Libya, NATO, and the Pottery Barn rule

John Batchelor, host of the John Batchelor Show -- the best news analysis show on the planet -- writes today on his blog:

You break Tripoli

Tripoli is a tragic opera that illustrates how little we have learned since the catastrophes of Kabul and Baghdad.

My information is that NATO and the Transitional National Council at Benghazi have been negotiating with the Qadhafi family for some weeks about en exit with dignity and assurances.

Mustafa Jalil heads the TNC. Since the assassination of the rebel war chief Younes at the direction of the TNC some weeks ago, Jalil has not provided answers about why and how and who.

Now he double-crosses Q and launches the jihadist cells in Tripoli. They behave as expected: hysteria, gun-shooting, boasting, pointing weapons they'd just grabbed as if they were playing video games; no fire discipline, no organization at all, marauding enthusiasts. They even claimed that they had captured Q's number-one thug son, Saif al-Islam.

For twenty-four hours, the speculation in US media was that this is "the end of Q" and that POTUS Obama's peculiar "leading from behind" was a surprise victor. Now Saif al-Islam dashes into the camera at the hotel where the journalists are crowded and under siege -- and he makes a zesty argument that the rebel cells were lured into attacking in order to identify the turncoats. Laughter.

Am told that Qadhafi will now fight to martyrdom -- whether in Tripoli or to the South. The Obama administration's "leading from behind" will now stand a test: how long can it explain anarchy and call it progress toward democracy? Colin Powell's dictum: "You break it, you own it."

Batchelor away tonight, back on the air tomorrow night. See his blog for broadcast details. Stay tuned.

Battle in Tripoli, Libya: Two different views of Operation Mermaid Dawn (UPDATED 9:50 AM EDT)

UPDATE
(U.S.-based) CBS News has picked up on the sleeper-cell angle (see below) in a report posted at 7:45 AM EDT. The report doesn't mention Operation Mermaid Dawn but it cites (without a link) a quote from yet another AP report (undated) that completely removes the fig leaf from NATO's 'humanitarian intervention' in Libya's civil war:

A senior rebel official, Fathi al-Baja, told The Associated Press that over the past three months -- as the fighting appeared to have stalemated -- the National Transitional Council worked with NATO to set up sleeper cells within Tripoli, armed with weapons smuggled in by the rebels.

This will be my last update to this post but bit by bit, the details of the military operation will emerge -- although if the history of NATO operations is any guide, the American public will be the last to know.
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Starting at 9 PM EDT last night I switched for about an hour between CNN and FNC live coverage of the situation in Tripoli. Then for the next hour I checked in at both stations at random times. Never once did the coverage, which focused greatly on the jubilation of Libyan rebels in taking over large parts of Tripoli, mention the term, "Operation Mermaid Dawn." Nor did the retired U.S. military talking heads who spoke to anchors on both stations mention the operation -- at least, not while I watching.

(For readers outside the USA, CNN and FNC are the USA's major national cable TV news stations.)

Nor did America's major newspaper, the New York Times, mention Operation Mermaid Dawn in its latest coverage of the situation; the report mentioned only the rebels' increased "coordination" with NATO.

Indeed, the only U.S. news source about the Battle of Tripoli I've found so far that has alluded to Operation Mermaid Dawn, which was not an 'uprising' but a well-planned military operation, comes from the Associated Press newswire service, which al Jazeera quoted yesterday:

Colonel Fadlallah Haroun, a military commander in Benghazi ... told the AP news agency that weapons were assembled and sent by tugboats to Tripoli on Friday night.

That's the first time I've ever seen a NATO war vessel referred to as a tugboat, but perhaps the first reporter I quote below got tugboats confused with a warship. Or perhaps the weapons were offloaded from a NATO warship to tugboats and Colonel Haroun forgot to mention that part.

In any case the latest AP report, featured at HUFFPO news website and updated at 7:00 AM EDT, makes no mention of the operation.

And the only reference to Operation Mermaid Dawn I could find in the British press (including the BBC website) is from the Telegraph.

However, the Telegraph's account of the operation differs so markedly from the only other description of the operation I found that I'm posting both reports below in their entirety.

The first report is from the Centre for Research on Globalization, a well-known news analysis website based in Canada. The site has a strong anticolonialist slant and thus, tends to view state-backed globalization policies as a mask or rationalization for neocolonialist interventions.

The second report is from the U.K. (Daily) Telegraph; the Telegraph, while slanting to the Right (although less so since its Conrad Black era) comports in its view on the Libya situation with all other major British press including the BBC and the Left-leaning Guardian.

Note that it's not until almost at the end of the Telegraph report that there's any allusion whatsoever to sleeper cells, which are mentioned in the first report. And the Telegraph makes no mention of al Qaeda involvement in the uprising, and has nothing to say about any reports of a NATO warship off Tripoli's shore or how the rebels in Tripoli got hold of "heavy weapons."

As to which of the two reports is more accurate, Americans better find out fast.

NATO SLAUGHTER IN TRIPOLI: "Operation Mermaid Dawn" Signals Assault by Rebels' Al Qaeda Death Squads

By Thierry Meyssan
August 21, 2011
Voltaire Network
Centre for Research on Globalization

Tripoli, Libya, Aug. 22, 2011, 1 AM CET– On Saturday evening, at 8pm, when the hour of Iftar marked the breaking of the Ramadan fast, the NATO command launched its “Operation Mermaid Dawn” against Libya.

The Sirens were the loudspeakers of the mosques, which were used to launch Al Qaeda’s call to revolt against the Qaddafi government. Immediately the sleeper cells of the Benghazi rebels went into action. These were small groups with great mobility, which carried out multiple attacks. The overnight fighting caused 350 deaths and 3,000 wounded.

The situation calmed somewhat on Sunday during the course of the day.

Then, a NATO warship sailed up and anchored just off the shore at Tripoli, delivering heavy weapons and debarking Al Qaeda jihadi forces, which were led by NATO officers.

Fighting stared again during the night. There were intense firefights. NATO drones and aircraft kept bombing in all directions. NATO helicopters strafed civilians in the streets with machine guns to open the way for the jihadis.

In the evening, a motorcade of official cars carrying top government figures came under attack. The convoy fled to the Hotel Rixos, where the foreign press is based. NATO did not dare to bomb the hotel because they wanted to avoid killing the journalists. Nevertheless the hotel, which is where I am staying, is now under heavy fire.

At 11:30pm, the Health Minister had to announce that the hospitals were full to overflowing. On Sunday evening, there had been 1300 additional dead and 5,000 wounded.

NATO had been charged by the UN Security Council with protecting civilians in Libya. In reality, France and Great Britain have just re-started their colonial massacres.

At 1am, Khamis Qaddafi came to the Rixos Hotel personally to deliver weapons for the defense of the hotel. He then left. There is now heavy fighting all around the hotel.

Libya: how 'Operation Mermaid Dawn', the move to take Tripoli, unfolded

For weeks rebels promised that opposition groups in Tripoli were just awaiting the word to stage their own move to take the Libyan capital.

By James Reevell in Djerba
11:33PM BST 21 Aug 2011

Few knew whether their promises were real, or whether they had the strength in numbers or arms to make good on them.

On Saturday night, the promise was put to the test. According to rebel sources in the capital and opposition groups abroad, including in the Tunisian resort town of Djerba, "Operation Mermaid Dawn" was launched from the Ben Nabi Mosque on Sarim Street near the heart of the city.

"Mermaid" is a long-standing nickname for Tripoli.

The rebels moved just after Iftar, the breaking of the Ramadan fast.

A group of young men began chanting Allahu akbar, God is Great, signifying the start of a new protest at the mosque, witnesses in Tripoli and rebels said. Prayers were cancelled and all women sent home. The men then locked themselves in and began shouting anti-Gaddafi slogans.

They then used the mosque's loud speaker system, normally used to call people to prayer, to broadcast their chants across the city.

As shooting and explosions lit up the Tripoli night, Gaddafi forces arrived and initially opened fire on the mosque with machine guns, also summoning reinforcements armed with anti aircraft guns mounted on pick up trucks. The men inside the mosque were unarmed.

Local residents and rebel fighters then converged on the mosque to defend it, using machine guns and Molotov cocktails in a fierce firefight. The rebel forces were able to drive the Gaddafi forces back forcing them to take refuge in the state TV centre on Al Nasr Street nearby.

This TV centre has been previously bombed by Nato but has several underground levels.

It was still in the hands of loyalists yesterday. A woman presenter brandished a gun while launching into an impassioned speech declaring she would fight the rebels to the death if they attacked the station.

From the mosque the uprising proceeded to spread in what, from telephone reports, appeared to be a coordinated movement. Opposition members inside the capital reported that as many as thirteen suburbs within the city were actively taking part in the uprising and engaging in firefights with loyalist troops.

Multiple sources reported that fighters temporarily entered Green Square and, in a hugely symbolic moment, raised the outlawed Libyan national flag.

Green Square is the epicentre of Colonel Gaddafi's power and status in Libya, the scene of his great rallies early in the uprising and his dramatic personal appearance in the arches of the ruined fortress on its edge. It features a giant mural of the Colonel.

Local residents said Gaddafi forces had begun to use heavy weapons, including artillery shelling, against the mosque, killing at least a dozen people in the immediate vicinity.

According to witnesses one shell hit a civilian home next door to the mosque, killing an elderly woman inside. They also said that Gaddafi forces commandeered garbage trucks as a form of disguise before ambushing opposition members near the mosque.

Later in the day, as the imminence of the rebel advance became clear, opposition forces came out elsewhere.

Prominent opposition members confirmed that the rebels had been shipping weapons into Tripoli for several weeks, in preparation for this uprising.

Mass text messages were used to urge residents within the capital to rise up. The rebels do have weapon caches along with small numbers of fighters smuggled into the capital, according to sources.

Although rumours swirled among opposition supporters both in Tripoli and abroad that Col Gaddafi and his family had fled, few gave them much credence.

They were confident, though, for the first time in the conflict that this was the end, and the fall of the Gaddafi regime was near. The question they were asking was not whether Gaddafi would fall, but how many lives he would take with him.Just for good measure I'm going to include the New York Times report I mentioned above because while it doesn't mention Operation Mermaid Dawn by name it presents the U.S. government's 'narrative' of its involvement in the Tripoli battle, or 'spin' it one wishes to be cynical. These narratives can change, so I'd like to have the record of the Times account; the Times as with many other publications often updates a report on a fast-changing situation rather than publishing a new report, which can mean deletions of entire passages without mention of the deletions.

Surveillance and Coordination With NATO Aided Rebels

By Eric Schmitt and Steven Lee Myers
Published [online]: August 21, 2011 [no time stamp but probably published around 11:00 PM ET]

WASHINGTON — As rebel forces in Libya converged on Tripoli on Sunday, American and NATO officials cited an intensification of American aerial surveillance in and around the capital city as a major factor in helping to tilt the balance after months of steady erosion of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s military.

The officials also said that coordination between NATO and the rebels, and among the loosely organized rebel groups themselves, had become more sophisticated and lethal in recent weeks, even though NATO’s mandate has been merely to protect civilians, not to take sides in the conflict.

NATO’s targeting grew increasingly precise, one senior NATO diplomat said, as the United States established around-the-clock surveillance over the dwindling areas that Libyan military forces still controlled, using armed Predator drones to detect, track and occasionally fire at those forces.

At the same time, Britain, France and other nations deployed special forces on the ground inside Libya to help train and arm the rebels, the diplomat and another official said.

“We always knew there would be a point where the effectiveness of the government forces would decline to the point where they could not effectively command and control their forces,” said the diplomat, who was granted anonymity to discuss confidential details of the battle inside Tripoli.

“At the same time,” the diplomat said, “the learning curve for the rebels, with training and equipping, was increasing. What we’ve seen in the past two or three weeks is these two curves have crossed.”

Through Saturday, NATO and its allies had flown 7,459 strike missions, or sorties, attacking thousands of targets, from individual rocket launchers to major military headquarters. The cumulative effect not only destroyed Libya’s military infrastructure but also greatly diminished the ability of Colonel Qaddafi’s commanders to control forces, leaving even committed fighting units unable to move, resupply or coordinate operations.

On Saturday, the last day NATO reported its strikes, the alliance flew only 39 sorties against 29 targets, 22 of them in Tripoli. In the weeks after the initial bombardments in March, by contrast, the allies routinely flew 60 or more sorties a day.

“NATO got smarter,” said Frederic Wehrey, a senior policy analyst with the RAND Corporation who follows Libya closely. “The strikes were better controlled. There was better coordination in avoiding collateral damage.” The rebels, while ill-trained and poorly organized even now, made the most of NATO’s direct and indirect support, becoming more effective in selecting targets and transmitting their location, using technology provided by individual NATO allies, to NATO’s targeting team in Italy.

“The rebels certainly have our phone number,” the diplomat said. “We have a much better picture of what’s happening on the ground.”

Rebel leaders in the west credited NATO with thwarting an attempt on Sunday by Qaddafi loyalists to reclaim Zawiyah with a flank assault on the city.

Administration officials greeted the developments with guarded elation that the overthrow of a reviled dictator would vindicate the demands for democracy that have swept the Arab world.

A State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said that President Obama, who was vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, and other senior American officials were following events closely.

Privately, many officials cautioned that it could still be several days or weeks before Libya’s military collapses or Colonel Qaddafi and his inner circle abandon the fight. As Saddam Hussein and his sons did in Iraq after the American invasion in 2003, the Libyan leader could hold on and lead an insurgency from hiding even after the capital fell, the officials said.

“Trying to predict what this guy is going to do is very, very difficult,” a senior American military officer said.

A senior administration official said the United States had evidence that other members of Colonel Qaddafi’s inner circle were negotiating their own exits, but there was no reliable information on the whereabouts or state of mind of Colonel Qaddafi. Audio recordings released by Colonel Qaddafi on Sunday night, which expressed defiance, were of limited use in discerning his circumstances.

Even if Colonel Qaddafi were to be deposed, there is no clear plan for political succession or maintaining security in the country. “The leaders I’ve talked to do not have a clear understanding how this will all play out,” said the senior officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to maintain diplomatic relationships.

The United States is already laying plans for a post-Qaddafi Libya. Jeffrey D. Feltman, an assistant secretary of state, was in Benghazi over the weekend for meetings with the rebels’ political leadership about overseeing a stable, democratic transition. A senior administration official said that the United States wanted to reinforce the message of rebel leaders that they seek an inclusive transition that would bring together all the segments of Libyan society.

“Even as we welcome the fact that Qaddafi’s days are numbered and we want to see him go as quickly as possible, we also want to send a message that the goal should be the protection of civilians,” the official said.

The administration was making arrangements to bring increased medical supplies and other humanitarian aid into Libya.

With widespread gunfire in the streets of Tripoli, Human Rights Watch cautioned NATO to take measures to guard against the kind of bloody acts of vengeance, looting and other violence that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government.

“Everyone should be ready for the prospect of a very quick, chaotic transition,” said Tom Malinowski, the director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch.

Obama's MENA speech: tick tock tick tock -- ding ding ding! Time's up, Mr Commander-in-Chief

Counting on my fingers and toes several times I think today is the 60 day-deadline for President Obama to ask Congress -- yes, by gum I see from Daily Kos and CNN that today is indeed the day President Barack Obama is supposed to comply with the part of the War Powers Act that says POTUS must receive congressional authorization for committing U.S. troops to a military action that lasts longer than 60 days.

Nuts to that, sez that great European statesman, Senator John McCain. According to CNN's report:

McCain said he doesn't believe the War Powers Act is constitutional and therefore he doesn't believe the president needs congressional authorization to continue the mission.

"I've never recognized the constitutionality of the War Powers Act, nor has any president, either Republican or Democrat," McCain said.

Yes but there are a few stick-in-the-muds among Republicans (see the CNN report) and Democrats (see Daily Kos) who want to bring the matter of continued U.S. military involvement in Libya to a vote.

If you interject, 'So that's what Obama's speech was about yesterday' -- yes. The part of the speech that addressed the Israeli-Palestinian situation was probably Obama's way of putting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the spot ahead of their meeting in Washington today. But the speech would have happened without the visit and Obama's incendiary comments relating to Israel. Obama knew he had to throw together a policy on MENA ahead of the 60-day deadline to rationalize continued U.S. military actions in Libya. He had to do this in the attempt to placate his American Leftist voter base.

The American Leftists -- the real Leftists -- aren't buying Obama's reasons for U.S. military intervention in Libya, as you can see from reading Rep. Mike Honda's op-ed at Daily Kos. Honda (D-CA) is a Senior Democratic Whip and co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus's Taskforce on Peace and Security.

And CNN's report carries a letter to Obama from six Conservative Republican senators who pretty much echo the crux of Honda's argument.

As it so happened just around the time of Obama's speech NATO launched attacks in Libya that were an escalation in their intervention to help the rebels eject Col. Gadhafi from power -- an intervention which for some queer reason NATO leaders portray as designed to protect Libya's civilian population. See this Reuters report for details on the latest NATO strikes. As Rep. Honda points out there were plenty of options NATO and the Obama administration could have taken if civilian protection was their real aim.

Libya Possum Chronicles

8:00 AM ET UPDATE
Gadhafi kept saying Qatar was supplying the rebels with arms and no one would believe him but now someone's ratted out Qatar and they've admitted they've been secretly supplying arms. So that's where the French-made missiles have been coming from. The Guardian has the story.
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I didn't get a chance to watch TV news coverage yesterday but while I was perusing last night's rush transcript for CNN's main news report, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, I noticed that at the top of the hour Wolf said:

"Just days after NATO took control of operations in Libya, a surprising revelation about the U.S. military's role, what the Pentagon is now saying.

I then scrolled through the transcript, looking for what CNN had to say about the "surprising revelation," which The New York Times had broken sometime in the late afternoon. I scrolled and scrolled until finally I came upon these words, near the end of the transcript:

BLITZER: All right, Brianna. Thanks very much.

This footnote. You can read more from Jay Newton-Small about the CNN/"TIME" political roundtable over at TIME.com.

Just days after NATO took control of operations in Libya, a surprising revelation about the U.S. military's role, what the Pentagon is now saying.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Let's take a look at some of today's "Hot Shots."

In London, workers begin preparations for the royal wedding. [...]

Blame it on the transcript service -- unless one wants to argue that the only people truly able to keep up with the way editorial policies percolate through the news media are (a) retired police who served on a vice squad for at least a decade and (b) retired plainclothes detectives who were employed for at least a decade by a major casino. People who've worked in those fields for years really have seen it all -- every scam, every sleight-of-hand.

Not that I'm calling CNN a scam, but I'm just saying that the attitude and experience of say, a veteran vice squad cop is the best help to spotting the news media equivalent of black ice on the road.

Moving along to the Times report we learn that President Obama was playing possum regarding the nature of the U.S. military involvement in Libya, then in response to complaints at NATO that the U.S. wasn't doing enough, the Pentagon popped out with the announcement, then Times reporters began dialing their sources. My favorite part of the report is the discussion about nuance:

Pentagon Says It Has Kept Up Some Strikes on Libya

By THOM SHANKER
Published: April 13, 2011
The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials disclosed Wednesday that American warplanes had continued to strike targets in Libya even after the Obama administration said the United States was stepping back from offensive missions and letting NATO take the lead.

Although American officials had said that no aircraft would fly offensive strike missions, unless officially approved in Washington, 11 warplanes have flown 97 sorties intended to electronically jam or otherwise suppress Libyan air defenses since April 4, when command of the mission was handed over to NATO and the United States publicly said it was stepping back to a supporting role.

The number of actual missile strikes during those missions was only three; all were against Libyan air defense systems, whether radars, command-and-control sites or surface-to-air missiles. Two of them were to destroy hard-to-find and hard-to-strike mobile targets.

In explaining the gap between public statements and operational details, officials said the trio of strikes on Libyan targets since April 4 were classified as defensive, not offensive.

The distinction was that these attacks were intended to incapacitate Libyan radars, antiaircraft batteries or command centers in order to protect NATO strike aircraft, and were not offensive actions against Libyan government forces threatening civilians.

Pentagon officials had to scramble Wednesday to explain the latest nuance about the American mission in Libya.

The administration has expended enormous effort calibrating its explanation of the intervention there to a variety of audiences: the American public, Libyans still loyal to the government or rebel sympathizers, and people in Europe and the Arab world.

At a minimum, the disclosure of strikes dating back several days — on April 4, 6 and 7 — revealed a tin ear for how the facts of daily combat operations would compare to public statements that left the impression that the United States had ceased dropping bombs and missiles on Libya.

The continued operation of American warships and warplanes in both supporting and attacking roles is evidence that, while NATO is in command, the United States military remains the partner with specific capabilities that are required for the alliance to operate effectively.

American officials had said that only support aircraft — like refueling, reconnaissance and command-and-control planes — would be part of the daily operation. Any NATO desire for American strike aircraft, in particular the A-10 tank-buster and the AC-130 flying gunship — would have to be requested formally and approved in Washington.

But the 11 American warplanes assigned to a mission called Suppression of Enemy Air Defense are flying as part of the NATO-led mission.

“It is a purely defensive mission,” the Pentagon said in an official statement. Later, the Pentagon press secretary, Geoff Morrell, added, “It is completely consistent with how we have described our support role ever since the transition to NATO lead.”

The American aircraft assigned to suppressing Libyan air defenses are six F-16CJ aircraft and five E/A-18G warplanes, according to Pentagon officials. Working together, they can detect and jam adversary air defense systems and attack them with missiles, some specifically designed to home in on radar emissions.

The disclosure came one day after fissures opened among the allies over the scope and the intensity of attacks against Libyan government forces. Britain and France, in particular, called on NATO and its partners to intensify strikes.
[...]

I see a problem with Obama prodding the Pentagon to admit in public that the U.S. government had been playing possum. Isn't this admitting that even with more American air support than was publicly known, Gadhafi has still managed to eke out a stalemate? So what's it going to take to deal with Gadhafi to the satisfaction of CNN, Nicolas Sarkozy, and David Cameron?

Last night veteran MENA region CNN Senior International Correspondent Ben Wedeman, who is fluent in Arabic and one of the media's best 'eyes on the ground' in Libya, spelled out the bad news in his nightly report for Anderson Cooper's AC360 show (10:00 PM ET). (The "General Kimmit" Cooper refers to is BRIGADIER GENERAL MARK KIMMITT (RET.), FORMER U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR PLANS AND STRATEGY):

[...]
COOPER: Ben, General Kimmitt made an interesting point about the Gadhafi military, the Gadhafi forces, pro-Gadhafi forces being a learning enemy, that they have adapted their tactics. The same cannot be said at all for the opposition forces. They do not seem to be a learning force.

WEDEMAN [reporting from Benghazi]: No, no, not at all. In fact, they seem to be learning almost nothing. Certainly compared to the Gadhafi forces who have changed their tactics completely. Initially they were using tanks and heavy weaponry. Now they're running around in the desert in pickup trucks, almost indistinguishable from the rebels.

The rebels however don't seem to be learning anything, and it seems that even the level of enthusiasm seems to be draining off a bit because they realized that at least in this part of the country, that they can't move forward. And, therefore, you see fewer and fewer men at the front lines.

You almost never see a senior commander there. We did notice that they have some new weaponry. We did see for instance the other day they have these MILAN anti-tank missiles made in France.

They did have some night-vision goggles, but they didn't even know how to use the night-vision goggles. They didn't realize that you need to put batteries inside. So they don't seem to be increasing their training. There's very little leadership at the front. Communications continues to be poor. And therefore, I don't think anyone realistically can expect any sort of advance from the east given these conditions.

There's more to the discussion, which anyone who's closely following the Libya situation might want to read; it begins near the top of the rush transcript. The CNN editorial viewpoint is strongly in favor of the U.S. supporting the rebels to the fullest extent possible so while the opinion part of the nightly discussions on AC360 (and other CNN news shows) is slanted in that direction, it's because of their viewpoint that they're closely tracking the situation.

As to whether last night's AC360 mentioned the Pentagon's news -- yes, briefly, but as you can see Cooper turned it into fodder for the argument that the U.S. needs to do much more. But he also clearly indicates that at this point, the U.S. and other NATO countries will be left holding the bag:

COOPER: Well, we learned today American aircraft are still being used in strikes against air defense systems and for jamming enemy radar and aerial refueling, but tank-busting American A-10 Warthog attack planes like these they stopped flying missions last week.

And a number of countries like Qatar and the UAE involved in the air effort refuse to let their planes be involved in attacks on Gadhafi forces for political reasons back home.

The question now with a stalemate on the ground between opposition forces and Gadhafi's army and Libyan civilians still suffering in places like Misrata and Tripoli and elsewhere, is NATO doing enough?
[...]

Libya: Under increased pressure from Sarkozy and Cameron, Merkel hangs tough; Obama, staring into abyss of U.S. debt crisis, votes "present."

11:00 PM ET UPDATE
This in from The New York Times:

Pentagon Says It Has Kept Up Some Strikes on Libya
By Thom Shanker

WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials disclosed Wednesday that American warplanes had continued to strike targets in Libya even after the Obama administration said the United States was stepping back from offensive missions and letting NATO take the lead.

There's more to the report, much more, but I'll just note here that according to the Times "the disclosure came one day after fissures opened among the allies over the scope and the intensity of attacks against Libyan government forces. Britain and France, in particular, called on NATO and its partners to intensify strikes."
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April 13, 2011, from Reuters updated report on Libya:

On Tuesday [French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe] criticised NATO for not doing enough to stop the bombing of Misrata. French daily Le Monde reported that Defence Minister Gerard Longuet had also said more U.S. participation in military strikes was needed in order to stem attacks by Gaddafi's army.

March 31, 2011, from the transcript of Eliot Spitzer's March 31 interview with French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy on CNN's In the Arena:

SPITZER: Let's fast forward this because there's so much more to the story. [Sarkozy] gets them -- you go to Paris, he then recognizes the [Benghazi council] government --

LEVY: And I tell [Sarkozy], I tell him absolutely. I tell him there is French flags today in Benghazi. If there is a bloodbath, the blood of the people of Benghazi will go on the French side --

SPITZER: You made a moral argument to him.

LEVY: Not only I made the moral argument, I spoke with my heart. I spoke with my consciousness, and I -- it was a conversation from one heart to another heart. He is president of France, but he's a man --

SPITZER: And he then did this without even speaking so, we're told, to his foreign minister, to the leadership of his party? You must be one persuasive advocate.

LEVY: Not -- that is not the point. I think that he knew -- he understood that if he began to put everybody in the story, nothing would happen. You know, bureaucracy, administration, European partners --

SPITZER: So what you're saying --

LEVY: So what -- Mrs. Merkel did after -- how she tried to block the process. Just imagine if Sarkozy had told her before. She would have done even more.

SPITZER: So he acted when other people spoke. He moved when the U.N. was dithering. You can -- don't need to be so polite. And the consequence of this was that by leading, everybody else followed -- the United Nations, the United States.

LEVY: Yes.

In the Spirit World post (April 11) I had to bite my tongue to avoid voicing my suspicion that France's President Nicolas Sarkozy had used an uprising in Libya as an excuse to pummel Germany's government out of its increasingly stubborn opposition to any and all schemes emanating from Brussels that require Germany to keep writing large checks. However, I tried to convey what my tongue wouldn't say by making shameless use of the spirit world, which is how an old French proverb ("You have to know how to give an egg to get an ox") got dragged into the story.

If my suspicion is correct then it would be closer to the truth to say that Sarkozy laid an egg in the effort to get an ox. I don't know if the Libyan situation represents the first time a country started a war on the advice of a philosopher -- and it's splitting hairs to say it's not a war -- but that's what happened.

(Read the entire transcript from the Spitzer-Levy discussion if you're having trouble imagining a universe in which a head of state uses as a philosopher as a forward observer.)

The (U.K.) Guardian, which has been keeping a close eye on Sarkozy and the French press since all of this started, clearly thinks that Sarkozy's hawkishness is motivated by domestic political reasons; I'm not so sure it's that simple or that Sarkozy is that cynical. The Reuters report spoke of signs that "cracks" were appearing in the NATO alliance because of the Libya situation. The cracks had appeared even before Germany refused to support the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq; what we're seeing today, in the argument about Libya, is a window on the gulf that opened up in NATO in 2009 (See the Spirit World post). The Washington Post reported this morning:

[...] Both the French and British governments have complained that other countries in the 28-member [NATO] alliance are not doing enough.

The differences in approach to the intervention were also apparent on Wednesday, when foreign ministers and other officials of the nations involved in the bombing campaign gathered in Doha, the Qatari capital. The officials planned to weigh options and seek ways to accelerate a negotiated end to what has become an inconclusive civil war of see-saw battles for cities along Libya’s Mediterranean shore.[...]

But there was no civil war until French, and then UN and NATO interventions, created one. There was an uprising, fueled by anti-Gadhafi Libyans watching cable television reportage on the 'Arab Spring' and principally the Egyptian protests -- but without realizing that what they were seeing on TV of the protests was a military coup masquerading as a people's revolution.

(I suspect I would find the same situation in Tunisia if I started digging; this on account of there is no such thing as a bloodless revolution against an authoritarian regime unless the military backing the regime gives the green light.)

As for a negotiated settlement, the rebels don't want one; they want their own country. To get from here to there they want weapons, military training, more NATO bombing campaigns, and money -- lots of money -- from the 'international community.' So now the United Nations is frantically dialing for dollars to ward off what it terms a humanitarian disaster, and today the U.K. foreign secretary William Hague "called for Libya's rebel movement to receive international funding as Nato members and their allies met for talks on the north African country's deadlocked civil war." This, according to the Financial Times.

Meanwhile, over in the USA, Washington is peering into the abyss. From Eliot Spitzer's interview with Reagan Administration budget director, David Stockman, on April 11:

STOCKMAN [...] We are issuing $6 billion of debt every day and suddenly the field has changed in terms of who's buying that. Japan was buying a lot. They're out of business because of this tragedy. They're turning inward.

China was buying a lot. They just had a trade deficit for the first time in five or six years. They'll be buying much less [U.S.] debt. The Fed was buying a huge amount in QE2 [second phase of Fed's quantitative easing] They're done in June.

And then today one of the biggest bond funds, the biggest hedge fund in the world, announced that they're shorting the Treasury bond. In other words, they're selling the bond. They're not buying it. So I think we're in -- you know, facing this serious crisis within weeks and months.[...]

"Serious crisis?" We're seeing the ground opening beneath our feet.

The good news is that after noticing that the earth was moving even the most hawkish expansionists in Washington have gotten very quiet about Libya these last few days, and that our nation's president has had much practice from his time in Congress at simply voting "present."

So as things stand at this moment -- to return to the Washington Post report:

[T]he Obama administration appeared to reject the possibility of an expanded U.S. military role [in Libya] in the near future. A State Department spokesman insisted Tuesday that NATO was performing adequately in enforcing the no-fly zone and said the alliance was fine-tuning its tactics to address complaints about the campaign’s effectiveness.

“We have every confidence in NATO’s ability to carry out the task of enforcing the arms embargo, as well as the no-fly zone and the protection of civilians in Libya,” the spokesman, Mark Toner, told reporters in Washington.

“The U.S., of course, as needed, would help out if requested in other capacities. But, really, our role has receded.”

Here's hoping, because according to the Post the pressure on Obama is ramping up:

Maurizio Massari, a spokesman for Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, said NATO countries should furnish arms to the rebels fighting to topple Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, saying that was the best way to assure the the rebels’ defense. The suggestion implied that the NATO-led air strikes were incapable of protecting the insurgents and their de facto capital, Benghazi, from persistent assaults by Gaddafi loyalists.

But news agency reports said that Belgium, backed by Germany, contended that providing arms to the rebels would go beyond the scope of the U.N. Security Council resolution that authorized Western bombing against Gaddafi’s troops as a way to protect civilian populations.

Tuesday’s unusual public criticism of the Libya operations from French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe and British Foreign Secretary William Hague raised questions about NATO’s ability to smoothly conduct such a large-scale and sustained military operation without the United States playing a commanding role, as it has in the past.

“The Americans have the numbers of planes, and the Americans have the right equipment,” said Francois Heisbourg, a military specialist at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.

The only way I can see out of this mess, at present, is to first send Bernard-Henri Levy back to Benghazi. Have him explain to the rebel leaders the facts of life in a post-Japan tsunami world, and in a world where NATO no longer marches in lockstep.

Then send Libya's former foreign minister Moussa Koussa back to Tripoli. Have him explain to Col. Gadhafi that there's a face-saving dénouement but that it would hinge on his not wreaking revenge on the Benghazi rebels.

Yes yes supposedly Koussa is a defector but whether or not this is true he could return under the protection of NATO, as a negotiator.

According to the Guardian, Koussa was planning on meeting today with rebel leaders who were in attendance at the Doha meeting. No word yet on how that turned out but whatever settlement offer could be broached at this point, I think it would be heard most clearly from the French.

As long as the rebels believe that France will continue to carry the standard for them at all costs, they will not be in a mood to settle. The longer they remain in that mood the closer Libya's humanitarian crisis moves toward catastrophe
-- a catastrophe that will spill into neighboring countries and Europe, as Libya's humanitarian crisis has already done.

The bottom line is that even with a military victory and control of several oil fields, the rebels are not capable of starting and managing a nation without massive assistance that Germany is not going to provide, the French and British can't afford to provide, and that the USA would be stark-raving mad to provide.

As to where my advice would leave America's promotion of democracy -- which promotion would that be? The debacle in Afghanistan, which has resulted in the country's Muslim hardliners running the show in Kabul? The bloodbath that occurred in Iraq because Paul Bremer confused an economic theory -- Neoliberalism -- with the principles of sound democratic government? (1) The misapplication of Gene Sharp's tactics to Iran? The installation of U.S. puppets during the Orange and Rose revolutions? Or how about if we go all the way back to Indochina and ask whatever happened to the great democracy promotion that resulted in the Vietnam War?

My second essay on this blog praised the principle of the democracy doctrine. But my third essay, and many subsequent ones, argued that Washington had to learn to play it straight when promoting democracy around the world.

Yet playing it straight is only half the task; the other half requires knowing how to intelligently promote democracy. We're not there yet, and now Germany and the United States cannot afford to help patch mistakes after the fact. So the operative phrase for U.S. foreign policy in this era must be "Look before you leap."

1) For readers who didn't closely follow the doings of the Coalition Provisional Authority under Paul Bremer: To his everlasting credit he played a key role in getting a written Constitution for Iraq. Beyond that it was pretty much a fog on account of Washington having had much experience at setting up democracy stage shows, but little experience with setting up the real thing.

But President Bush had his heart set on Iraq having a real democracy, not the stage-managed imitation. So Bremer, a Kissinger disciple, was forced to improvise. That worked out in part to his ordering Iraq's moribund state-run factories shut so that a healthy private sector could establish. In this, he was following good Neoliberal economic principles. However comma he had also ordered de-Baathification, which had routed Baathists from Iraq's military.

With no paychecks from factories or the military, large numbers of Iraqi males were watching their families starve. And so they went to work for the insurgency or al Qaeda. I forget how much AQ was paying for each IED laid -- maybe around 40 bucks a pop -- and to families of suicide bombers, but it was a paying job and thus, the bloodiest chapter in Iraq's post-Saddam history.

Finally some people at the U.S. Department of State gave up trying to argue with Bremer over the issue and staged their own insurgency. They reopened a few of the factories in contravention of Bremer's edict, just to get paychecks generated.

Libya Stalemate

Here's the best overview of the military situation in Libya, as it stood yesterday. NATO is boxed in militarily as are the rebels and Gadhafi's forces:

CNN's THE SITUATION ROOM with Wolf Blitzer, anchor

Aired April 11, 2011 - 17:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[...]

WOLF BLITZER: Let's go to the military operation underway in Libya right now. A new U.S. concerns, a stalemate could be emerging. Our Pentagon correspondent, Chris Lawrence is joining us with this part of the story. What's the latest, Chris?

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, one senior U.S. official tells us that there's almost no chance that Libya's rebels can move further along on the ground towards Tripoli, and yet, another official tells us that Moammar Gadhafi's forces cannot undertake a major ground offensive. So, where does that leave you?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAWRENCE (voice-over): Nobody wants to call it a stalemate, but U.S. officals privately say the rebels are holding Ajdabiya but don't have the organization, weapons, or manpower to move on. Gadhafi holds Brega, but air strikes have a destroyed a third of his ground armor and cut into his supply lines. U.S. and NATO officials now believed neither side can move. They also say it can't go on like this. If it does, al Qaeda is almost sure to take advantage.

ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN, NATO SECRETARY-GENERAL: If this ends up in a stalemate that eventually could also make Libya a failed state, that could become a breeding ground for terrorists and extremists.

LAWRENCE: In a political term, there's no such thing as a tie.

WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: A stalemate would be a defeat. I think for the president and in terms of his stated goal of seeing Gadhafi leave.

LAWRENCE: Former Defense Secretary William Cohen says NATO must do more militarily.

COHEN: That would intensify the military operations.

LAWRENCE: U.S. and NATO officials have information notes civilians being killed, but Gadhafi's forces are enough now so mixed in so with civilians it's impossible to launch air strikes against them, unless, you use low flying aircraft that can fire extremely accurately, the kind that U.S.S. stop flying now that it is not leading the mission. In addition, Gadhafi may still have as many as 15,000 shoulder fired missiles. It's why NATO secretary-general now says there's no way to fight its way out of this.

RASMUSSEN: I want to be clear that there can be no solid military solution to the crisis in Libya.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAWRENCE (voice-over): Especially when it's getting harder for NATO to even tell the two sides apart. For example, last Thursday, NATO warplanes accidently bombed the rebels because they didn't know that the rebels now had tanks -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Chris Lawrence at the Pentagon, thank you.

[...]

Do Sarkozy's actions toward Libya relate to the day the world changed? Pundita turns to the spirit world for an answer.

July 16, 2009: The Day the World Changed

The Spiegel report that accompanies the historic photograph above (tersely credited to "DDP") starts as a snark piece about Russian President Dmitry Mevedev turning on the charm and getting German Chancellor to smile during their meeting in Munich on July 16, 2009. As you can see Chancellor Merkel had done plenty of smiling months earlier:

March 31, 2009: Merkel and Medvedev attend a meeting of German and Russian economic leaders at the Chancellery in Berlin

(Photo: Sean Gallup for Getty Images Europe)

However, the Berlin meeting, which was to prepare for a G20 summit in London, was pro forma. It was the Munich meeting which was the biggie. After clowning around for a few paragraphs Spiegel moved to a discussion of Medvedev's approach to Russia's human-rights issues. Then after a riveting discussion of how to remove grass stains from socks the report finally doles out a few hints regarding the importance of Medvedev's trip to Munich:

The two sides also agreed to develop a common school textbook together. Work on the project is set to begin later this year. If anything concrete comes out of the efforts, it will be a remarkable success. Russians and Germans currently have a very different view of their shared history. A common school textbook could help to promote mutual understanding between the two nations. The chancellor went as far as to praise the way that German-Russian relations had "greatly intensified."
[...]
Andreas Schockenhoff, the German government's commissioner on German-Russian relations, also says that more concrete projects need to be agreed upon in the future. "But the dialogue is getting more and more open," he says.

In what might be the biggest understatement of this young century Schockenhoff added, "Last year, the Georgia war dominated the mood, but this year there is a very different atmosphere of trust."

United Press International was a little more forthcoming about the import of the Munich meeting:

Medvedev in Germany to talk Nord Stream

MUNICH, Germany, July 16 (UPI) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met Thursday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss energy security and the Nord Stream gas pipeline.

Sergei Prikhodko, an aide to Medvedev, said fuel and energy cooperation were at the top of the agenda for the meeting between the two leaders. He added the talks focused particularly on the political aspects of implementing the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which he described as of "strategic importance not only for Russia and Germany, but for the whole of Europe," RIA Novosti reports.

The Nord Stream gas pipeline would transit along a dual route through the Baltic Sea to Germany. Russia sees the project, and its South Stream counterpart, as an option to avoid politically sensitive routes through Ukraine that transfer 80 percent of all Russian gas to Europe.

Europe, for its part, puts its faith in the Nabucco pipeline, though that project suffers from a lack of firm commitments from potential gas suppliers and financial shortfalls.

Merkel in March said she wants no public funding for the $10.3 billion Nabucco project.[...]

But it was left to John Batchelor to put all the pieces together, which he did in such spectacular fashion that Stephen F. Cohen, the great Russia scholar, was struck speechless for a few seconds.

Finally Dr Cohen said slowly, more to himself than to Batchelor, "I think you might be onto something."

So then everyone around the world who was tuned into Batchelor's radio show began scribbling notes like mad.

Batchelor saw the Munich meeting as a harbinger of the end of NATO as the world had always known it. Unfolding events over the next year showed he was correct. Yet there was no single event, no specific crisis to signal that a massive shift in old alliances was underway. However, with regard to Germany there were at least three situations that taken together were a large factor in Merkel's historic decision to turn over a new page in German-Russian relations, and which had taken years to come to a head.

2008: Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on hold after putting through a call to State to learn whether the CIA would assassinate him for ordering a military strike on South Ossetia


1. The proposed Nabucco pipeline -- proposed to serve Europe as an alternative to Russian natural gas -- and proposed to be supplied with gas by those bastions of stability, "Iraq in cooperation with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and possibly Egypt." Wikipedia adds helpfully:

Concerns have been raised about the safety of the project. The pipeline will cross through unstable areas of Turkey's Southeast region. In recent years the Kurdistan Workers' Party claimed responsibility for blowing up the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline and the Tabriz–Ankara pipeline in Turkey. ... Gas for the Nabucco pipeline coming from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan will have to pass near areas of instability in the South Caucasus.

Understand that Washington had wanted Germany to pick up a big share of the tab for funding the Nabucco nightmare, which, when Wikipedia last checked, still hasn't found funding.

2. U.S. and British machinations in Ukraine, which egged on Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko to escalate his cold war with Putin. This included holding Europeans who were dependent on Russia natual gas hostage to the prospect of freezing in the winter, and which threatened to crash a good chunk of the EU economy. And which by 2008 also had something to do with a cold war between the Kremlin and the British foreign office over a joint oil deal involving British Petroleum -- er, "BP."

3. The very same war in Georgia that Herr Schockenhoff delicately alluded to. You remember that war, right? The one where presidents Bush and Putin had to learn while sitting next to each other at China's Olympics that Georgia's president -- the necktie-chewing Mikheil Sakaashvili, installed as Georgia's President in a U.S.-orchestrated putsch ("The Rose Revolution") -- was trying to start World War Three?

Yeah. That war.

There are surely additional reasons not specifically related to the United States -- the economic crisis for one, which brought home to Germans that they couldn't continue bankrolling the expansion of the European Union at the rate they'd done in the past.

And there was simply the fact that a shaking out in alliances was inevitable when it became clear to West Europeans that continuing with the policy of using former Soviet republics to create an ever-expanding front against Russia was threatening to create the very instability on the Continent that had driven European fear of Russian hegemony. The Georgia war was the starkest demonstration that there had to be a realignment of priorities for Europe, even if this caused a major rift with the United States.

And so, when Medvedev showed up in Munich three days after the Nabucco Pipeline Intergovernmental Agreement between Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria was signed by five prime ministers with the European Union President Jose Manuel Barroso and Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy Richard Morningstar and Ranking Member of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Senator Richard Lugar looking on and beaming, Angela Merkel said to him -- paraphrasing here -- For God's sake, let's try for sanity.

And with such few or similar words, the small cracks in the NATO alliance widened to a gulf, which finally ushered in the true post-Soviet era.

The question is whether the Libya crisis -- the response of the United States and European NATO nations to the uprising in the country -- is part of a shift in alliances on the European continent, or whether the crisis was in some way precipitated by it.

In an attempt to divine an answer I must turn to the occult on account of the Beeb rolling up much of its operation in Russia, FNC shutting its Moscow Bureau, the ABC and CBS Moscow bureaus shuttered and reporters at CNN's Moscow bureau (if there's even one left) spending their days playing darts and yelling out the window to any Russian who looks like FSB, 'We're NOT spies!'

So give us a moment while we retrieve the Ouija board. [clattering sounds] All right; everyone quiet please because I've never tried this before with people listening in.

Oh Ouija, why did Nicolas Sarkozy decide to invade to Libya on the advice of a philosopher, and does the improved relationship between Russia and Germany have anything to do with the decision, and how can the United States get out of the mess in Libya?

All right; now I wait, and hope the spirit world is in a good mood. The last time I asked Ouija for insight into European affairs I got the spirit of a Prussian general. It gave me plans for laying siege to Paris and a recipe for pickled herring. I used to have a spy at the German embassy here in Washington, a young raccoon with a good ear for German and a gift for acting adorable, but then it bit a caterer -- ssshhh, Pundita! Quiet! [whispering] Just see what I have to go through because the editorial boards of the New York Times and Washington Post want to act like members of the NSC and desks at the U.S. Department of State instead of doing their job -- sssshh! The wedgie's moving!

"I-L-F-A-U-T-S-A-V-O-I-R-D-O-N-N-E-R-U-N-O-E-U-F-P-O-U-R-A-V-O-I-R-U-N-B-O-E-U-F"

"Il faut savoir" -- looks French. So now we have to traipse to a translator program......

Translation: "You have to know how to give an egg to get an ox."

Never what I want to know, always what the spirit world wants me to know. Well, let's see what inspiration we can glean from a French proverb about an egg and an ox. I think this requires a trip in the time machine:

March 17, 2009

Sarkozy wins French NATO re-entry vote
[no byline]

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Opposition lawmakers Tuesday ridiculed President Nicolas Sarkozy for taking France back into NATO's military command after more than 40 years, but were unable to stop the move when it came to a vote.

The National Assembly voted in favor of Sarkozy's plan, 329-238.

Socialist Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister, told Prime Minister Francois Fillon: "You tell us this would mean more independence and more influence. It would probably mean less independence and less influence."

The move did not technically require parliamentary approval, but the president's party scheduled the debate to give opponents a chance to voice their opinions -- and to show a majority backed it.

Asking the National Assembly to vote on the issue also showed how sensitive the matter is in France.

France was a founding member of the NATO alliance in 1949 but it left the military structure in 1966 amid friction with the United States.

"To cooperate is to lose your independence," French President Charles de Gaulle said at the time.

For the next 43 years, even though France selectively participated in NATO military operations, de Gaulle's principle remained the governing cornerstone of French foreign policy.

If Paris took orders from NATO military commanders, it was reasoned, the nation would no longer have complete control of its destiny.

Sarkozy, however, believes the opposite -- that cooperation in NATO is a guarantee of French independence.

Rejoining NATO's military command, he argued, will give France a seat at the table for decision-making.

From its earliest years, the organization's trans-Atlantic ties were strained because U.S. analysts warned that if the European allies failed to increase their contributions to the alliance, they risked losing the support of the United States, according to NATO.

Meanwhile, the European nations felt the United States was trying to dominate the organization, according to NATO.

De Gaulle's 1966 decision meant no French forces could be under permanent allied command and that France would have no participation in defense planning.

In 1995, France rejoined NATO's military committee, which advises NATO's political authorities on military policy and strategy and provides guidance on military matters to NATO's strategic commanders.

While France was still not a part of the military command, it contributed troops and funding to NATO activities, including actions in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Half of all French troops outside the country are assigned to NATO military operations.

Opponents of Sarkozy's move -- who include some members of his party -- believe de Gaulle, not Sarkozy, had it right. They started a last-minute petition drive to stop his march back into NATO.

"With this decision, France will return as a subordinate country and will lose its ability to represent another image in the world," said Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a member of the French National Assembly.

The president's allies calculate Sarkozy's move will strengthen Europe's hand on defense issues.

"There will be more European weight in the way decisions will be made," said Louis Giscard d'Estaing, a member of the National Assembly's U.S. Friendship Committee. "Therefore, the balance of power between the USA and Europe will be re-established within this French move."

March 17, 2009. Why does that date have a familiar ring? Oh yes; the National Assembly vote on France rejoining NATO happened just a few days before the March 31, 2009 meeting between Merkel and Medvedev in Berlin ahead of the London G20 Summit. Moving ahead in the time machine:

March 22, 2011

Sarkozy opposes Nato taking control of Libya operation
Dissent from Germany, Turkey and Norway leaves question marks over command structure

By Kim Willsher in Paris
(U.K.) Guardian

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has opposed handing over control of the military operation in Libya to Nato, saying the move would send the wrong message to Arab nations.

At a meeting of the North Atlantic Council, Nato's decision-making committee on Monday, the French representative reportedly stormed out after being accused of hindering Nato's involvement in the campaign. France had flatly refused to agree to the proposal, which was later agreed by a majority of member countries.

The German representative is also reported to have left the meeting after his country was criticised for not wanting to get involved.

Turkey, angered that the French president had failed to invite it to Saturday's summit in Paris, refused to give carte blanche for a no-fly zone over Libya.

Western diplomats say Sarkozy angered Britain and the US by announcing French planes were already in the air and ready to attack Libya before many of his allies had even left Saturday's meeting to decide on military action, and before informing his partners.

Afterwards, the French president -- who will be seeking re-election next year -- was congratulating himself for what the French called his "diplomatic blitzkrieg" in pushing through UN resolution 1973 authorising the offensive against Muammar Gaddafi.

However, after Monday's meeting, Norway said it was "suspending' participation of its F-16 fighter jets, which had already arrived in Italy before flying on to Crete, until it had "a clarification of the command [structure]".

Germany and Turkey do not want Nato to carry on the bombing campaign against Gaddafi's forces; Luxembourg, present at Saturday's summit, has said it will only take part if the operation is Nato-led; Italy is "reflecting on the use of its bases" for the operation.

The French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, said Nato was "willing to come to the support of the coalition in a few days", suggesting a role for the organisation that is complementary rather than central.

A French military source told AFP it was a case of "finding a way to get Nato involved without it being seen to head the operation".

While France has been giving the impression it is heading the operation, the military attacks on Libya are, according to Juppé, "an operation co-ordinated by the US in direct collaboration with the French and British authorities". It is being led from US bases in Germany and Italy.

This is apparently the first time London, Paris and Washington have failed to come up with a unified chain of command for the operation. [Pundita note: I think the reporter meant to write "an" operation.]

Laurent Teisseire, spokesman for the French ministry of defence, told journalists: "There is no centralised chain of command at this moment. Everyone is using their own military structures in a co-ordinated fashion."

This unprecedented, three-pronged command is reflected in the different names for the operation: The French are calling it Harmattan (the name of a hot wind that blows over the Sahara); in Britain, it is Operation Ellamy; and in the US, it is Odyssey Dawn.

Le Nouvel Observateur magazine described it as "a boat without a captain".
[...]

I can't buy Sarkozy's stated rationale for opposing a NATO-led military operation in Libya because by his reasoning the Arab world would also be alarmed by any Western-led operation, including a French one.

Yet Sarkozy is no fool. So while it's tempting to chalk up his headlong rush into the Libyan uprising to a response to a humanitarian crisis, or to show his political opponents that France would not be marginalized by NATO membership, or to an attempt to head off a massive influx of refugees, or even a big move in the chess game of oil politics or all the above, I remain perplexed by his very strong initial opposition to NATO control of the Libya operation.

Here I'm reminded of Diana Saluri Russo's January 30 article for the Global Journalist, Is the Foreign News Bureau Part of the Past? She writes:

While some might herald the futuristic era that web-based journalism -- with its blogs, tweets, and YouTube videos -- is bringing to foreign reporting, Tobias Piller, long-time Rome correspondent for a German newspaper, has a different take.

For Piller, relying on nonspecialists and drop-in coverage in place of regular foreign correspondents is, in fact, taking foreign coverage back to earlier days.

“When I arrived in Rome 17 years ago, there was what I would call an older generation of foreign reporting,” says Piller. “It basically consisted of something like a ‘letter from Rome’ maybe every two weeks—an analysis of the country’s curiosities, an analysis of politics now and then, mostly stereotypes. It was basically a generalist’s view.”

As mainstream media replace foreign correspondents with “hot spot” drop-in coverage, outsource to local hires and newswires, and even the Vatican turns to YouTube, Piller says the demand for and faster arrival of information creates a different type of journalism, which often results in a kind of painting in broad strokes.

Piller, who covers Rome for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, cites German confusion about Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s continuing popularity in Italy as an example of what only in-depth, authoritative reporting can offer.

“Germans can’t understand why Italians elect Berlusconi over and over again,” he says. “They say he is a crook, so why does this happen. Or they think Italians have been brainwashed. The fact is that Italy is very complicated. Italians don’t see it so much as black and white. You need to see it from the inside. If you are not an official journalist, you are not able to explain that.”
[...]

I urge you to read the entire article, which is a sobering assessment of difficulties that present-day journalism is posing not only for individual news consumers but also for governments.

Things have come to the point where only the John Batchelor Show and the big news wire services such as Reuters and Associated Press routinely provide ongoing media coverage of regions around the world whether or not there's a crisis or big 'breaking' news story from a region.

That's how John was able to spot the importance of the Munich meeting, and why his audience could appreciate its significance: for years his show had routinely featured reports and analysis on Europe and Russia.

Munich is by no means the only instance when John noted an emerging trend before other analysts and the mainstream press saw it. He can be months and even years ahead of the curve; he's simply a brilliant analyst who's had many years of practice, which doesn't mean he can't make mistakes in his initial estimates of a situation. But no small part of his ability to spot important trends is because he tracks regional developments all around the world, over time.

Yet routine ongoing coverage of world regions is being reserved more and more for online magazines, subscription journals, specialty blogs and message boards; John's radio show is a rare exception in that it's available through a major mainstream mass-media outlet.

Photo Caption from Global Journalist: "Foreign news bureaus, such as this 1930s Associated Press London bureau, used to bustle with energy. Now many foreign bureaus are closing and switching to local reporters.
AP Photo: Uncredited)"

War as Wimbledon

Meanwhile, Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said government forces had shot down two rebel helicopters in the east, but this also cannot been confirmed.

He said: "A clear violation was committed by the rebels to [UN] resolution 1973 relating to the no-fly zone."

Nato says it is applying the zone fairly and on Saturday escorted a rebel MiG-23 fighter jet back to its base.

Here is the rest of the Beeb's April 10 report, titled Libya: African leaders head to Tripoli talks.

Washington's headless horseman and President Obama's Address to the Nation on Libya

President Obama's Monday address to the nation about Libya ended at 7:57 PM ET. By 8:05 PM, CNN's Nic Robertson was reporting to Anderson Cooper from Tripoli that the Libyan opposition battling Moammar Gadhafi is deeply divided in their view of the International Coalition's intervention on their behalf, with one side believing that the intervention represents an attempt to split the country in order to steal Libyan oil. I have no idea how that side came to such a ridiculous idea.

But moving along, yesterday U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in London on a cat-herding mission for President Obama, who is rather desperately trying to persuade the International Coalition to think and speak in one voice on the matter of Libya.

Desperation would be an understatement on account of Obama's advisory bench being heavy on Arab affairs advisors and light on African affairs advisors. What this means is that Obama didn't realize at first that (a) Gadhafi thinks like an African, (b) Gadhafi plays the archetypical role of the African chief, and (c) many Africans think like Africans.

What (c) boils down to, in terms of the situation at hand, is that in the view of many Libyans you give the chief the shirt off your back no matter how much he abuses you and the stronger the chief the less you complain about the abuse.

That's the way things are in Africa. That's the way things have been in Africa for countless millennia, on the theory that new-fangled ideas of government come and go while a strong father's will to protect his children is eternal.

Will this theory eventually die out? Will the Libyan opposition on the other side of the split, with leaders educated in the USA and Europe, and including a wafer-thin stratum of democracy activists, someday prevail over the atavistic African model of the most reliable form of government? One would hope so, but right now the President of the United States is facing the stark prospect that not only might Gadhafi survive the International Coalition's onslaught but also that any support Gadhafi receives in Libya could further fracture the Coalition, which is already at loggerheads on how to proceed.

Prime Minister David Cameron made an appeal for unity at the London Summit, which was attended by senior diplomats representing no less than 40 countries, including some Arab countries:

“We are all here in one united purpose, that is to help the Libyan people in their hour of need.”

But when one notes that many Africans (a) consider the Arab Spring an Arab thing (b) still think of the Arabs in Africa as conquerors and colonialists, and (c) have never stopped fuming about European colonial adventures in Libya, I'm afraid that appeals to humanitarianism play better in the United States than where it counts.

None of the above goes near addressing the problem I mentioned in the last post, which is that the 'cooperative' side of the Libyan opposition -- the side that welcomes Coalition intervention against Gadhafi -- has elements that are sympathetic to America's enemies. Top of the enemies list is al Qaeda.

To put the cherry on top, Gadhafi is not a forgive-and-forget sort of person. Thusly, if he survives one must assume he'll divert a considerable portion of Libyan oil revenue to wreaking terrorism on the countries that shot up his air defense system. Top of the shooters list would be the United States of America. Against this prospect is the major rationale Obama cited last night for the timing of the U.S. military action in Libya:

Now, we saw regime forces on the outskirts of [Benghazi]. We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi –- a city nearly the size of Charlotte –- could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.

As I noted in the March 15 post, Gadhafi had no intention of launching a massacre in Benghazi, which would have been counterproductive for his purposes. His plan was to partly encircle the city, then use a variety of measures to encourage and pressure the Benghazis to drive the rebel leaders through the opening in the circle, out into the desert, where he intended to pick off the leaders. So this was going to be a waiting game, not an invasion.

However, governments are entitled to their propaganda and Gadhafi might have been lying in his teeth, so I won't labor the point about Obama's hair-trigger response to Gadhafi's military threat to Benghazi. Moving to the major secondary rationale Obama cited:

A massacre would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya’s borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful -– yet fragile -– transitions in Egypt and Tunisia. The democratic impulses that are dawning across the region would be eclipsed by the darkest form of dictatorship, as repressive leaders concluded that violence is the best strategy to cling to power. The writ of the UN Security Council would have been shown to be little more than empty words, crippling its future credibility to uphold global peace and security. So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.

Yes, the refugee problem is considerable. On Monday CNN correspondent Ivan Watson reported that refugees from Libya had been flooding into Tunisia and Egypt at the rate of 15,000 per day. That the flood had been stanched somewhat since the Coalition took military action didn't mean an end to the humanitarian crisis created by the refugees.

And yet the price of all that for America can't be counted because right now there is no limit to the cost of blinkered U.S. initiatives to bring about democratic reform in Egypt; that's because the sky's the limit for the unintended consequences.

If you ask what initiatives I'm talking about -- I forgot to mention that part, perhaps because of embarrassment that I led myself down the garden path after I read a Wikileaks leaked State Department cable about Egypt that the (U.K.) Telegraph published on January 28. You remember that cable; right? I discussed it in the February 14 post in which I contended that under cover of 'peaceful' protests Egypt's military had launched a successful coup to remove Gamal Mubarak and the Gamalists from power.

From the cable's wording it certainly seemed that the idea to have the Obama administration back Egypt's April 6 Youth Movement had been abandoned, so I assumed that the entire project had been shelved. What I didn't stop to consider was that there could be many similar projects afoot in Washington, and that these were never abandoned. So I got a nasty jolt, which frankly I'm still recovering from, when I read Associated Press Special Correspondent Charles J. Hanley's report on March 12 titled, US training quietly nurtured young Arab democrats, and which reads in part:

The revolutionary roar from the Arab street, shaking the palaces of the privileged, toppling presidents, has echoed around the globe, dominating the headlines and airwaves for weeks. But behind this story of political upheaval lies another, quieter story of outside organizations that, with U.S. government and other money, tutored a young Arab generation in the ways of winning in a political world.

All involved emphasize that what has happened sprang from deeply rooted grievances in the autocratic Arab world, not from outside inspiration. But they say the confidence-building work of democratic coaches, led by the U.S. but also including Europeans, was one catalyst for success.

That success, meanwhile, points up a core paradox: A U.S. government that long stood by Mubarak and other Arab leaders as steadfast allies was, at the same time, financing programs that ultimately contributed to his and potentially others' downfall.

Some see American shrewdness at work, covering multiple political bets in Egypt and elsewhere. Others see an America too big and complex to be consistent.

"Speaking as a Canadian, one of the beauties of the U.S. system is that there are many, many entry points in many centers of power, and they can have conflicting policies," said Les Campbell, Middle East chief for the U.S. National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.

The NDI, affiliated with the Democratic Party, and the GOP-affiliated International Republican Institute (IRI) are links in the nurturing "democratic assistance" web, key conduits for grants from the State Department's Agency for International Development (USAID) and from the National Endowment for Democracy, a private organization funded by the U.S. Congress.
[...]

If readers who've been with this blog for years find Hanley's report to have a familiar ring, you might be recalling the following report from Ian Trayner at the (U.K.) Guardian, which I've mentioned several times over the years, and which received mention on the first day of this blog's existence, on November 28, 2004:

November 26, 2004

US Behind the Turmoil in Kiev
[...]
Ukraine, traditionally passive in its politics, has been mobilised by the young democracy activists and will never be the same again. But while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.
[...]
The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute [NDI], the Republican party's International Republican Institute [IRI], the US state department and USAID are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros's Open Society Institute. [...]

If American readers -- and for that matter, readers in Western Europe -- say, 'Forget the history lesson; how much is putting humpty-dumpty back together again going to cost us?' -- well, as I mentioned earlier, there are many unintended consequences spinning out from the magical ouster of Hosni Mubarak -- magical, that is, to audiences throughout the Middle East, who watched the CNN International and Al Jazeera Hollywood-style productions made from the Egyptian protests and thought, 'Oh snap, we can do that here, too.'

So, again, because there's no way to factor in the unintended consequences at this point there's no way to even estimate the cost to taxpayers who'll be stuck with the bill for putting Libya back together into some semblance of order.

Technically, the Gadhafi assets frozen by UN mandate should cover the costs for Libya, but those can't be disbursed immediately and immediately is what's needed. As to the cost in human lives and wrecked economies to -- again, there's no way to tell at this point how much it will add up to.

The taxpayer doesn't necessarily have to pay immediately, at least not the American taxpayer. That's because the Federal Reserve can simply make more money, or the appearance of more money, by pressing a few keys on computers. Of course there is a huge cost to that way of funding activities running into many billions of dollars. But large amounts of money must be found immediately. To quote again from Charles Hanley's report:

National Endowment money, $100-million-plus a year, is at work in more than 90 countries worldwide. But it's the USAID grants, from an $800 million budget for developing "political competition" and "civil society" in 67 nations, that have proved vital to activists in a half-dozen Arab lands, from Morocco to Yemen. Some $104 million was requested for them in the proposed 2011 budget.

In post-Mubarak Egypt, that help is about to balloon.

Of a $150 million Egyptian "transition fund" announced by Washington, $50 million will go toward democracy and governance programs like the ones that have nurtured hundreds of Egypt's rising democrats, The Associated Press has learned. That would triple the 2011 funding previously planned.

"We need more support, and fast," said Abdallah Helmy, 34, co-founder of Egypt's dissident Reform and Development Party and one who benefited in recent years from "hundreds and hundreds of hours" of U.S.-supported training in everything from managing campaigns and elections to using Twitter, Facebook and other social media for political messaging.

It's estimated more than 10,000 Egyptians since 2005 have participated in USAID-financed democracy and governance programs, carried out by NDI, IRI and 28 other international and Egyptian organizations - not only political training, but also projects to prepare judges, build PTA-style school associations and otherwise deepen civic involvement.
[...]

Those are all wonderful projects. Pity they wouldn't be worth much in a country where the military cut a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood in exchange for the Brothers' help in ousting Gamal Mubarak. The March 24 New York Times report that discusses speculation about such a deal doesn't mention the part about a coup; to my knowledge the Times hasn't entertained the possibility that a coup happened.

Anyhow the Times report came too late to warn Egypt's secular democracy activists who were engaged in the protests -- although I seem to recall that John Batchelor warned during the early days of the Egyptian protests that the Brothers and the military had cut a deal, and repeated the warning more than once on his show and his blog. Yet within days of Hosni Mubarak's departure from office, and without prompting from outsiders, many secular Egyptians who took part in the protests did become suspicious that they'd been duped by the military and even some of their leaders; unfolding events in Egypt have not eased their suspicions.

In short, it's going to take huge infusions of cash and technical help if Egypt's genuine democracy advocates are to have even a ghost of chance against a coalition of the military's old guard, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the most radical of Egypt's conservative organizations.

To argue that establishing a genuine democracy is always a rocky road would be to ignore or overlook that it would have been impossible for the military to stage a bloodless coup in Egypt without the assistance of the Western-trained democracy activists who planned and led the initial protests. That the activists might have been innocent dupes wouldn't change the fact that democracy activism, as taught and funded by Western organizations, made it possible for Egypt's military to palm a coup in full view of the world.

If you want to argue that there was no coup I'll be glad to debate you on that score, and I'll do it in a Note at the end of this post. For now, the point is that the more players involved in democracy-promotion initiatives that are mounted or supported by foreign governments, the harder it becomes to monitor them all and control how they're used, and where the funds actually end up.

It all started with the best of intentions, in the 1980s, with the establishment of the National Endowment for Democracy to promote democracy around the world. Its activities were to be closely monitored by Congress because even though it was a private organization it would receive federal funding. The idea worked so well that others started copying it. Not in a year or two but over decades a thick forest of NGOs, GONGOs (government-sponsored non-governmental organizations) and INGOs (international GONGOs) grew up.

The idea became attractive to all kinds of players, not all of them interested in democracy. But set aside democracy initiatives that are fronts for lobbies only interested in business deals or in manipulating a country's politics; set aside local crooks and transnational criminal gangs that set up phony NGOs to cover their tracks. I'm talking about what happened when the sincere democracy-promotion organizations morphed into a kind of industry -- a completely unregulated one.

Les Campbell spoke of the "many, many entry points in many centers of power," in America and called this a beautiful system even though it could produce conflicting policies.

But when the unintended consequences arising from the activities of thousands of people scattered across hundreds of organizations, agencies and departments that operate out of sight of the American voter and often in conflict or with no coordination and official mandate suddenly manifest in the screaming headlines of crisis, what then of the beautiful system?

What then is that there's no one to call to account -- no one to bring before a congressional committee or eject from political office, no one to ask, 'What were you thinking, you goddamn lunatic?'

There is only dense fog on a moonless night in Washington, the hooting of an owl wheeling along the dark waters of the Potomac River and the faint sound of a horse's hooves nearer and nearer --

March 30

Hillary Rodham Clinton remark at London [summit], "... to achieve their aspirations through political change ..." is the blandest way of describing what begins now as years of manipulation and misdirection by the Euro colonial powers to secure the energy fields of Libya without looking as if they are running 6 million people as feudal tenants.

The obstacle to this utopian fairy tale is Q [Gadhafi]. Am told Q is looking at exile and sniffing, 'What about Charles Taylor, oh great Uncle Sugar?' You promised him safe exile in Nigeria if he'd depart his Monrovia nest; however, as soon as the Liberian gov changed hands and decided that Taylor was an outlaw (guided by the geniuses at George Bush State) the ICC closed in and Chuck T sits in the Hague playing video games and hiding his money.
[...]
Q knows the ICC is the threat, and he does not believe State. Also, the rebels are a nightmare of stooges and regime plants. Also the rebel soldiers are all featured on Al Q jihadist websites as heroes of Iraq and Afghanistan. Guys we used to chase we are now protecting with air.

Laughter is a useful emotional release for the You Can't Make This Stuff Up planet of chuckleheads and deadbeats called Earth.

Final note: the deep conflict in London is that Pop Q wants Saif Q to take command of apparatus at Tripoli and run election which he will win overwhelmingly. The Benghazi TNC, stooges all with Western educations and Euro bank accounts, reject this Son-for-Dad deal as the end of their days. Pop the popcorn, as the Italians and Turks love the deal, and the US and French hate it.
-- Saif to the rescue; John Batchelor

Who, then, is the victim in all this madness? For a headless horseman must always have a victim. The victim is America's most cherished values, which Barack Obama spoke with great feeling about during his address to the nation about Libya.

******
Note

The Coup

First, for those who read my February 14 post on Egypt but missed the update I added on the 17th, I'll fill you in. On February 14 STRATFOR chief George Friedman joined Associated Press Cairo Bureau Chief Hamza Hendawi in concluding that the Egyptian military used the protests in the country to carry out a 'soft' coup that was aimed at forcing Hosni Mubarak to resign. And while Friedman stressed the military's fear that Hosni's youngest son, Gamal, would be the father's successor as president, he stayed with Hendawi's view that the coup was an ad hoc affair; i.e., improvised after the protests were already underway.(1)(2)

My analysis, the one I published on the 14th, had gone much further than Hendawi and Friedman; I'd concluded that a cadre in the military's high command (the 'Old Guard') had used youth groups to stage protests that masked a coup, which was aimed at routing not Hosni but Gamal and Gamal's closest associates.

However, I had little evidence to shore my contention that the military had planned the initial protests as cover for a coup, and the evidence I'd scraped together could only be considered suggestive. I'd based my conclusion almost entirely on what I'd learned about Egypt's military and its increasingly desperate struggle against the Gamalists, and also on logical argument. In the update I used the same logic to dispute Friedman's conclusion that the coup had been ad hoc:

Friedman had emphasized the military's struggle against Gamal, which was heating up as Egypt's 2011 presidential election drew near. Yet Friedman was willing to assume that despite their desperation the military's Old Guard would simply wait and hope for a serendipitious moment to give them an opportunity to oust Gamal.

The Old Guard was in no position to wait and hope. Ironically, a February 16 report from STRATFOR titled Egypt's Next Crisis: The Economy, aided my argument. The report, which was republished by the Market Oracle website, throws vastly more light on the Old Guard's reasons for wanting to oust Gamal than even the reports I'd used as the basis for my analysis.

What I found most astonishing about the STRATFOR report is that it revealed that Gamal and his band of reformers in the government had achieved more success in breaking the military's hold on the Egyptian economy than had been reported before to the public -- at least, the publics outside Egypt:

Until just a few years ago, Egypt’s ruling military elite was able to “borrow” money from Egyptian banks with no intention of paying it back. President Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal changed all that, reforming and privatizing the system in order to build an empire for himself.
[...]
One of the many changes [Gamal] made was empowering the central bank to actually enforce underwriting standards at the banks. The effort began in 2004, and early estimates indicated that as many as one in four outstanding loans had no chance of repayment.

By 2010 the system was largely reformed and privatized, and the military elite’s ability to tap the banks for “loans” had largely disappeared. The government was then able to step into that gap and tap the banks’ available capital to fund its budget deficit. In fact, it is this arrangement that allowed Egypt to weather the recent global financial crisis as well as it did. For the first time in centuries, Egypt’s financial position was not entirely dependent upon outside forces.
[...]
From Gamal Mubarak’s point of view, four problems had been solved. The government had more stable financing capacity, the old military guard had been weakened, the banks were in better shape, and he was able to build his own corporate empire on the redirected financial flows in the process.

But these changes and others like them earned the Mubarak family the military’s ire. Mubarak and his reform-minded son are out of the picture now, and the reform effort with them.

With the constitution suspended, the parliament dissolved and military rule the order of the day, it stretches the mind to think that the central bank will be the singular institution that will retain any meaningful policy autonomy.

If the generals take the banks back for themselves, Egypt will have no choice but to seek international funds to cover its budget shortfalls. Incidentally, we do not find it surprising that now — five days after the protests ended — the banks are still closed by order of the military government.

Yet Egypt cannot simply tap international debt markets like a normal country. While its foreign debt load is small, its total debt levels are very similar to states that have faced default and/or bailout problems in the past. An 8-percent-of-GDP budget deficit and a 72-percent-of-GDP government debt load are teetering on the edge of what is sustainable.
[...]

Based on all I've learned about Gamal I'd dispute that he undertook the reforms for the express purpose of building a personal financial empire. And in any event he would have needed all the financial empire he could muster in order to keep prying the Old Guard's fingers away from Egypt's throat.

I also dispute Friedman's claim, in the February 14 report, that Hosni wanted his son to succeed him in the near term; see my Valentine's Day post for my reasons, although I won't plant a flag on that point. I'm willing to concede that the Old Guard might have had inside information that Gamal was going to make a try for the presidency in 2011.

I'll even concede that there could have been two coups - the one I outlined, and the kind of ad hoc coup that Hendawi and Friedman described. I can see how the Old Guard, once noting the military was being hero-worshipped by the protestors, might have decided to throw Hosni to the lions just to make Double Dutch sure that Gamal had no more supporters in the regime -- even though Hosni made every concession the they wanted on January 29 by naming Old Guard champion Omar Suleiman as vice president and calling for the resignation of Egypt's Cabinet, thus ejecting the peskiest of the Gamalist economic reformers from government.

But no matter how you slice and dice it the Old Guard had to act. If they didn't want to resort to a wave of assassinations to solve their Gamal problem their best window for action was the annual Police Day commemoration in Tahrir Square on January 25.

Their biggest problem would have been persuading the April 6 Youth Movement leaders and other activist group leaders that if they mustered their followers to come out in full force to protest on Police Day, they wouldn't be targets of a sting operation to single out and neutralize opposition ahead of the presidential election. They managed to persuade them, but all that for another day.