The New York Times is still beating the war drums in Libya. The Times today urged President Obama to renew air attacks on Col. Qaddafi’s ground forces with U.S. A-10 antitank aircraft and AC-130 ground attack gunships. It also recommended arming the rebels and providing them with training.
For a minute, I thought that George W. Bush or Dick Cheney might have written the Times‘ lead editorial today. But they wouldn’t be this foolish. It’s highly unlikely, for example, that Bush and Cheney would have considered arming and training rebel forces, some of whom are supporters of al Qaeda and whom had previously gone to Iraq in a jihad to kill our soldiers. Yet the Obama administration is still considering arming the Libyan rebels, even though we still do not know very much about whom we would be arming and the UN Security Council resolutions authorizing collective actions against the Qaddafi regime contain a total arms embargo.
The chairman of the UN Libya Sanctions Committee has said publicly that the arms embargo to Libya also applies to any arms to the rebels.
The head of U.S. Africa Command General Carter Ham said it was the stated intent of al Qaeda’s affiliate in the area, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), to aid Libya’s opposition:
We would need, I think, necessarily to be careful about providing lethal means to a group unless we are assured that those U.S.-provided weapons would not fall into the hands of extremist organizations
Nevertheless, as recently as yesterday, a State Department spokesperson, when asked whether arming the rebels was still under consideration, replied:
it is permissible to get arms to the opposition, and that’s something that remains on the table, certainly. We’ve never taken that option away
