Coalition War Fails Again in Libya

Coalition wars in the post-Vietnam era seem to be doomed to failure. They are not wars at all, but rather aggressive agglomerations of individual partner states.

Aggressive - because the coalition seeks to right the violation of a perceived common moral axiom.

In the case of Iraq, it was the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, later determined to be non-existent. Their non-existence led to the collapse of the original small coalition and its re-building in another guise. In the case of Libya, the aggression is directed to the saving of innocent civilians from their government’s violent behavior toward them. The Libya coalition has proof of the violence but it is less sure about who is demanding rescue and who is happy with the status quo. That makes it difficult to keep coalition members focused and active.

Agglomerations - because the coalition members are not bound by any common history, but by a perceived external injustice they wish to eliminate. The agglomeration acts somewhat like an oil slick - it forms a rather tight mass and then disperses as choppy waters in the form of uninformed world opinion and frontline reality overtake it.

The very fact that the United Nations had to force the Libya coalition into existence speaks to its fragility. It would have been preferable for France to act alone, because she alone felt intensely the injustice and demanded that it be removed.

But, with all the international tribunals aimed at preventing “war crimes,” most countries, even those with the best of motives, are afraid to act. Perhaps we have built a monster with our worries about unjust wars. Perhaps, we ought to seriously re-consider the American objections to these tribunals. But, that is in the future and will not help Free Libya.

In any event, we should not expect much more than has already been accomplished by the Libya coalition. The rockets have all been fired, the sea blockade is forming and the people of Libya will be left to fend for themselves in deciding how to win their liberty from despotism.

The international community has bound itself so tightly in ill-conceived rules of engagement that all the fire power and technology in the world will not, indeed is forbidden to, help a few poor souls in the Libyan desert asking only for freedom.