The story of Libya is merely another chapter in the book of American military interventions in the Middle East, with the very same themes: Vicious, chaotic, self-serving and lacking in vision. Such highly militarised foreign policy is yet to bring a single conflict in that region to an end.
What it does however, is habitually instigate new conflicts. Thus it takes no particular virtuosity to arrive at the initial conclusion that America’s recently-launched war on Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), dubbed ‘Operation Odyssey Lightning’, is unlikely to end well. Not only because Libya’s convoluted fight is very difficult to navigate, but because the intentions of the United States are not as innocuous as they may seem.
Of the many analyses regarding the recent strikes against Daesh that of Libya’s political analyst Al Hussain Al Mesuri is particularly interesting. Al Mesuri encourages us to look for answers, not in Tripoli or Tobruk, but in Washington itself. “The significance of the US air strikes against (Daesh) in Sirte is crystal clear: To give (presidential candidate) Hillary Clinton a push against her Republican rival Donald Trump, who has accused the former secretary of state of (mishandling the response to the) attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in 2012,” Al Mesuri told Egypt’s Ahram Online. He further described the operation as “election-flavoured political strikes”.
After reading this, one cannot help but recall what some labelled as the “Monica War” — when former US president Bill Clinton launched deadly air strikes against Iraq in December 1998. It was then that Clinton deliberately chose war to distract from an embarrassing affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, that could have resulted in his impeachment.
Libya is another American and another Clinton affair, but the punishment and consequences this time are even more severe. The US is clearly instigating war with little regard for the horrendous outcomes. In fact, the term ‘instigate’ was used by top US economist, Jeffrey Sachs, in a recent interview with Al Jazeera. While Sachs acknowledges the culpability of the Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar Al Assad regimes, in Libya and Syria, respectively, he insists that the US “instigated war” in these countries, as it has for decades to severe shortsighted interests.
“War is different from repression,” he said, and US wars have wrought “disaster”.
The conflict in Libya is not a clear-cut political choice, considering that the country is still embroiled in a protracted political conflict, overshadowed by multiple war fronts. This has been the case since the Nato intervention in 2011, which turned a regional uprising into an all-out war. What was once a relatively stable country has now become a failed state.
It is quite convenient for some to forget the above context and to position the discussion entirely as a war against Daesh. Instead, “can air strikes alone win a war without ‘boots on the ground’?” has, somehow become the crux of the matter, which has engaged a large number of intellectuals on both sides of the debate.
Swift territorial expansion
Alas, a state of war has become the status quo, where any distinction is blurred between the foreign policies of US President Barack Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush. Obama has simply continued with the legacy of Bush, unhindered. The primary change that has occurred is tactical: Instead of resorting to massive troop build-ups on the ground with an assignment to topple governments, Obama has used air strikes to target whoever is perceived to be the enemy, while investing in whoever he deems ‘moderate’ enough to finish the job.
Being almost entirely conducted from the air, Obama’s wars were designed to produce little or no American casualties. This approach proved less taxing politically. However, it worsened the situation on the ground, and instead of ending war, it expanded it. While Bush’s invasion of Iraq revived Al Qaida and brought it to the heart of the region, Obama’s aerial wars have forced Al Qaida to regroup, employing a different strategy. It rebranded itself, from militant cells to a ‘state’, sought swift territorial expansion, used guerrilla warfare when facing an organised army or when bombed from the sky and carried out suicide bombings throughout the world to crush the morale of its enemies and to serve its propaganda efforts aimed at keeping the recruits coming.
The truth is that Daesh thrives on military intervention because it was born from previous military interventions. It is expanding because its enemies are not in unison, as each is serving agendas that are rarely concerned with ending war, but rather with seeing war as an opportunity to realise political gains.
With this logic in mind, one cannot expect ‘Operation Odyssey Lightning’, which officially began on August 1, to achieve any result that can end up stabilising the country. Even if Daesh is driven out of Sirte, it will find some other unstable environment elsewhere where it will spawn and wreak havoc.
Without an entirely different approach to the problem, the conflicts will certainly keep multiplying. In January, the cost of the war on Daesh, as estimated by US Defence Department data, jumped by $2 million (Dh7.35 million) a day to a total of $11 million.
“The air war has cost the US about $5.5 billion since it began in August 2014,” Business Insider reported. The escalation in Libya is likely to produce new, more staggering numbers soon.
Concurrently, the cycle of war and violence is feeding on itself with no end in sight. “Hope in aerial bombardment as the prophylactic for peace is absurd,” Vijay Prashad, Professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, wrote recently about the futility of air-strike wars.
“It has given us instability and chaos. Other roads have to be opened. Other paths ceded.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Dr Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story.
