George Melloan: Obama's Half-Rumsfeld in Libya
[Mr. Melloan, a former columnist and deputy editor of the Journal editorial page, is author of "The Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism".]
Defense Secretary Robert Gates promised Congress last week that the U.S. will put no "boots on the ground" in Libya to enforce President Barack Obama's edict that Moammar Gadhafi must step down. Yet it has been leaked that CIA operatives are on the ground in Libya aiding efforts by the eastern tribes to unseat Gadhafi. Maybe there's a distinction between boots and whatever CIA people wear on their feet.
This seeming contradiction is rather typical of the confusion the administration has been sowing as it strives to formulate a policy towards the uprisings in the Middle East. But if the CIA is indeed helping the Libyan rebels—a report Mr. Gates declined to address—there may be a shred of policy at work. Whether the administration is prepared to expand that shred into something more robust is still a question.
President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went to considerable pains to formulate strategy for fighting unconventional wars. To do so, they had to overcome resistance from their generals, whose idea of boots on the ground is the deployment of thousands of troops and heavy armor. But after the 9/11 attack on the U.S., there was no time for that. An outraged America demanded that the president retaliate quickly against al Qaeda terrorists and their Taliban enablers in Afghanistan. Assembling an invasion force, as the U.S. Army first proposed, would have taken months. So Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet, deployed CIA agents and highly trained special forces "A-teams" to work with anti-Taliban tribes.
The results were dramatic...
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates promised Congress last week that the U.S. will put no "boots on the ground" in Libya to enforce President Barack Obama's edict that Moammar Gadhafi must step down. Yet it has been leaked that CIA operatives are on the ground in Libya aiding efforts by the eastern tribes to unseat Gadhafi. Maybe there's a distinction between boots and whatever CIA people wear on their feet.
This seeming contradiction is rather typical of the confusion the administration has been sowing as it strives to formulate a policy towards the uprisings in the Middle East. But if the CIA is indeed helping the Libyan rebels—a report Mr. Gates declined to address—there may be a shred of policy at work. Whether the administration is prepared to expand that shred into something more robust is still a question.
President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went to considerable pains to formulate strategy for fighting unconventional wars. To do so, they had to overcome resistance from their generals, whose idea of boots on the ground is the deployment of thousands of troops and heavy armor. But after the 9/11 attack on the U.S., there was no time for that. An outraged America demanded that the president retaliate quickly against al Qaeda terrorists and their Taliban enablers in Afghanistan. Assembling an invasion force, as the U.S. Army first proposed, would have taken months. So Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet, deployed CIA agents and highly trained special forces "A-teams" to work with anti-Taliban tribes.
The results were dramatic...