Did Libya Vindicate 'Leading From Behind'?

Max Boot gives Obama the boot on Libya, at WSJ and RCP. Boot's normally pretty gung ho on foreign military intervention, so I'm sensing a little disappointment overall. That is, more forward deployed U.S. power earlier in Libya would have not only shortened the war, but made for a stronger precedent in future crises. See Boot's earlier piece, "It's Not Too Late to Save Libya."

Rebels Bust Gaddafi's Bunker

A huge report at London's Daily Mail, "Missed him by minutes: How rebels and special forces came close to snaring Gaddafi." Also at Telegraph UK, "Libya: rebels surround apartment block 'hiding' Col Gaddafi."



Plus, at LAT, "Eww! Moammar Kadafi (hearts) Condoleezza Rice." And Memeorandum.

Protection Racket: 'Responsibility to Protect' Becomes a Doctrine

From Joshua Muravchik, at World Affairs:

The world has mostly enjoyed peace since 1945, but that owes nothing to the UN and everything to American power, exercised mostly in the form of guarantees to Japan, NATO, and other allies, rather than in shooting wars. In this era when violence within states is far more common than between them, cases of extreme abuse will sometimes cry out for outside intervention. But the traditional doctrine of humanitarian intervention, invoked by the United States and other democracies at their own discretion, is likely to offer a more usable basis for such action than the shiny new version called R2P, which places all authority in the paralytic hands of the United Nations Security Council.

It's a good piece. RTWT.



And recall David Rieff, at National Interest, "Saints Go Marching In."

More Than 12 Million Facing Starvation in Somalia

This just makes me sad. Forget politics and political science theory. I wish we could do something.

At Los Angeles Times, "Somalia famine spreads to 3 new regions, U.N. says":

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa

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With hunger in the Horn of Africa dramatically worsening, the United Nations on Wednesday added three more regions of Somalia to the list of areas it says are stricken by famine.

More than 12 million people are facing starvation, with children particularly vulnerable. The U.N. last month declared that two regions of Somalia were suffering from famine, and it said Wednesday that the famine was likely to spread across most of Somalia in coming months, as well as parts of Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Somalia is struggling with its worst drought in 60 years, and 3.7 million Somalis are in crisis, mainly in the south — creating Africa's most serious hunger crisis in two decades. Refugee camps in the capital, Mogadishu, are now affected as well, U.N. agencies said.

Shocking images of those suffering have resulted in an increase in aid in the last two weeks, after donors' earlier sluggish response, but violence in the south of the country has limited humanitarian agencies' access.

The U.N. is seeking to raise $1 billion to address the crisis.

I'm researching relief agencies, by the way. I'll make a contribution, but so much gets wasted on overhead and corruption I'm wary. More on that later.

Somalis Starve as Shabab Islamists Bar Escape From Famine

This really bothers me, at NYT, "Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine." The picture here was on the cover of today's hard copy edition.

Readers know I've expressed reservations against humanitarian intervention, especially since Libya really wasn't. But I'm not reflexively opposed to the use of military power to guarantee food shipments. Almost twenty years ago President George H.W. Bush sent U.S. forces to Somalia to protect delivery of humanitarian aid. We all know how that turned out, but we didn't go in right in the first place, didn't have enough men and heavy armor on the ground, and President Bill Clinton got cold feet after we sustained casualties. If we were ever to do something like that again, we'd be best to go in without the U.N. or our NATO allies. Leave it to American forces, who've been engaged in two decades of counterinsurgency warfare since the early 1990s. The experience is cumulative. We could do a better and more effective job of relief today, and frankly, it could do some good. The Horn of Africa is right next to Pakistan and Yemen as the top location of festering Islamist war against the West.

Every morning, emaciated parents with emaciated children stagger into Banadir Hospital, a shell of a building with floors that stink of diesel fuel because that is all the nurses have to fight off the flies. Babies are dying because of the lack of equipment and medicine. Some get hooked up to adult-size intravenous drips — pediatric versions are hard to find — and their compromised bodies cannot handle the volume of fluid.

Most parents do not have money for medicine, so entire families sit on old-fashioned cholera beds, with basketball-size holes cut out of the middle, taking turns going to the bathroom as diarrhea streams out of them.

“This is worse than 1992,” said Dr. Lul Mohamed, Banadir’s head of pediatrics, referring to Somalia’s last famine. “Back then, at least we had some help.”

In any case, more at New York Times, "Off Media Radar, Famine Garners Few Donations," and "How to Help Victims of the East Africa Famine."

South Sudan Gains Statehood

When I first saw the news yesterday morning, with images of jubilation among the population, I thought, hmm, how's this going to work out? Sudan is one of the world's most crisis-ridden states, as measured by Foreign Policy Magazine "Failed States Index, 2011."

And see Los Angeles Times, "South Sudan, world's newest nation, is instantly one of the most troubled":

The countdown clock ran out, the flag ascended over the fledgling capital and a new nation born from Africa's longest civil war and the deaths of 2 million people joined the world.

The mood was euphoric Saturday in Juba as the Republic of South Sudan formally declared its independence from the north, its bitter antagonist for generations. For the day, at least, a people weary of conflict were willing to ignore that their nation came into being as one the world's most troubled states.

Dozens of heads of state gathered outside the mausoleum of southern war hero John Garang at a massive ceremony featuring marching soldiers. Thousands of ordinary Sudanese crammed into the parade grounds, singing and cheering.

The man sworn in as South Sudan's first president, Salva Kiir, stood alongside his old nemesis, northern President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in the western region of Darfur. Bashir's presence was a powerful sign that he has acceded to the partition, however grudgingly.

It is not exactly true to say the country is starting from scratch, because it has been building the rudiments of a functioning government since the 2005 peace deal that made independence possible. But nationhood comes fraught with outsized problems.

More at the link. And see also, New York Times, "After Years of Struggle, South Sudan Becomes a New Nation" (via Memeorandum).

RELATED: From James Traub, at Foreign Policy, "Bashir's Choice."

Ratko Mladic, Bosnia War Crimes Suspect, Arrested in Serbia

At the Charleston Post Courier, "Serbia Arrests Mladic on War Criminal Charges":

BELGRADE, Serbia -- After 16 years on the run, a frail and haggard Ratko Mladic was hauled before a judge Thursday -- the first step in facing charges for international war crimes, including the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.

No longer the fearsome, bull-necked military commander, Mladic was arrested by intelligence agents in a raid before dawn at a relative's house in a village in northern Serbia. The act was trumpeted by the government as a victory for a country worthy of European Union membership and Western embrace.

Mladic, 69, was one of the world's most-wanted fugitives. He was the top commander of the Bosnian Serb army during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, which killed more than 100,000 people and drove another 1.8 million from their homes. Thousands of Muslims and Croats were killed, tortured or driven out in a campaign to purge the region of non-Serbs.

He was accused by the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for the massacre of Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces in eastern Bosnia and the relentless four-year siege of Sarajevo.

Also, at Christian Science Monitor, "After Ratko's arrests, a look back at the Srebenica massacre."

What is Obama's Mission in Libya?

Ross Douthat comments on President Obama's address to the nation on the Libya intervention, "A War By Any Name":

Tonight, in a speech that probably should have been delivered before American planes began flying missions over North Africa, Barack Obama will try to explain to a puzzled nation why we are at war with Libya.

Not that the word “war” will pass his lips, most likely. In press briefings last week, our Libyan campaign was euphemized into a “kinetic military action” and a “time-limited, scope-limited military action.” (The online parodies were merciless: “Make love, not time-limited, scope-limited military actions!” “Let slip the muzzled canine unit of kinetic military action!”) Advertising tonight’s address, the White House opted for “the situation in Libya,” which sounds less like a military intervention than a spin-off vehicle for the famous musclehead from MTV’s “Jersey Shore.”

But by any name or euphemism, the United States has gone to war, and there are questions that the president must answer. Here are the four biggest ones: What are our military objectives? ...

Keep reading for the rest of it. Interesting though is how divided the administration remains on Libya. Robert Gates saying the mission's not in the vital interests of the United States? Well, check with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, I guess, since she's saying Libya's a greater interest to the U.S. than is Syria, or something? Well, what the heck? At least neocon-bashing Juan Cole knows what's going on: "An Open Letter to the Left on Libya." (At Memeorandum.)

Regime Change the Only Viable Solution in Libya

From Bret Stephens, at WSJ, "We're (Almost) All Neocons Now." After a primer on the surging popularity of neoconservatism --- from French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Princeton Political Scientist Anne-Marie Slaughter --- Stephens reminds us:

It's easy to forget that Iraq was a war many liberals—Joe Biden, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton among them—once supported, when they could bring themselves to hate Saddam more than they did the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal. The latter passion overwhelmed the former for a few years, but eventually the initial logic of their position was bound to reassert itself in some similar scenario.



So it has been with Libya. The moment the Libyans revolted, the U.S. could not have remained silent without doing violence to bedrock American values. And so President Obama said Gadhafi must go. The moment Mr. Obama said that, the administration could not be indifferent to the outcome without risking the wrath of a vengeful Gadhafi, as well as a wider Arab audience that would have felt profoundly betrayed by empty U.S. promises. And so Mr. Obama crossed his fingers that the rebels would win, and win fast.



The moment Gadhafi turned the tide and threatened to massacre his opponents, the administration was bound to try to stop him for purely humanitarian reasons. And so Mr. Obama pressed for international action, even as he hoped the U.S. would not have to be directly involved. The moment it became clear that there would be no such intervention without U.S. involvement, the U.S. became involved.



Now the administration is again at a crossroads as it ponders what to do next. Sooner or later it will figure out that any road that doesn't lead to Gadhafi's death, imprisonment or exile is a cul-de-sac that can only mean the de facto partition of Libya, or Gadhafi's survival, or a long civil war from which the West cannot easily disentangle itself.



Put simply, regime change is the only viable option for resolving the crisis in Libya, a point most sentient observers are beginning to grasp. And regime change is only going to come about if the U.S. presses the matter. So why is the administration so reluctant to acknowledge the obvious?

Compare to Stephen Walt's, "What intervention in Libya tells us about the neocon-liberal alliance." Walt sounds more and more like a Paulbot. And he's long given realism a bad name. Not only that, his analysis is riddled with clichés. The United States hardly wields its military like hammer, obviously, since untold nails of humanitarian crises remain un-pounded. Indeed, the lost souls of Rwanda haunt the conscience of the West today. Americans can't intervene everywhere, but that's not a likelihood anyway. Walt --- and the anti-military paleocons before him --- simply raves against robust U.S. engagement in the world. It's isolationist and morally bankrupt.

Coalition Airstrikes Hit Libya Again: Tripoli and Surroundings Targeted in Fourth Barrage in Last Several Days

The main story's at LAT, "Coalition Airstrikes Target Tripoli." Reports of civilian causalities at both videos, with the U.S. denying the allegations:

RELATED: There's all kinds of commentary at Memeorandum, but too little hours in the day. Still, I'll try to post on Stephen Walt's essay later.

VIDEO: Night Sky Explosions Over Tripoli, Libya

Awesome clip:

And see the news updates at New York Times, "Allies Open Air Assault on Qaddafi’s Forces in Libya," and Telegraph UK, "Libya: British forces launch missile attacks on Gaddafi." Also at Memeorandum.

Cameras, Technology, and the Fight for Human Rights

At Reason.tv, a powerful discussion with Yvette Alberdingk Thijm, Executive Director of WITNESS, a Brooklyn-based human rights organization:

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Leading Through Civilian Power

I've been meaning to do this — and since I just posted "Hillary Clinton Says No White House Run - And No TSA Pat-Downs!" — what the heck?

From Foreign Affairs, "Leading Through Civilian Power: Redefining American Diplomacy and Development." The word "staid" comes to mind, but interesting nevertheless:

Diplomacy has long been the backbone of U.S. foreign policy. It remains so today. The vast majority of my work at the State Department consists of engaging in diplomacy to address major global and regional challenges, such as confronting Iran's nuclear ambitions, facilitating negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, enhancing stability on the Korean Peninsula, and working with other governments to bring emergency relief to Haiti. And President Barack Obama and I certainly relied on old-fashioned diplomatic elbow grease to hammer out a last-minute accord at the Copenhagen conference on climate change last December.

In annual strategic dialogues with a range of key partners -- including China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, and South Africa -- the United States aims to deepen and broaden its relationships and to establish a stronger foundation for addressing shared problems, advancing shared interests, and managing differences. The United States is investing in strengthening global structures such as the G-20 and regional institutions such as the Organization of American States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. This is part of a commitment to building a new global architecture of cooperation that includes not only the East and the West but also the North and the South.

Although traditional diplomacy will always be critical to advancing the United States' agenda, it is not enough. The State Department must expand its engagement to reach and influence wider and more diverse groups using new skills, strategies, and tools. To that end, the department is broadening the way it conceives of diplomacy as well as the roles and responsibilities of its practitioners.

The original Foreign Service, as its name implies, consisted of people trained to manage U.S. relations with foreign states, principally through consultations with their counterparts in government. This has been the main function of U.S. ambassadors and embassies, as well as the staff at the State Department. But increasing global interconnectedness now necessitates reaching beyond governments to citizens directly and broadening the U.S. foreign policy portfolio to include issues once confined to the domestic sphere, such as economic and environmental regulation, drugs and disease, organized crime, and world hunger. As those issues spill across borders, the domestic agencies addressing them must now do more of their work overseas, operating out of embassies and consulates. A U.S. ambassador in 2010 is thus responsible not only for managing civilians from the State Department and USAID but also for operating as the CEO of a multiagency mission. And he or she must also be adept at connecting with audiences outside of government, such as the private sector and civil society.

More at the link.

Why Are We Supporting Repression in Ethiopia?

From William Easterly and Laura Freschi, at New York Review:

Foreign aid observers have often worried that Western aid to Africa is propping up autocratic regimes. Yet seldom has such a direct link from aid to political repression been demonstrated as in “Development without Freedom,” an extensively documented new report on Ethiopia by Human Rights Watch. Based on interviews with 200 people in 53 villages and cities throughout the country, the report concludes that the Ethiopian government, headed by prime minister Meles Zenawi, uses aid as a political weapon to discriminate against non-party members and punish dissenters, sending the population the draconian message that “survival depends on political loyalty to the state and the ruling party.”

Ethiopia is Africa’s largest recipient of foreign aid (at $3.3 billion in 2008 and rising), and is frequently described as a country where western assistance is providing a safety net for the poor and laying the groundwork for country-wide economic growth. Donors working in Ethiopia, citing progress on six out of the eight Millennium Development Goals, claim that aid has “had a significant impact on improving the lives of the poorest families.” A predominantly Christian country bordering two unstable Islamic states (Somalia, and Sudan), Ethiopia is also seen as a crucial ally in the “war on terror.”

Yet Human Rights Watch contends that the government abuses aid funds for political purposes—in programs intended to help Ethiopia’s most poor and vulnerable. For example, more than fifty farmers in three different regions said that village leaders withheld government-provided seeds and fertilizer, and even micro-loans because they didn’t belong to the ruling party; some were asked to renounce their views and join the party to receive assistance. Investigating one program that gives food and cash in exchange for work on public projects, the report documents farmers who have never been paid for their work and entire families who have been barred from participating because they were thought to belong to the opposition. Still more chilling, local officials have been denying emergency food aid to women, children, and the elderly as punishment for refusing to join the party.

More at the link.

I admire Easterly's work, for example: "Think Again: Debt Relief."

'Cos This is What We've Seen...

I'm down with the idealism, although not the policy implications. Among the band's very first political songs, "Driven to Tears":

How can you say that you're not responsible?
What does it have to do with me?
What is my reaction, what should it be?
Confronted by this latest atrocity

Driven to tears

Hide my face in my hands, shame wells in my throat
My comfortable existance is reduced to a shallow meaningless party
Seems that when some innocent die
All we can offer them is a page in a some magazine
Too many cameras and not enough food
'Cos this is what we've seen

Driven to tears

Protest is futile, nothing seems to get through
What's to become of our world, who knows what to do

Driven to tears

American Volunteers Devoted to Helping Others in Afghanistan

At LAT:

They were a disparate group of American altruists who had long cared for the poor and ailing, thrown together on a mission to provide medical help in the most daunting and needy of places.



Last week, the six Americans were among 10 volunteers shot to death in a remote swath of Afghanistan while returning from an aid mission, a tragic end to their years of risk-laden service in the war-ravaged and impoverished nation.



Tom Little [pictured above], for one, remained in Afghanistan through its brutal civil war in the 1990s, talking his way through checkpoints manned by various ethnic militias, and saving the lives of co-workers who might otherwise have been dragged from the car and killed.



Colorado dentist Thomas Grams often traveled with a bodyguard and told friends how he'd persuaded a tribal leader to bring his mother in for a dental exam by agreeing that she'd peel back as little of her burka as possible.



"He was just there out of kindness," Katy Shaw, a friend of Grams, said Sunday, her voice catching. "I can't get my arms around why someone would do that to a group of people trying to be helpful."



The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the ambush in a rugged, isolated valley, which also killed two Afghan men, a German woman and a British woman working with the International Assistance Mission. The Taliban accused the Christian group's volunteers of proselytizing and spying for Western military forces, which the charity vehemently denied.



The charity team, which had been providing eye care and other health services to villagers, had hiked over a steep mountain pass into neighboring Nuristan province, where insurgents had been battling Afghan and Western forces. Police theorized that the assailants might have followed them back from there.



Two other Afghan members of the group escaped the massacre: an interpreter who had left before the ambush and a driver who told police he recited verses from the Koran as he pleaded for his life. Afghan authorities are still questioning the driver about his account of the incident, and police said it would take two days for investigators to reach the scene of the killings.



The Western military condemned the attack as part of a pattern of insurgent behavior that exacerbated the suffering of Afghan civilians.



"This is something the Afghan population has to face," said Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force. "Because of these brutal, indiscriminate and absolutely deranged tactics and activities of the Taliban, international aid workers and nongovernmental organizations can't do their job, which is so necessary for this country" ....



Another victim, Cheryl Beckett [pictured above], 32, was a former senior class president in Ohio with a sharp sense of humor and a strong Christian faith, said her grandmother Jean Fink. Both characteristics helped the aid worker power through the last six years, with Beckett educating Afghan villagers in nutritional gardening and mother-child health, and herself in the local languages.

RELATED: "Afghan driver for slain aid volunteers being held by authorities." More at Blazing Cat Fur, along with the press release from the International Assistance Mission.