Whatever you might say about the aftermaths (and there is plenty of criticism that even the most eager of hawks could provide), one must admit that the primary phase of Bush's wars - the defeat of the Taliban and Hussein regimes and their ejection from power - proceeded swiftly and with the minimum of fuss in both cases.
Libya is ultimately Obama's war, and no greater contrast could be imagined. Bush understood what Obama does not - that in order to topple a demagogue, you must get your hands dirty and go in on the ground. More to the point, you must have the will to do so. Obama certainly did not - the US put in a major effort right at the start, to get things rolling, and then pulled back to let the rest of NATO do its thing. NATO seems not to be doing all that well.
I'm still not sure exactly what has gone so drastically wrong, but I would put it down to terminal self-doubt combined with fear of "legal" consequences and possibly overlain with the dangerously seductive myth that a war can be won with air power alone at reasonable cost (political, military and financial).
It can't.
There are two ways to win a war with air power alone. The first is to resort to the strategic bombing campaign as practised by the Allies in World War 2, or alternatively to nuclear weapons, and make of the enemy's nation a burned and blasted wasteland. Unless there's a pressing reason, which I leave to the imagination, it's something the parliamentary democracies understandably and justifiably steer clear of these days.
The second is to be engaged in a war of specific strategic aims and limitations, in which both sides are either committed to certain goals or constrained by certain factors. If geographic constraints dictate the only way for Nation A to attack Nation B is by use of an invasion fleet, an air force might - by destroying that fleet while it is at sea - eliminate the means of making war at a stroke. Land wars, of the sort that Libya's is, are not like that. To successfully prosecute a land war, one must fight both on land AND in the air, and one must ensure that combat operations in all three dimensions are properly integrated.
Furthermore, one must ensure that one's land forces are evenly matched to those of the opposition AND numerically equal to their tasks. This is patently NOT the case in Libya, where the forces the West is supporting appear to be of dubious capability and are taking major reverses even with Western strike support (supposing that support to be fully effective all the time). The component of NATO with the most resources (the US) has cut and run, doing its little bit to say it was there and then walking away leaving the lesser lights to do the job alone.
Such things are inexcusable when the stated aim is 'regime change'. If it had been stated at the very begining of the Western intervention that NATO aid would strictly be limited to taking out the Libyan Air Force (including aviation assets operated directly by the Libyan Army, e.g. strike and scout helicopters) and then the rebels were on their own, that would have been one thing. What we are trying to achieve now is quite another, and simply cannot be done at a limited cost. Iraq War 1 possibly came closest to ending this way - had we killed enough of Saddam's soldiers, it's theoretically possible he might have decided to withdraw from Kuwait on his own rather than be forced out by the ground phase - but there you have an example of that limited sort of war where the criteria for victory have been very carefully defined.
The Allies could not, without ground forces, have conquered Nazi Germany. The only reason Japan capitulated without an invasion was because of the new factor of the atom bomb, which promised the hitherto impossible goal of complete national and racial obliteration, especially in the context of an island nation whose military had been utterly destroyed and was incapable of defending it.
Libya is ultimately Obama's war, and no greater contrast could be imagined. Bush understood what Obama does not - that in order to topple a demagogue, you must get your hands dirty and go in on the ground. More to the point, you must have the will to do so. Obama certainly did not - the US put in a major effort right at the start, to get things rolling, and then pulled back to let the rest of NATO do its thing. NATO seems not to be doing all that well.
I'm still not sure exactly what has gone so drastically wrong, but I would put it down to terminal self-doubt combined with fear of "legal" consequences and possibly overlain with the dangerously seductive myth that a war can be won with air power alone at reasonable cost (political, military and financial).
It can't.
There are two ways to win a war with air power alone. The first is to resort to the strategic bombing campaign as practised by the Allies in World War 2, or alternatively to nuclear weapons, and make of the enemy's nation a burned and blasted wasteland. Unless there's a pressing reason, which I leave to the imagination, it's something the parliamentary democracies understandably and justifiably steer clear of these days.
The second is to be engaged in a war of specific strategic aims and limitations, in which both sides are either committed to certain goals or constrained by certain factors. If geographic constraints dictate the only way for Nation A to attack Nation B is by use of an invasion fleet, an air force might - by destroying that fleet while it is at sea - eliminate the means of making war at a stroke. Land wars, of the sort that Libya's is, are not like that. To successfully prosecute a land war, one must fight both on land AND in the air, and one must ensure that combat operations in all three dimensions are properly integrated.
Furthermore, one must ensure that one's land forces are evenly matched to those of the opposition AND numerically equal to their tasks. This is patently NOT the case in Libya, where the forces the West is supporting appear to be of dubious capability and are taking major reverses even with Western strike support (supposing that support to be fully effective all the time). The component of NATO with the most resources (the US) has cut and run, doing its little bit to say it was there and then walking away leaving the lesser lights to do the job alone.
Such things are inexcusable when the stated aim is 'regime change'. If it had been stated at the very begining of the Western intervention that NATO aid would strictly be limited to taking out the Libyan Air Force (including aviation assets operated directly by the Libyan Army, e.g. strike and scout helicopters) and then the rebels were on their own, that would have been one thing. What we are trying to achieve now is quite another, and simply cannot be done at a limited cost. Iraq War 1 possibly came closest to ending this way - had we killed enough of Saddam's soldiers, it's theoretically possible he might have decided to withdraw from Kuwait on his own rather than be forced out by the ground phase - but there you have an example of that limited sort of war where the criteria for victory have been very carefully defined.
The Allies could not, without ground forces, have conquered Nazi Germany. The only reason Japan capitulated without an invasion was because of the new factor of the atom bomb, which promised the hitherto impossible goal of complete national and racial obliteration, especially in the context of an island nation whose military had been utterly destroyed and was incapable of defending it.