How Libya helps NATO defeat itself

I suppose the title is misleading; this is not, and never has been a NATO operation. NATO is a defensive alliance, designed to counter the USSR in Central and Northern Europe during the Cold War. It was languishing for the ten years between the collapse of the USSR in 1991 until the 9/11 attacks gave it some fleeting legitimacy again. With that fight past it's best-before date (early 2002 when Al-queda and the Taliban had been smashed and driven from power in Afghanistan) NATO continues to seek to justify it's existence.

Well, face it: the game is up. The action in Libya is actively opposed by several NATO signatories, most notably Germany and Turkey so to call it "a NATO action" is flat-out wrong. What's even worse, it's incoherent and at risk of petering out ignominiously.

The Associated Press

Date: Fri. Apr. 15 2011 5:38 AM ET

TRIPOLI, Libya — From her father's compound, struck by U.S. bombs exactly 25 years ago, Moammar Gadhafi's daughter sent a defiant message early Friday: Libya was not defeated by airstrikes then and won't be defeated now, she told a cheering crowd.

The daughter, Aisha, pumped her right fist as she led the audience in late-night chants from the second-floor balcony of the badly damaged Bab Aziziyah compound, targeted by U.S. warplanes in 1986. "Leave our skies with your bombs," she said, referring to NATO airstrikes that had struck Tripoli just hours earlier.

Gadhafi (this sp this time I guess) has learned that he must hang on at all costs, so that's what he is doing. People and animals are most dangerous when cornered, and that is exactly what the policy and practice of not letting old despots slink away to a comfortable exile leads to. Advantage: Gadhafi.

So as the rump NATO wallows around and begs for more attack planes, Moammar hires mercenaries, adapts to the loss of control of his skies and both digs in and counter attacks. Cyrenaica (eastern Libya these days) is expendable to him as the oil is mostly in the west and south of the country. A cease-fire line that keep most or all of the oil will work quite well for him and would pull the rug from under the humanitarian/self-determination mission the French have cobbled together.

If I must make a prediction, I'll go with that scenario, at least in the short term. Nobody will miss Gadhafi if he's gone, but they'll have to winkle him out and no one who can do it is sufficiently motivated to do so. As a second act, NATO should be dissolved and a new North Atlantic Anglo Alliance (UK, USA, Canada) should be created in the West while the Europeans (Euro Zone) sort themselves into whatever works for them. Not our problem anymore, the Germans can handle it. Who won WWII again?