Bill LuMaye Show: Bill LuMaye Fri. 04/8/11

Bill LuMaye Show: Bill LuMaye Fri. 04/8/11: "Bill talks to Mike Lyons, the CBS News Military Consultant MP3 File"

War in the Name of Humanity

We jumped into the Libyan Civil war with both feet and a made to order, air dropped No Fly Zone on the side that has no military power or even political legitimacy whatsoever.  The standard Libyan Rebel fighting force looks like this - has two pickup trucks, one machine gun, a few AK47s, an RPG grenade launcher with a couple of grenades, another rifle and a surface-to-air missile, a few men, boys, and a Rebel Flag.   When you put that up against even the most disorganized military with only a modicum of skill and equipment like the Libyan Army has (Cold War era Soviet made Tanks and armored personal carriers), the result is still called "no match".   Take a look at the front page of today's New York Times and you will see a picture of a boy training for the Rebel forces.  The article goes on to say the young man has already been at war for 37 days and has fired his weapon numerous rimes.  Flash-forward a week from now, the boy is riding in a pick up truck that is incorrectly identified as enemy by the crack NATO targeting specialists circling overhead in an AWACS.   The initial mission is for the close air support; they won’t get there for another 4 hours because the British and French don't really have the weapons to fly close air support properly.  The mission gets handed off to the US Navy, who proceeds to launch a Tomahawk cruise missile in the general direction of the truck, under the justification of it being a military target.    The Cruise missile is an "area fire weapon" - you don't have to hit the pick up truck directly in order to "neutralize" the target.  The end result of the Tomahawk attack is one less Rebel Force - a few more AK47s, another SAM and Rebel forces all are removed from the battlefield.  Also removed from the battlefield (and from the living) is the 13 year old boy who was with the Rebel force.  He never had a chance.

We got into this war (frankly, it's appalling to be calling this “a limited military action in Libya in support of an international effort to support and protect Libyan citizens and of short duration with limited kinetic action”) under the pretense that we saved the lives of "thousands" of civilians who would have been slaughtered by the Libyan Army.  Instead, we are going to kill people one or two at a time.  Meanwhile, we try to arbitrarily separate combatants from non combatants on the battle field, and when we make a mistake, it's chalked up to the fog of war.  It still is very difficult for any soldier or combatant to flip the switch from war fighter to peacekeeper. It’s part of the requirement today, all in the name of humanity. 

Bill LuMaye Show: Mike Lyons Gives Latest On Libya

Bill LuMaye Show: Mike Lyons Gives Latest On Libya: "Mike Lyons (Ret. Major US Army), CBS News Military Consultant, talks on the latest in Libya, give us his response to the President's speech,..."

Stalemate in Libya

With two weeks in the books, we are at a stalemate in Libya. First, let's agree on this - there is a Civil War taking place there.  The Rebel "army" in unorganized, has no command and control, does not fight as coherent units, is out manned 10-1, and does not have the weapons to defeat the Libyan Army who they are up against.  I have read all the feel good reasons we got involved in Libya, and even despite the multiple and layered criticisms - we haven't done this before, why Libya and not Darfur, the President acting unilaterally -  the conclusion we saved at least one life (someone) then no one; It's better to save someone then no one.  I disagree.  We can't personalize it to that level - it's not the way to run neither a country nor its foreign policy.

Where I struggle with this intervention is how we got involved so late in the game, how our policy towards Libya changed virtually overnight, the clear divisions within the administration about what to do, a President who acted unilaterally without Congressional support, and what our military was used for, which was to completely destroy the Libyan air force and other military targets.  Rest assured, we killed people on the ground, but we seem to think it's ok to kill them because they are soldiers and not civilians. You don't launch 150 cruise missiles and not hit a person.  We launched a Humanitarian mission to save Libyan civilians, but it started out with us killing people.

We brought a type of warfare to the battlefield of which the enemy had no defense against. I grew up in the US Army during the Cold War, commanded a unit in Germany before and after the Berlin Wall fell.  I always thought we would be involved with the Super Wars, not the regional skirmishes, and especially where our national interests were not at stake.  I never thought I would see our military used as the proxy to fight the war of another country - neither the French or the British were capable of targeting and launching the Blitzkrieg type of attack required to implement the no fly zone.  The US was the complete and absolute "hammer" of this operation.  Sec Gates knew all to well it would take a massive air attack to set the environment for the no fly zone (150+ Tomahawk missiles is a massive attack in my book). In previous no fly zones, we already controlled the ground. We tipped the balance in favor of the Rebels, and after two weeks, all it brought was a stalemate.
 
It's pure conjecture to say we saved the lives of thousands of civilians.  We have intervened in another country's civil war and we can't even project what Libya looks like 6 months from now.  We did a classic "ready-fire-aim" operation here, and I am afraid we weakened American interests by having our military used to advance the interests of other countries which is a dangerous precedent to have set.