Don’t Arm Libyan Rebels: A Warning From House Intel Committee Chairman Mike Rogers
EmailABC's Jonathan Karl reports:
In a terse and strongly worded statement, the House Intelligence committee chairman says, essentially, he’s not going to play Charlie Wilson in the Libyan conflict. Arming the rebels in Libya the way we armed the rebels in Afghanistan during the 1980s, he says, would be a mistake.
“It’s safe to say what the rebels stand against, but we are a long way from an understanding of what they stand for,” Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., says. “We don’t have to look very far back in history to find examples of the unintended consequences of passing out advanced weapons to a group of fighters we didn’t know as well as we should have.”
More: “We need to be very careful before rushing into a decision that could come back to haunt us.”
Rogers, by the way, was an early advocate of using the U.S. military to impose a no fly zone.
See my March 18th interview with Rogers, just after the no-fly zone was green-lighted, HERE.
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Choice of strategy is a tossup. Do you want oil shipments to resume quickly so the price at the pump falls – OR do you want democracy with citizens’ rights (without al-Qaeda philosophy) in these islamic oil producing countries? NATO allies including USA have chosen the latter, so we will have to wait for cheap gas until Gaddhafi is defeated or quits. And that may take a while
:(
Posted by: vkmo | March 30, 2011, 3:01 pm 3:01 pm
If we want to make an even bigger problem for the US, in the Arab world, there is no more sure way to make a bigger problem, than arming the Libyan rebels, with US made weapons.
Posted by: Rick McDaniel | March 30, 2011, 4:30 pm 4:30 pm
Our strategy should be to instigate as much infighting among the islamists as possible. Keeping them fighting each other is preferable to them united against us.
Posted by: iskanda | March 31, 2011, 1:15 pm 1:15 pm
Although not generally a fan of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, I highly recommend listening to the speech he delivered this morning in the House, navigating the Constitutional and other implications of the war in Libya. The clearest voice I’ve heard on this entire matter.
Posted by: Pamela | March 31, 2011, 1:39 pm 1:39 pm
So who supplied the weapons the rebels are using now? They are British and US supplied weapons, that rebels confiscated from Ghadaffi. US-made weapons continue to pour into Libya from Egypt, paid for by Saudi Arabia.
This is an African tribal war – not a pro democracy struggle. So what is NATO exactly doing in Lybia? They say they won’t supply weapons, nor help the rebels achieve their objective of killing Ghadaffi. They say they are there to avert a massacre. What do you think will happen if the rebels, by some fluke of luck, take Tripoli? Whoever wins, Ghadaffi or the rebel movement: a massacre is the outcome of tribal warfare.
The best outcome now is a stalemate and subsequest division of the country along tibal lines. But since this war is not about the people of Libya as much as about securing Lybia’s oil, we can fully expect that the goal of peace takes a backseat to NATO bombing and US covert operations. US involvement Libya, unfortunately and regardless of good intentions, at present spells: “MASACRE” .
Posted by: Alan | March 31, 2011, 2:30 pm 2:30 pm
Well, Alan, we can see you’re not a weapons expert then. MIG fighters, SA-5′s, GRAD rockets, AK rifles, RPG’s. All of these are Eastern Block (former Soviet) weapons. The rebels made off with a few of Ghadaffi’s light weapons but they are all former Soviet stuff. Are you suggesting that the US and UK bought them from the Eastern Block countries and gave them to Ghadaffi?
How exactly have the US and UK armed the rebels to this point? Not that we aren’t considering it now … which I believe it a mistake a’la Afghanistan.
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