10 March 2011 Dumb luck and bad luck

The Case for a No-Fly Zone

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: March 9, 2011

“This is a pretty easy problem, for crying out loud.”

“ For all the hand-wringing in Washington about a no-fly zone over Libya, that’s the verdict of Gen. Merrill McPeak, a former Air Force chief of staff. He flew more than 6,000 hours, half in fighter aircraft, and helped oversee no-fly zones in Iraq and the Adriatic, and he’s currently mystified by what he calls the “wailing and gnashing of teeth” about imposing such a zone on Libya. “

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/opinion/10kristof.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

“The secretary of defense, Robert Gates, has said that a no-fly zone would be “a big operation in a big country” and would begin with an attack on Libyan air defense systems. But General McPeak said that the no-fly zone would be imposed over those parts of the country that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi doesn’t control. That may remove the need to take out air defense systems pre-emptively, he said. And, in any case, he noted that the United States operated a no-fly zone over Iraq for more than a decade without systematically eradicating all Iraqi air defense systems in that time.

Cassi Creek: Kristof is appalled at the loss of human life taking place in Libya. He has just cause to be. The use of modern warplanes to attack poorly armed, poorly trained rebels is heinous. To use them against unarmed civilian non-combatants is equally so. It calls to mind the attacks by Italian forces against Ethiopians prior to WWII and to the source for Picasso’s Guernica, painted to memorialize the German-Italian air attack on the Basque town of Guernica in 1937 http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/guernica_nav/main_guerfrm.html

Libyan air force personnel have crossed a line by attacking civilians. Our concepts of justifiable warfare and our sometimes invocation of the Geneva Accords cause us to object to the deaths and injuries in a conflict we see as greatly mis-matched. The Libyans have also destroyed oil pipelines and other facilities. This is justification for interference by regional nations. If the new Arab regimes want to demonstrate their merit, the problem of Libya is an excellent place for them to begin.

Remember, however, that the concept of winning a war often entails staging an attack with the opposition is not prepared. The American victory in the first Gulf War depended in part upon a carpet-bombing attack upon thousands of Iraqi soldiers dug into sand and dirt, delivered by B-52 aircraft flying out of sight above the targeted Iraqis. We also spent the first shooting days of that war systematically demolishing both communications and anti-aircraft capabilities so that the threat to our aircraft was lessened to the point that we essentially controlled all Iraqi airspace.

While Gen. McPeak is correct, we can affect a no-fly zone; it would be costly in a time of economic recession and could easily result in lives lost due to normal operational hazards.

Sec Gates is correct. We can do it but it then becomes a shooting war, placing our troops in danger and interfering in a civil war that has no clear-cut opposition to the mad Khadaffi. We will gain nothing by interfering in Libya. The Arab world will come to view it as an invasion at some level and they will be aided in that perception by Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the various Islamic extremists who currently oppose our presence and our action in Muslim nations.

The perception presented by McPeak ignores the thing all military pilots know. It doesn’t take a fighter of equal or greater capacity to bring down a warplane. Many pilots have been shot down by a single bullet fired at random by troops on the ground. It’s called a “golden BB.” All it has to do is damage a fuel line, hydraulic line, fuel tank, or engine. The multi-million dollar plane becomes a ballistic object that is unlikely to return to base.

It can happen with a bullet, with shrapnel from AA guns, shrapnel from a SAM, or even from a shoulder-fired SAM. Our pilots would be at equal risk over both Libyan and opposing forces. Neither force can identify our aircraft all that well and will likely shoot at anything they see in the air. We stand a large chance of losing planes and pilots to the untrained and even to the stupid custom of shooting anything possible into the air. Our good intentions would most likely boomerang.

Yes, we can do it. No, we should not. It will cost too much in dollars and lives. The loss of lives in Libya is horrifying but it is a local and regional problem to solve.

We’ve had 1.04 inches of rain today. That’s twice yesterday’s rainfall. Yesterday there was a flood warning but the creek stayed in banks. At 1600, it’s creeping out in the lower parts of our yard. It promised to be an uneasy night once the sun goes down. At some point, this is supposed to become snow and drop 1-6 inches. I’d welcome a week without precipitation.

Dinner tonight is white bean/Italian sausage/soup with greens. I’ve never been that much of a fan of soups for dinner. But the weather and location seem to call for it.