Everyone knew this to some extent, but to hear the actual numbers is still shocking. Video at Hot Air. The reporter making the claim is Jon Lee Anderson, who is on the ground in Libya and has evidently been out among the rebels. I’m not terribly familiar with Anderson, but a scan around shows that he has done some serious reporting from the war zones over the past few years. He’s not a rookie.
Anderson estimates that the number of actual, effective soldiers in the rebellion is in the “low hundreds,” and they’re augmented by a force of “foolhardy young men with guns” numbering about 1500. This is the force that the West has put its prestige on the line to back? We’re expecting to defeat Gaddafi’s antiquated but Soviet-trained professional army, estimated to number about 76,000 with a reserve of 40,000, with this ragged force of Mad Max extras? Really?
If Anderson is right and the rebellion really is so feeble, the way I see it from several thousand miles away admittedly, is that we have about three options. One, forcefully target and get Gaddafi soon. He’s very unlikely to take a deal to head to Uganda imho, though I’d love to be surprised. The longer the ping-pong drags on (and the rebels are apparently serving today, at least in Brega) the more degraded that rebellion will get, the higher the price of oil will get, and the weaker the coalition will get. Few Western hearts are in this, and Gaddafi knows it. Two, put an actual US expeditionary force on the ground and pound Gaddafi’s army to dust, take Tripoli, install a friendly government and get out. Or three, get out and let the war take its own natural course, warning Gaddafi that we have amphibious carriers bristling with Marines and lethal aircraft right off the coast, and if he acts up, he eats high explosives. And in the mean time, we have CIA operatives on the ground working to weaken and eventually remove him. Having crossed the Rubicon, there is no going back to the status quo ante.
They wouldn’t be so outgunned if they weren’t so apparently addicted to firing their guns in the air, now would they?
NATO jets have the No-Fly Zone covered, so start aiming what you’ve got at the Qadaffi goons, you dummies!
The problem with number 3 is that, considering this administration’s record to date vis-a-vis seriousness of purpose since being in office, there’s no way Gaddafi would belive or worry about that threat from these guys.
Bryan bryan bryan. Not to worry.
Little lenin’s 9-day planning cycle was that long because he took the time to determine the scapegoats AHEAD OF TIME. (and of course, how to take full credit if it comes out well)
He’s golden on this. Sarkozy, the Brits, Hitlery, the CIA, his military advisors, oil companies, the State Department, Congress for tying his hands, the Constitution and more !!. He has layers and layers of entities to blame if it doesn’t turn out well.
You missed the 4th option of sending in “trainers” and arms to to the rebels to assist them in their mission. Sounds kind of like how Viet Nam started out. But to send arms to the rebels without trainers would be a bigger waste than the other options.
I don’t understand the theory of why it’s ok to kill Libyan sargents and privates, but assassination of two bit dictators is somehow immoral.
Can someone explain that to me?
Does this sound familiar? Honduras… Cuba… Afghanistan… Vietnam… Lebanon… Iran… Iraq… ah, that’s ok, it’s only a bad idea when it’s a Republican that does it. And, it’s ok because this time we have a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate leading the way!
This story, from the Somaliland Press may, if true (or even if it isn’t), cast the Libyan rebels in a different light than at present.
True? False? Both? Beats me. Maybe the CIA can ask the Department of Justice for assistance in looking into it.
Let’s get Holder on that right now …
You left out the part where the “friendly government” we install consists mostly of tribalists from eastern Libya, who consolidate power by looting and “cleansing” the western Libyans who support Gaddafi.
Aside from the highly unlikely outcome where we Gaddafi leaves, and the West leaves also, there are two outcomes:
(1) Gaddafi stays, the country is partitioned, and the partitioning is policed by the West. For a look at how this will likely work out, I direct your attention to the effective partitioning of Pali Gaza from Israel. Oh, and we look like fools, because Gaddafi is still there.
(2) Gaddafi is gone, and the only way to prevent either a collapse into intertribal warfare and/or an Islamist ally of Iran is, wait for it, “nation-building.” Your reference here is Afghanistan.
Mr. Preston:
Thank you so much for the informative article, however the options you offer at the end are just to many, so I have taken the opportunity to revise them…actually reduce them to on…and that one is a bit less expansive than yours:
“Get out and let the war take its own natural course…” mind our own business and while we are at it get out of Afghanistan and Iraq and concentrate on our massive problems here at home.
…and to think I used to be a hawk until the Puppet Prince took up residence in the White House, we just ain’t got the leadership for one much less 3 extended wars, and we do not have the resources, human and otherwise.
Thanks again, this has been rumored about but you are the first I have read where on the ground confirmation is provided.
“We’re expecting to defeat Gaddafi’s antiquated but Soviet-trained professional army, estimated to number about 76,000 with a reserve of 40,000…”
Small correction: that’s the on-paper strength of the pre-revolution Libyan armed forces. The same article notes that many army units have defected or refused to fight. Gaddafi appears to be depending on an ‘inner guard’ of only a few thousand, plus hired mercenaries, all using whatever equipment they can find that’s operational. They’re certainly superior to the rebels in every way — arms, training, equipment, supplies, C3I, and morale. But if they really outnumbered the rebels by a hundred to one, the rebellion would have already been smashed, Western nagging notwithstanding.