Photo of Muammar Qaddafi by James Gordon

Muammar Qaddafi has been killed and his forty-two year dictatorship in Libya is over.

After seizing power in Libya by a military coup, Qaddafi renounced the Libyan constitution and upheld his rule through a combination of force and admiration from his cult-like following.  He amassed wealth with Libya’s oil, waged wars with neighboring states and was behind the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1994 that killed 270 people, including 189 Americans.  

When Libyans began to call for the ouster of Qaddafi seven months ago and NATO jets joined their campaign, it was unclear how this revolution would end.  In the nuclear non-proliferation community, however, there was a collective sigh of relief because Libya had given up its nuclear weapons program in2004.  Qaddafi could not use them against his people in revolt.

Under an agreement with the U.S. and U.K. that promised normalized relations with Libya, Qaddafi relinquished his entire nuclear weapons program.  The U.S. and U.K. dismantled, destroyed and airlifted out key components and documents on the program, Russia removed highly enriched uranium that it had supplied and the International Atomic Energy Agency began verification of nuclear sites.  Qaddafi did not have the nuclear option thanks to the tireless work of U.S. diplomacy and international non-proliferation organizations.

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Nukes on a Blog, Libya (all tags)

On August 21, the Libyan opposition forces stormed the capital, Tripoli, and took control of President Ghaddafi’s compound.  The war is not over, as Ghaddafi loyalists continue to battle the rebels, and the Transitional National Council (the organization formed to represent the opposition) will need to begin work to fill the power vacuum. The council has a huge task ahead of it to restore order, rebuild the country, create legitimate national institutions and cobble its different factions into some sort of working government.  More immediately, the opposition and NATO have to secure Ghaddafi’s chemical weapons and low-enriched uranium stockpiles.

In addition to Ghaddafi’s arsenals of conventional weapons, he is rumored to have stockpiled chemical weapons agents.  NATO has pledged to secure the chemical weapons so that Ghaddafi forces cannot use them against the opposition and civilians, but the opposition will also need to be involved.  James Corbett, a member of the Center for Research on Globalization, doesn’t believe the Ghaddafi regime would use these weapons in a last ditch effort to hold on to power, since it hasn’t used them yet.  However, the greater risk is that, amidst the chaos of Ghaddafi’s overthrow, these stockpiles could be susceptible to theft by smugglers or terrorists.  Terrorist organizations, such as Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, have successfully used chemical weapons against civilians in the past.  

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Libya, nuclear security, terrorism, Security Matters (all tags)

Written by John Isaacs, appears in ADA Today:

United States involvement in the Libyan war may turn out to be the straw that broke the political and philosophical back of the military interventionists.

Most of the country having long turned against George W. Bush’s war of choice in Iraq, President Obama has been continuing the process of withdrawal from that (at least tenuously) pacified country. Disaffection with the Iraq war hurt the Republicans at the polls in 2006 and 2008.

As for the Afghan war, many on the left and right were willing to reserve judgment on President Obama’s actions early in his administration because he had inherited a weak position from his predecessor.  Besides, Afghanistan—in contrast to Iraq—was the “good” war, one directly related to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

But the effort to oust long-time Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi means the United States is engaged in three military conflicts at the same time, to say nothing of predator drone strikes in other countries. While liberals are split on the Libyan conflict, the expanding wars are widely perceived to be military interventionism run amuck.

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Security Matters, Libya, Afghanistan, Merkley, McGovern, Iraq (all tags)

THE HILL BLOG

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/172803-war-powers-resolution-consistently-ignored

In 1973, in my first job in Washington, D.C., I helped to pass the War Powers Resolution. At the time, it seemed like a good idea.

The country was reeling from the Vietnam War that had proved so divisive and caused so many casualties. Many blamed Presidents John F. Kennedy for surreptitiously getting the country into a war, Lyndon Johnson for using falsehoods to win approval of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and Richard Nixon for his secret plan to end the war that led to many more years of fighting and dying.

War powers advocates argued that the measure was essential for Congress to reassert its power to make war that had atrophied since the declaration of war against Germany and Japan in 1941 – the last time Congress so declared.

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Libya, war powers, Congress (all tags)

Not today...

Remember the F-22? After years of back and forth over its cost and utility, Congress voted in 2009 to cease additional procurement of the plane. Those that were purchased already have done little more than gather rust since their introduction into the Air Force in 2005.

Early this month, though, the aircraft were reportedly readied for action, just in case, and Gen Norton Schwartz, USAF chief of staff, told Congress that he expected the F-22s to be employed in what was still a hypothetical operation in Libya. Certainly, if the planes have feelings their lonely hearts were aflutter at the possibility of their first big trip into the fray.

It was not to be, however. Schwartz, reporting again to Congress, said yesterday that the reason F-22 fighters have not been used to attack air defenses or counter Libyan jets is because they’re not based in the region.

Well, okay… benefit of the doubt… but there could be some other reasons, as well.

Stephen Trimble speculates that this particular battle may have come a bit too early for the Raptor:

True, the F-22 fleet can drop two joint direct attack munitions or eight small diameter bombs. However, six years after declaring initial operational capability, the F-22 is still waiting for a radar that picks up targets on the ground. The air-to-ground mode for the Northrop Grumman APG-77 radar is nearing the end of a long testing phase, and retrofits for the fleet should start at the end of this year. Until then, the F-22's primary targeting sensor is effectively blind to ground targets after the aircraft takes off.

In a statement that seems to reinforce Trimble’s speculation, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley noted yesterday that the F-22 has “some air-to-ground capability, though it is optimized for air-to-air engagements.” This would render the plane of little use in Libya, where the vast majority of operations have been focused on air-to-ground strikes. The F-15E, by comparison, has the ability to drop laser-guided bombs on moving ground targets.

According to DoD Buzz, the U.S.’ F-16, F-15E, F/A-18G, AV-8B and A-10, Britain’s Eurofighter Typhoon and Tornado, and France’s Rafale and Mirage have appeared in Libya so far. They are joined by B-2 Stealth bombers, B-1 Lancers, and AC-130 gunships, as well as a variety of intelligence and command and control planes.

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Security Matters, Defense Spending, F-22, FY 2010, Libya (all tags)