Simultaneous War III continues. Nobody knows its goal or how or when it ends. Or who’s in charge of operations. Or what a success might look like. In fact, the many questions US airstrikes on Libya have raised seem to have struck many (including me) dumb. Why? Because I just don’t get it. I don’t understand the point of this latest military adventure. Or what it is supposed to accomplish. Or how.
There are lots of countries in which dictatorships with varying degrees of brutality toy with the lives of the citizens, suppressing dissent, imprisoning, killing, disappearing, repressing in one way or another. These countries are not democracies. How many are there in which tyrants of one stripe or another are in charge and acting like, well, tyrants? I don’t know, but you can bet that Libya isn’t the only one in Africa. And, of course, all of these countries, to one degree or another, have nascent opposition groups that are involved in various kinds of opposition to the tyrant, including demonstrations, rebellions, or outright armed insurrection. But the US isn’t busy lobbing $1 million missiles at these countries in support of the rebels, or flying airstrikes to blow up their military defenses, or coordinating with the allies to advance the opposition, or even threatening them to straighten up and fly right. Or else. Libya is special, probably because of oil.