Andrew at Abu Muqawama ("a blog that focuses on small wars and insurgencies in addition to regional issues in the Middle East") reviews U.S. strategy for Libya.
Money quote(s):
"The U.S. and allied military campaign in Libya is an embarassment. From the very beginning, U.S. and allied political and strategic objectives have been unclear, and thus U.S. and allied military forces have been asked to carry out military operations without a clear commander's intent or end state. Out of all the operations orders that have been issued by the U.S. military for operations in Libya, in fact, only one -- the order to carry out the evacuation of non-combatants -- included an end state. None of the other orders issued to and by the U.S. military included an end state, in large part because senior military and civilian leaders either could not or chose not to explicitly articulate what the end state might be. The U.S. and allied military intervention is thus the very definition of an open-ended military intervention -- the kind in which most U.S. decision-makers swore we would never again engage after Iraq and Afghanistan." (Empasis in original text. - CAA.)
This has been, in turn, alternately and simultaneously an aggravation, an infuriation, and an embarrassment. WTF, over?
If I have to say this again; I will shed no tears on the day Col. Qadhafy is confirmed dead. None. He's been a long-time resident on my better-off-dead roster for decades now.
That being said, I'm clueless as to how going after Col. Qadhafy is intended, in a foreign policy objective sense, to disincentivize rogue statesmen from pursuing their own WMD proliferation.
"The U.S. Army, in response to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (in which the military was asked to operate in a complex environment with often unclear policy guidance), developed commander's appreciation and campaign design (.pdf) to help officers properly frame and understand the problems in front of them."
That's an interesting TRADOC product linked therein.
"Campaign design is a great tool for commanders, but it is also the reflection of a bigger problem -- one identified and described most eloquently by Hew Strachan in this essay in Survival. It is what happens when you leave military commanders to figure out strategy and policy for themselves."
Mr. Strachan's essay is well worth reading.
"(T)he United States has now been applying force in Libya for over two months without explaining why. What is the political end we are trying to achieve? The United States needs to be honest with both its allies and its military. Because we should expect the U.S. military to go to great lengths to understand the environment and the enemy, but what makes the military intervention in Libya so embarassing is that the U.S. military is once again in the position of laboring to divine the intent of its own elected and appointed leaders." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)
Somewhere out there, not even in uniform yet, is a young man or woman who will write, for the Libyan intervention, what H.R. McMasters wrote for the Vietnam war.
