equivocation: "hostilties", and the idea of limited conflicts on a global battlefield
Harold Koh, before a senate panel, was grilled on his (and Obama's) view of the War Powers Resolution, where he stated this (h/t Adam Serwer):
"[T]he operative term, "hostilities," is an ambiguous standard, which is nowhere defined in the statute," Koh testified. "An operation that was expressly designed to be limited—limited in mission, exposure of U.S. troops, risk of escalation, and military means employed—led the President to conclude that the Libya operation did not fall within the War Powers Resolution‟s automatic 60-day pullout rule." According to the New York Times, "American warplanes have struck at Libyan air defenses about 60 times, and remotely operated drones have fired missiles at Libyan forces about 30 times."
The major problem with this explanation is that in every other case that involves the estimation of threat, as the determination of the meaning of "hostilities" here entails, and where the rights of individuals at home and abroad are concerned, this narrow reading is completely inverted. In the Global War on Terror, no single life, moral principle, or expense is often spared in tracking down every terrorist in the name of security. But when security or even the traditional institutional modes of checking executive power might call into question the prudence and legality of an aggressive military action, this broadest of interpretations is completely ignored.
Bomb Yemen to stop the terrorists. Bomb Pakistan to stop the terrorists. Libya? Well this isn't about terrorism, so in this case the hostilities are "limited". Guess what, it doesn't work that way--in the middle east of the 21st century, limited hostilities do not exist. The ability of a single individual--following the logic of the security state-- to wage war with weapons of mass destruction can never be underestimated. Thus the notion of limited conflicts, and the pairing down of terms like "hostilities" is laughable on its face, especially in light of typical US government logic in the war on terror. There is perhaps no better an example of this type of equivocal thinking than Libya:
Suppose that Qaddafi, a dictator scorned, manages, as he has been able in the past, to effect a terrorist attack on Americans. This is not a fanciful possibility, and the last time I checked, terrorist attacks were hostile acts.
One propelling force behind the Obama administration here is that this is a convenient opportunity to cowtow to humanitarian calls for help with the Arab Spring movement. Unfortunately those making the calls for intervention forget that the US almost never acts for these types of reasons, except as pretext.They also fail to recognize that the Arab Spring is in many ways a war of independence from US dominated regimes. America's intervention, particularly in strategic locations, is precisely what they don't want, whether they know it or not.
Libya is the largest oil and gas reserve in Africa. Aiding a new compliant regime in the region strokes our European allies whose help we will need when/if we decide to oust the Iranian regime from power. It is also a convenient time to distract from the new signs of failure in the global economy, and to stimulate it for another couple of years with massive military expenditures. And of course there is the time-tested idea of global security(dominance)--meaning that nobody knows what the fuck we'll do at any given moment, so they must bend over backwards to avoid the wrath of the US military.These are some of my guesses on why Libya intervention seemed like a good idea to the fools in office a few months ago.
Its interesting to me that Robert Gates, carrier of the flame of global security from anti-Soviet to the anti-Islamist era, has significantly moderated his views on the advisability of aggressive war. I guess the institutional pressure to follow the dictates of the world order are quite difficult to resist while inside the jaws of power, but quickly fade when one turns to questions of legacy and public good.
