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.