A little summary of how I see the story so far.
So far relatively few aerial sorties have been flown, except for French aircraft and a few long range Tornado runs from the UK. The rest of the Aircraft seem still to be moving into their forward bases. The rest of the attacks seem to be missile attacks from warships assembled a few weeks ago for the evacuation of overseas personnel. There was no US Strike Carrier on station at commencement and if one has indeed been redeployed, it has yet to arrive.
I still say that the resolution was not expected to go through and that Obama is furious that it has. Note – despite “taking” his country to war, he has not changed his schedule and instead has been in Brazil; a country which abstained, so he cannot even claim to be consulting with close allies. On top of this he has made it clear that he wants nothing to do with the campaign and wants to hand over responsibility to others, at the earliest opportunity.
Now the Arab league are saying that they are unhappy with the form the action has taken, which again suggests that there is friction between the US and House of Saud over this matter.
It all seems somewhat confusing, but I think I can see what has been happening.
First off we had the revolt in Benghazi which spread. The rebels were flying the old royalist flag and this may have suggested to Gadaffi that his Saudi enemies may have had a hand in it. We all scoffed when Gadaffi condemned the rebels as Al-Qaeda, as the rantings of a madman, but if this was indeed an insult against the House of Saud, then its meaning becomes clearer.
On the ground there was chaos as some military units defected to the rebels and loyal units were driven back. In addition many units seemed simply to have sat on the fence waiting for clear signs of the outcome before committing themselves.
In Tripoli, Gadaffi launched a diplomatic initiative to those countries with major oil interests in Libya. In exchange no doubt for major concessions, Gadaffi negotiates his survival, principally down to the fact that he has been a reliable supplier. Word gets out , and those units that were sitting on the fence, come back into action and the rebel advance is soon turned into a route.
The House of Saud however is not done. The Saudis live in two worlds; The Arab and the Islamic, and they want to rule both of them. Gadaffi is to them an upstart who has challenged their rule of the Arabic world, just as the Iranians are there sectarian opponents in the Islamic. King Adbullah sees an opportunity to humiliate an upstart and so seizes it.
The first mention of a No Fly Zone comes from “call me Dave” during his visit to the Gulf. The call takes everyone by surprise and is plainly not welcome. The Call is however supported by the Saudi Dominated Arab League. Initially it looks a dead duck, with three none permanent UNSC members, India , Brazil and South Africa, ruling it out straight away during a conference in Delhi.
The Saudi’s however seem unprepared to take no for an answer and lobby all the hostile UNSC countries heavily, using Oil and Sovereign wealth as leverage. The Saudis know that the Western nations cannot be seen to be voting against such a resolution, so they concentrate on the likely vetoers to get them to abstain.
The US getting wind of this is furious and so toughens up the Resolution to make it utterly unpalatable to China and Russia, looking to force a veto.
For whatever reason though, the resolution is passed and the West has new headache handed to them. The US then grabs control of the early phase and unleashes an almighty missile bombardment. This is to my mind to embarrass the Saudi’s who primarily will have only wanted to humiliate Gadaffi and make him crawl to them for protection and recognise their leadership. Instead the US is acting in a way that will inflame the passions of the Arab Street and make the Saudi’s appear complicit….
