{"id":69404,"date":"2016-02-08T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=69404"},"modified":"2016-02-05T23:20:31","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T23:20:31","slug":"obama-and-the-pentagon-plan-massive-military-escalation-and-the-media-barely-seem-to-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/02\/obama-and-the-pentagon-plan-massive-military-escalation-and-the-media-barely-seem-to-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama and the Pentagon Plan Massive Military Escalation and the Media Barely Seem to Care"},"content":{"rendered":"

U.S. troops are going back into Iraq, our presence in Libya is escalating, and Obama has widened the war in Afghanistan\u2014all without much of a public debate. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Anti-Gaddafi<\/a>

Anti-Gaddafi fighters in Libya in 2011.
Photo Credit: Elizabeth Arrott\/Voice of America\/Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

Almost five years after the United States and its NATO allies launched a campaign in Libya to overthrow Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the United States is on the verge of massively escalating its military operations in the war-torn country.\u00a0According<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, the new effort is \u201cexpected to include airstrikes and raids by elite American troops.\u201d It is unclear how long this newest effort will last.<\/p>\n

The announcement comes on the heels of U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announcing combat troops were going back to Iraq\u00a0last week<\/a>. While U.S special forces have been conducting \u201cclandestine reconnaissance missions in Libya to identify militant leaders and map out their networks\u201d over the past year, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0report marks the first time overt combat troops will be deployed in the North African nation.<\/p>\n

The 2011 campaign was itself something of a bait and switch. What was originally sold as simply a no-fly zone quickly became regime change. A few weeks after the UN-sanctioned bombing of Libya\u2019s infrastructure and air capacity, the scope of the campaign pivoted when President Obama, along with Presidents Sarkozy and Cameron of France and the UK respectively,\u00a0announced the entirely new\u00a0objective<\/a>: NATO airstrikes, in concert with ongoing CIA support of rebels, to overthrow the Qaddafi government.<\/p>\n

After this was quickly achieved, the pundit classes rallied to congratulate a job well done. As Glenn Greenwald at\u00a0The Intercept\u00a0noted Wednesday<\/a>:<\/p>\n

War advocates such as\u00a0Anne-Marie Slaughter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Nicholas Kristof<\/a>\u00a0were writing columns celebrating their prescience and mocking war opponents as discredited, and the New York Times published\u00a0a front-page article<\/a>\u00a0declaring: \u201cU.S. Tactics in Libya May be a Model for Other Efforts.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It was widely expected that Hillary Clinton, one of the leading advocates for and architects of the bombing campaign, would be regarded as a Foreign Policy Visionary for the grand Libya success: \u201cWe came, we saw, he died,\u201d Clinton\u00a0sociopathically boasted<\/a>\u00a0about the\u00a0mob rape and murder of Qaddafi<\/a>\u00a0while guffawing on 60 Minutes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Despite the fanfare at the \u201coverthrow\u201d of Qaddafi (who suffered a\u00a0brutal death<\/a>\u00a0at the hands of a mob),\u00a0not much has been made of the U.S. military\u2019s slow escalation of its involvement in Libya over the past year. This time the objective, much like in Iraq after the U.S. deposed its leader, is destroying the presence of ISIS, a process that could take,\u00a0in the words<\/a>\u00a0of former Defense Secretary Panetta, \u201cthirty years.\u201d And it’s an escalation that has largely gone under the public’s radar.<\/p>\n

Slowly trickling wars are a common feature in U.S. policy. The latest war in Iraq against ISIS was originally sold as \u201climited,\u201d \u201chumanitarian\u201d airstrikes<\/a>\u00a0to save the Yezidi trapped on a mountain from ISIS, and it has now gone on for over a year and a half, spans two countries, and soon will include \u201cboots on the ground.\u201d All this with neither the corporate media nor Congress, which hasn\u2019t yet brought military authorization to a vote, paying much attention.<\/p>\n

This new level of indifference on the part of the public about what is an ISIS war spiraling into a massive global effort has even bothered the normally hawkish Times. In the context of Libya,\u00a0it wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This significant escalation is being planned without a meaningful debate in Congress about the merits and risks of a military campaign that is expected to include airstrikes and raids by elite American troops.<\/em><\/p>\n

That is deeply troubling. A new military intervention in Libya would represent a significant progression of a war that could easily spread to other countries on the continent.\u00a0It is being planned as the American military burrows more deeply into battlegrounds in Syria and Iraq, where American ground troops are being asked to play an increasingly hands-on role in the fight.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s always difficult to tell if public indifference is what leads to a media blackout or the other way around, but the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0is correct that a broad public discussion about the wisdom of committing to potentially decades-long military efforts is\u00a0disturbingly\u00a0absent.<\/p>\n

When the U.S. began its anti-ISIL efforts in August 2014, ISIL was in two countries. Now, after tens of thousands of aerial ordinances have been dropped on two continents, ISIS now has a presence in\u00a0over 20 countries<\/a>. The U.S. has even\u00a0expanded its war in Afghanistan<\/a>\u00a0to include ISIS, the White House announced last Thursday. None of the major presidential candidates, including the most progressive member of the U.S. Congress, Bernie Sanders, outwardly opposes the U.S.’ current anti-ISIL efforts, including the once-unpopular drone program.<\/p>\n

Over the past two weeks, the Defense Department and the Obama administration have been peppering the media with their plans to massively increase the war effort in Libya as well as Iraq, Afghanistan and potentially elsewhere. All the evidence points to the fact that war-makers in Washington and Brussels are gearing up for a major effort that could very well last a long time. The question is, will we ever have a public debate about it?<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Adam Johnson is an associate editor at\u00a0AlterNet.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 alternet.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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