http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Zi6J7GbHA
NATO is taking command of the Libya war. But the real strategy for victory over Moammar Gadhafi is found on the airwaves above Libya: communications frequencies telling his commanders to simply give up fighting. If that sounds like hope masquerading as a plan, then you're receiving the message loud and clear.
Flying over Libya is the Commando Solo, the Air Force's special operations aircraft. It's capable of hijacking radio and TV frequencies to disrupt enemy communications and broadcast the messaging that the U.S. wants. Last week, it informed Libyan naval officers that if they left port to challenge the American, French and Italian ships floating nearby, they'd be destroyed.
In the message embedded above, U.S. communications tell Libyan sailors to simply go home. And in Pentagon briefings for reporters last week, several American officers involved in the war elaborated that they were telling Gadhafi's field leaders to stand down from attacking the rebels at the besieged cities of Ajdabiya, Misurata and Benghazi.
And that message is the same one the Obama team is sending through the airwaves from Washington D.C. President Obama himself will likely reiterate it when he makes his case for the Libya war in a speech Monday night from the National Defense University. Only one problem: like the NATO air war itself, it's unclear whether that message can tip the balance of power on the ground in favor of the rebels.
On the Sunday chat shows, the administration indicated it was upping the information-operations pressure on Gadhafi's commanders. "We're also sending a message to people around him," Clinton said on "Meet the Press." "'Do you really want to be a pariah? Do you really want to end up in the International Criminal Court? Now is your time to get out of this and to help change the direction.'"
Added Defense Secretary Robert Gates, "One should not underestimate the possibility of the regime itself cracking."
Say this for the war, which NATO will soon run in its entirety: it appears to have given the rebels some oomph. For the first time since Gadhafi went back on the warpath in mid-March, they've retaken the eastern city of Ajdabiya, which loyalists attacked for over a week, and now claim to control Sirte, Gadhafi's hometown, further west. Al Jazeera reports that Gadhafi's forces, weakened by heavy coalition airstrikes, aren't fighting: a "column of military vehicles including truck-mounted anti-aircraft guns" was spotted falling back "in the direction of Tripoli."
If so, that's a big reversal, right as NATO assumes command of both the no-fly zone and the airstrikes. Whereas once the loyalists did the besieging, now they might be preparing for a siege of Gadhafi's capitol. No wonder the call for defections is ringing out.
But that's the only endgame that Clinton and Gates articulated. And NATO's announcement that it'll take over the war stopped short of measures to directly tip the military balance on the ground.
In a statement issued Sunday, NATO drew a firm line short of arming the Libyan opposition. Its efforts to "enforce the arms embargo" authorized by the United Nations will be "impartial, as the embargo "applies to all sides." The rebels can rely on NATO planes for air cover, but nothing more.
NATO has already taken a difficult step in assuming command of the war. So it may not be surprising that it doesn't want the mission to escalate into an effort to oust Gadhafi. But it's an open question whether the poorly trained and outgunned rebels can defeat Gadhafi's mechanized forces, even if they march all the way to Tripoli. For what it's worth, the top U.S. intelligence official assessed that Gadhafi's military was simply too strong, although that was before the U.S. and its allies launched the war. That sets up a stalemate on the ground, with NATO planes flying over the protracted war.
In that case, telling Gadhafi's loyalists to essentially end the war on NATO's behalf is the most optimistic outcome for the war on offer. But Gates, Clinton and President Obama had better hope that the Libyan commanders don't remember the 2003 Iraq invasion – when the Iraqi army was rewarded for putting up minimal resistance by being disbanded without pay. That, of course, set up years of bloody insurgency.
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