t looking good, then, sure, it might be worth bailing. But things are going well by all accounts; we might as well finish what we came for.

Lorne Gunter: No question, there’s value in laying a whuppin’ on the world’s baddies from time to time. Still, once we’ve decided to open up the can, we (the West, Canada, NATO) have to be prepared to stay until the job is done, particularly in those cases where the bad guy has no regard for his own people, such as Gaddafi. Better not to get involved at all and let him perpetrate a low level of violence against ordinary Libyans than poke our finger in his eye and provoke a wholesale bloodbath once we leave.

We also have to stick around to show we have the will to finish fights we get involved in. The problem with cutting and running when the task becomes unsavory to Western sensibilities is that the dictators of the world – as well as the al-Qaedas, Talibans, etc. – will quickly learn they can wait us out. Let us come in, blow off a few billion in ordnance, fly low with helos and kill a few insurgents, all the while knowing we’ll leave before they do.

But once Libya is done, we have to take a long, hard look at when we get involved because there are few quick, easy wars. As Matt said above, the Responsibility to Protect must be made a casualty of this war.

Matt Gurney: I third the approval of occasionally dropkicking bad guys in the face. And Kevin is certainly right — firing a few hundred smart bombs at Gaddafi isn’t exactly 1940′s-style Total War. But I think Lorne put his finger on the key issue. When we have to choose whether to fight — and it should be a choice made with care — we need to have a more rational way of reaching a conclusion. Assuming that we’re not forced into war by a direct attack on us or an ally, or by a foreign event so heinous we really can’t ignore it (think wholesale genocide, preferably in a country that has resources we like importing to help cut through the red tape), we need to not just ask if it’s a war worth fighting, but a war we can win without exerting ourselves too much. I hate to sound so meek there, but there’s damn few issues that I can imagine motivating Canadians to make the ultimate sacrifice of total war for year after bloody year. We don’t really have the political or cultural staying power for that kind of effort anymore. And while the various baddies out there that would do us harm suspect that, we’re not doing ourselves any favours by half-heartedly joining wars and then eventually quitting when we fail to win them. Just because the enemy knows this about us doesn’t mean we have to keep providing them with fresh examples.

Far better to fight rarely, but win when we do, than to flit about the globe dropping a few bombs here and there and hoping we don’t have to do more than that.

Kevin Libin: Making predictions about the future of geopolitics is a mug’s game, but since somebody’s got to play it, I’m tempted to point out that the likelihood of direct attacks on us, or an ally, by formal nation-states is increasingly small. And where it does exist, such as the possibility of Iran attacking Israel, China attacking Taiwan, or North Korea attacking the South, I can only imagine Canada’s role as sufficiently marginalized, in the shadow of much larger forces, as to amount, anyway, to “dropping a few bombs here and there” and not much more than that.

So, what if the future of conflict is what we have in Libya? Or Afghanistan? Or Iraq? Seems to me if Canada decides it’s not going to participate in these kinds of distant, regional, quasi-strategic clashes, then the natural question is ‘why have much of a military at all?’ — the same question, by the way, that brought the Liberals to massive cutbacks in Canadian Forces spending.

The unpleasant truth about forces is that you either use them or lose them; standing armies, as Eisenhower correctly pointed out, mean you need wars to fight. Now, Eisenhower was hardly anti-army or anti-war, and you don’t have to hate the military-industrial complex to understand its effects. The National Post has cheered the return, in recent years, to a stronger, prouder, better-funded military, and we have, in fact, called for more. Great. The Conservatives use the military as a means of rallying a certain strain of patriotism that favours their particular brand and worldview. Good for them. But building a strong military doesn’t happen unless you’ve reasons to use it — and not too rarely.

We can’t abandon R2P; R2P exists specifically for nations like ours, to give purpose to our smallish but domestically necessary armies. Since Canada likely won’t ever have a force that’s much useful in vanquishing superpowers or even middle powers, Afghanistan, the Libya mission, and others like them, are, I think, the kind of specialized services that comprise Canada’s military future. We’ll just have to get used to that.

National Post

[xerxes]

Good post (again). At this point I say we need to step up the effort to get rid of Ghaddfi as quick as possible and get out. The NATO countries invovled need to say to the rebels, "we'll get rid of Ghaddfi for you, the rest will be up to you."

[Canadian_Mind]

No, giving it to them, it wont be their work that did the job. Then they have no pride in it, and wont have pride in their government. That would fester a breeding ground for another undesirable asshole to take over.

Best bet is to stay the course. The only benefits we will get out of this is better rep and influence on the international diplomatic forum, and hopefully lower oil prices once the country stabilizes. I'm sick of paying more than a buck for gas, 80-100 cents was a good amount.

Personally, I don't think these were good enough reasons for us to just stick our toes in, even if we include that we are helping the Libyan people. Doesn't mean they weren't good enough reasons to get involved, but we should have gone balls-deep. The moment we entered we were on Goo-dumbass's bad side. So whether we went with what we're currently doing; or 24 fighters, more hercs, aurora's, refuelers, supplying the rebels with small arms, old 105mm howitzers, ammo, training, etc. We're still permanently on his bad list.

Then again, supporting the rebels could lead to what we saw in Afghanistan where some rebels went against the Mahujadeen and formed the Taliban. There are always some bad apples. But at the end of the day, pulling out now will make us an enemy of both the former Libyan leader and the rebels, whereas if we stay the course we'll be getting rid of an asshole, building our international credibility, giving our airforce and navy wartime practice, and what comes of the rebels will hopefully be a western friendly government. This is precisely why the brits and french have government officials helping them out, take this as a good sign, if they were all bad apples, we'd know it by now, and would all be pulling out already.

[Psudo]

Canadian_Mind wrote:

No, giving it to them, it wont be their work that did the job. Then they have no pride in it

Is that also your advice on welfare?

[Canadian_Mind]

Psudo wrote:

Canadian_Mind wrote:

No, giving it to them, it wont be their work that did the job. Then they have no pride in it

Is that also your advice on welfare?

What does that have to do with it? It's the reason why we have had Afghan contractors doing all the reconstruction in Afghanistan over 5 years, so they could have pride in their work, pride in their achievements, and pride in their country. Why shouldn't the same rational be applied here?

[andyt]

Psudo wrote:

Canadian_Mind wrote:

No, giving it to them, it wont be their work that did the job. Then they have no pride in it

Is that also your advice on welfare?

It would be mine. Give people jobs over welfare any day.

[Psudo]

Canadian_Mind wrote:

Psudo wrote:

Canadian_Mind wrote:

No, giving it to them, it wont be their work that did the job. Then they have no pride in it

Is that also your advice on welfare?

What does that have to do with it?

You offered your principle of pride as the basis for your argument. If that principle has exceptions, we should question whether or not Afghanistan is one of those exceptions.

I'm only questioning your logic, not your conclusion. I don't have an opinion about your conclusion.

[Canadian_Mind]

Psudo wrote:

You offered your principle of pride as the basis for your argument. If that principle has exceptions, we should question whether or not Afghanistan is one of those exceptions.

I'm only questioning your logic, not your conclusion. I don't have an opinion about your conclusion.

I don't see why you couldn't have phrased the question differently. You could have asked if I'd simply apply that logic to other facets of life. In which case I would have said yes, and that should have been the end of it. Asking about welfare specifically suggested to me that you might have an agenda.

[Psudo]

Sorry if I was misleading. That was another facet of life wherein that principle is often but controversially used. I suppose I could have asked the question generally first and/or added other specific examples to make my focus on the principle itself more clear. It seemed like the proper approach at the time.

[GreenTiger]

Our own of course. We can shovel the usual BS that we fighting for liberty and democracy, but we are really looking to get somebody with a little more mental sanity controlling those oil fields and exports.

[Canadian_Mind]

Psudo wrote:

Sorry if I was misleading. That was another facet of life wherein that principle is often but controversially used. I suppose I could have asked the question generally first and/or added other specific examples to make my focus on the principle itself more clear. It seemed like the proper approach at the time.

I get what you mean now, and why you asked. Sorry about turtling up earlier.