The gamble in Libya may be backfiring

When the Pathetic Trio (the chiefs of the American, British and French administrations) came to light with their fantastic plan to intervene in the Libyan civil war, it was clear to everyone that they did not have unity of thoughts, nor a coherent strategy, nor a clearly defined objective. As a matter of fact not even an incoherent strategy was laid out to the public.

All the people could see was a babble about "humanitarian actions", promises that this or that would not happen, and a show of flip-flopping and hair-splitting in a grand scale. The master piece was the "distinction" made between the regimes in Libya and Syria. Actually if I have to choose which evil is worse, I would say that its the latter. But in any case the intervention happened in order to avoid a bloodbath. OK, let's pretend we believe that statement for a minute and let's dissect its logic vis-a-vis the situation on the ground which derived form the air raids against the regular troops.

1- It is clear to everyone that the rebels can't hold ground, let alone move forward, without massive air support. Nobody should be surprised about that. They lack training and discipline. Whenever they see the regulars retreating under fire from the air, they advance. But whenever the raids wane off and the armed forces shells commence to fall on their positions, they get the hell out.

2- Supplying arms to the rebels is a very stupid game. First of all they will take time to learn how to operate them. Second, one day they may be used against America. Remember Bosnia, Afghanistan, etc.

3- The lack of discipline makes them nothing but a bunch of guys carrying guns around and shooting up in  the air to celebrate good news. If they can not stand an attack until relief comes, there is no way to win a real battle . This is the recipe for being flanked. And flanking is the way to annihilation.

4- The deployment of wave after wave of massive air power can push the regulars back to Tripoli. How is the military command of the Pathetic forces contemplating the idea of taking over that city? With the rebels? I would love to have that optimism in my own blood. If the rebels can't do anything useful for the reasons stated before, then they will have to bomb Tripoli into oblivion.

Huuum but what about that stuff on "preserving civilians from bloodbath"?


Cheers

The president's speech on the Libyan war: an aggression to logic

Tonight the American Federal Administration came up with a belated explanation to the war on Libya. Storytellers from the good old days would have done better. That's because they could seize the attention and faith of their audience. The facts they told were of course fantasy. However the narrative was logic, within the frame of that fantastic narration.

The justification for interfering in the internal affairs of that country was a slap in the face of logic, a truly incoherent babble, heaping up unconnected subjects. Let's go straight to the "big one". If humanitarian reasons justified the use of American military power (and tax payers money) to intervene in countries that are not waging foreign wars, but solely based on the ruthlessness of their dictators, no better reason could have justified the actions in Iraq. However the most vocal politician against that war was precisely the current commander-in-chief.

Number two, no vital American interest was at stake in the struggle, therefore there is no justification to use national resources for the endeavor. No reason was declared for not acting in Darfour. No doctrine was established for future actions, so that the administration will do whatever they see fit.

There is also a huge logical gap between what was said as the ultimate objective of the "mission", and what is being reported as actions on the ground. Toppling Qaddafi's regime is not the objective. Notwithstanding they are bombing his ground troops far, very far away from Benghazi. No explanation was given about who the rebels are, or what links they may have with the Al Qaeda recruits exploding themselves to kill American troops in Iraq. The obvious sensation is that they either don't know what they are doing, or they don't want us to know it. 

The saddest thing of the day in relation to that issue though came earlier in the day. A high-ranked government official came to the public to establish the parameters to judge the moral equivalence between Qaddafi's acts in Libya, and Assad's in Syria. According to that individual, the former was threatening to kill thousands of civilians in  a military assault, while the latter is only shooting a couple of guys with snipers in a police action.  That's why Assad don't have to fear intervention. The massage was clear:

"Mr. Assad, kill them and do it fast. Keep the military united though. If you do that, we won't bother you".

So much for humanitarianism...

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The real big mistake in the Libyan intervention

The first time I heard of a desalination plant I grinned. It was so long ago I can't remeber when it happened. I can just remember how naive I was. At that time I thought: "It is man subjugating nature. We won the battle for survival!".  I was genuinely proud of belonging to the human species.

I was not only naive, but very stupid as well. Desalination plants are ticking time-bombs of mass destruction. Guys, no country will ever resort to that unless if it is living above the self-sustainable water resouces it has by the way of nature.

After so may years of desalination activity, some very bad unintended consequences were found out:

1- The level of salt around the area from which the water is taken is eight times higher than average.

2- This is killing coral reefs, the sea food nursery in the seas.

3- That means less food from the ocean for the people living in the area.

4- The yields of the desalination plants are going down, meaning that they are using more energy to produce the same amount of water. This has been caused by the increase in concentration mentioned before.

Do you want to know some startling thing that you should have been made aware by all media and governments on Earth? Here you go: the level of the Dead Sea fell 150 feet (45 meters) since the 1950s! Who is going to drink the last drop? Israel or Jordan?

Therefore it does not require too much sophistication to perceive that the situation is (rapidly) moving to a dead end. Thence instead of supporting one side or another in a civil was that will only decide who will preside over Doomsday, the US administration should be leading the conversation between the people in the Middle East to bring them back to sanity, with the cooperation of the entire international community.

Otherwise, one day the following conversation may happen in one of those countries:

"Sir, our water supplies will last for just one more year"

"Do you have the nukes ready?"

"Yes."

"So drop the first one on..."

The situation in Libya, and how it relates do Rwanda and Yemen

If the so called "International Law" gives mandate to the UN Security Council to intervene in internal affairs of sovereign countries, it should be abolished. This principle of non-intervention was established in the wake of the Thirty Years War, in which ever shifting military alliances ravaged the whole Europe. That was settled in the Peace of Wesphallen, signed in a beautiful building in the town of Muenster, Germany. The powers of that time learned that internal affairs should not be messed with by foreigners. Perhaps because they never really know what is going on in a foreign land. Now the UN tore that principle into pieces.

The fact of the matter is that Libya grew way beyond the sustainability of the land. Khadaffi spent an estimated 20% of its oil revenue digging for water. The information is that the country has been maintained by water taken from six aquifers, which are NOT being replenished. Moreover, nobody knows how big they are nor how much is left. The situation is eerily similar to Yemen's.

No matter how sad it is to admit, the situation in the Middle East is dire, and there is no happy outcome in the offing. The population levels of the whole area must decrease to sustainability. The huge unemployment verified in countries like Libya and Yemen (30 and 35% respectively) is not necessarily a matter of national incompetence. The fact is that poorer societies have a sizable amount of their citizenry working in the fields. However the Libyans and the Yemenis can't afford that solution, for they don't have the necessary water resources for that matter. Yemen is the first country that will run out of water. What is the world going to do with the 20 million people living there? Are they going to be taken in by the Saudis? Would that country survive a sudden population increase of 50%? But if they don't Yemen's national borders will mean nothing but a huge concentration camp.

Thence Rwanda comes back to mind. That country outgrew its land resources. The subdivision of the land by inheritance caused the properties to become so small that they could not provide for the survival of their owners anymore. The situation ended up in a massacre. Why should we think that "This time is different"?

Why bombing Libya is a gross mistake

Once upon a time there has been a people wandering around the desert in the Middle East. They were in ecological equilibrium with their environment. Whenever life got worse, they moved to another place. They would be welcomed or unwelcomed by the locals, waging fights of low attrition to thrive and survive in that poor land. They created big cities wherever they could, and that tribal mode of being never ceased to exist. They expanded that civilization for many centuries, up until 732, when Charles Martell put a brake on it in the battle of Poitiers, France. On the 1st of January 1492 (what an eventful year!), the caliph of Granada was expelled from the Alhambra palace by the Catholic Kings. That act ensued a long retreat. In 1800 Napoleon invaded Egypt, and from that time on the retreat became a rout.

After WWI, the Ottoman Empire, caretaker of that land, crumbled and the victors of the time, the British Empire and France, created new countries according to the provincial division of the Ottomans. Whenever they thought the country was too small to become viable, they jammed a couple of those provinces together. Iraq is the most egregious example. With that political arrangement they put a king in charge and created their economic institutions mirroring the West, thinking that was the "civilized" way through which those countries should build their future.

One day they became producers of the most important commodity for the whole world, crude oil. The "synthetic" monarchies were mostly replaced by dictators, who ruled the place under the pressure and scrutiny of the great powers, up until the day there was only one left. That last superpower was the United States, and from that time on the choice they had was to be either in favor or against it.

As time went by, the US managed to keep the situation under control, and their population grew beyond sustainability. With 20% of the water resources of a country of poor hydro situation, they now depend on desalination plants and aquifers to subsist. They became net exporters of whatever they could produce, and net importers of food, whose main hidden value is its water content. By and large the main reason for water consumption by mankind is irrigated agriculture.

With the inflationary policy implemented by the Federal Reserve to bail-out Wall Street, the prices of food and energy sky-rocketed. This triggered social unrest in the area, which is predominantly devastatingly poor, thus dependent on government aid or intervention for everything.

That's why the unrest started in countries whose hydrocarbons production was relatively unimportant. They had a huge surge in the food prices, without having the benefit of the concomitant surge in oil revenue.

In Libya what is going on is a fight between the tribes in control and the tribes under control. The first group is known, the second is not. The only sure thing we know from them is that they provided most of the suicide bombers that killed themselves to inflict damage to the American troops in Iraq.

Moreover, no sovereign nation has ever given legitimate power for the UN to choose winners and losers anywhere in the world. If humanitarian reasons really mattered to the UN, EU and US administrations, they just lost a HUGE opportunity to assert that during the crisis in Darfour. They chose not to act. Has it all been motivated by oil?

Cheers