Remember way back when (about two weeks ago) President Obama said the U.S. is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya?
I also want to be clear about what we will not be doing. The United States is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya. And we are not going to use force to go beyond a well-defined goal — specifically, the protection of civilians in Libya. In the coming weeks, we will continue to help the Libyan people with humanitarian and economic assistance so that they can fulfill their aspirations peacefully.
What he meant is that we might be sending ground troops into Libya:
The United States may consider sending troops into Libya with a possible international ground force that could aid the rebels, according to the general who led the military mission until NATO took over.
Army Gen. Carter Ham also told lawmakers Thursday that added American participation would not be ideal, and ground troops could erode the international coalition and make it more difficult to get Arab support for operations in Libya.
Ham said the operation was largely stalemated now and was more likely to remain that way since America has transferred control to NATO.
Now its possible that Obama’s commander of Libya operations was watching Dancing With The Stars instead of Obama’s Libya speech and he simply isn’t aware that the president will not, under any circumstance, send ground troops into the country. But I suspect the administration is floating a trial balloon to see how Congress and the American people respond to the suggestion.
(Via: Outside the Beltway)
April 8th, 2011 | 4:07 pm
Not in a million years. From the article:
“Asked if the U.S. would provide troops, Ham said, “I SUSPECT there MIGHT be some consideration of that.” ”
I can’t find the actual transcript anywhere to see the full context of the question, but the notion that this president would EVER approve that is absurd.
April 8th, 2011 | 4:31 pm
Actually, he said, “no boots on the ground.”
He’s going to send them into combat wearing Crocs instead. Pretty purple ones.
April 8th, 2011 | 4:39 pm
Brian,
As absurd as sending more troops to Afghanistan, keeping Gitmo open, trying KSM in a military tribunal, keeping the Bush tax cuts and bombing Libya without consulting Congress?
How about as absurd as renewing the Patriot Act, retaining extraordinary rendition and about 95% of the Bush administration foreign policy architecture in place?
Nope, we will never see troops in Libya.
April 8th, 2011 | 4:54 pm
Steve: Actually, the notion that any of those campaign promises were serious, realistic, or ever stood any chance of being enacted by any president of the United States, is in fact absurd.
April 8th, 2011 | 5:33 pm
Well, a lot of people bought into them.
I actually hope we don’t put troops in Libya, but to quote Jim Geraghty, “every statement by Obama comes with an expiration date…every statement”….just to be perfectly clear.
April 8th, 2011 | 6:10 pm
Notice the first sentence in the quote from Obama. Some wag (Dana Milbank?) noted a pattern in the president’s speeches. For example, when he uses the phrase, “As I have said before,” you can be sure he’s about to say something you’ve never heard before. Likewise, if he uses some variant of the phrase, “Let me be perfectly clear,” then you shouldn’t expect to understand a word that follows in the way that he means it. Here’s a related article in Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25675.html
That said, in all fairness to the president, Gates was adamant that we not get involved in Libya, and you saw what happened there. So perhaps Mr. Obama has not been insincere on that score.
Yet.
April 9th, 2011 | 8:33 am
One never need be surprised when our Dear Leader says something that turns out to be false.
To quote myself (“as I have said before”), the truth is not in him.
April 9th, 2011 | 6:14 pm
He didn’t mean *that* Libya.
April 11th, 2011 | 7:02 am
I would be very surprised if U.S. troops are not already present on the ground in Libya, in the form of Special Forces A-Teams and other special operations units supporting the Libyan rebels. Somebody has to help bring some order into the chaos of their military structure and provide the training needed to turn a rag-tag militia into a force capable of repelling a professional army (albeit one of pretty low quality).
Also, it’s almost impossible to provide close air support without forward air controllers to designate targets (often with laser rangefinder/illuminators). Only U.S. troops have the laser rangefinders, GPS equipment and tactical radios compatible with our aircraft (other NATO forces probably have their special operations troops on the ground doing the same thing for their aircraft).
The only thing that does surprise me is the continued existence of Libyan forces more than three weeks after the air campaign began. Are we pulling our punches, or something?
If we did send in ground forces, I would expect the Libyan army to fold up much faster that the Iraqi army did in 2003.
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