Operation Oddysey Dawn, on the road to the Q-word.

Rebels flee their positions after shelling from Gaddafi's forces near Ajdabiyah, March 25, 2011.
REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

Well this certainly isn't helpful for Operation Oddysey Dawn.   I mean, dangit.  Who could have seen this coming?   Libya crisis: Gaddafi forces adopt rebel tactics   

"...The first is that Colonel Gaddafi's army has decided to follow methods which the rebels have used so successfully.  Its men are racing forward in the ordinary flat-bed trucks known elsewhere in Africa as 'technicals', with heavy machine-guns or anti-aircraft guns mounted on the back.  Others are equipped with mortars. Though these are quite light, they often cause great panic among the rebels, and are quick and easy to move forward...

.. it was fairly easy to destroy tanks and artillery from the air, even though, as we now know, the coalition's aircraft and missiles had difficulty dealing with tanks that had been well camouflaged or were stationed in narrow streets between houses, where ordinary civilians live.
Now the pro-Gaddafi forces have largely switched to the use of "technicals" of the kind the rebels use, the coalition will have much more difficulty identifying which ones belong on which side."

The original plan was to protect civilians caught up in the civil war/rebellion/insurgency by destroying the Libyan military assets, machine and otherwise with pinpoint airstrikes. Boom, done.  That worked as planned, so now the Libyan military is tooling around in attack trucks just like the rebels'.  So the coalition will have to change tactics or risk watching the whole thing turn into Operation Oddysey Dusk.

Next predictable development..  CIA advisers on the ground to gather intelligence and make contacts with the rebels/terrorists/freedom fighters and to direct airstrikes on their behalf.  C.I.A. in Libya Aiding Rebels, U.S. Officials Say 

"..While President Obama has insisted that no American ground troops join in the Libyan campaign, small groups of C.I.A. operatives have been working in Libya for several weeks and are part of a shadow force of Westerners that the Obama administration hopes can help set back Colonel Qaddafi’s military, the officials said.

The C.I.A. presence comprises an unknown number of American officers who had worked at the spy agency’s station in Tripoli and those who arrived more recently. In addition, current and former British officials said, dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British Tornado jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces, and missile installations, the officials said."

To succeed this operation will take more than precision airstrikes. Clue; boots.  Is President Obama ready to go to Congress and the people and make a case to escalate this war/peacekeeping/ effort to bring about a regime change in Libya? I hope not.  I think he's smarter than that, but who can say.

Rebellions, asymetrical warfare, and youtube..

I'm not down with the whole Libya thing, not quite yet anyway.  And no its not because I'm some Obama hating wingnut.  I actually think Obama has done pretty well playing the part of George W. Bush's 3rd term.  I just don't get this military approach to protect civilians.  How can you protect civilians when you can't tell combatants from civilians?  I guess its to kill off the people who wear uniforms which will then empower the ones who don't wear them and good luck figuring out that mess after the shooting stops.

True there have been attacks from Libyan military on areas where civilians were known to be.  Maybe even a case for war crimes.  But Quadaffi is fighting a rebellion in a sovereign nation in which the last time I checked, like it or not he was still the HMFWBIC, as in the head mother f-er who be in charge.  And the combatants he is fighting are hiding (or not hiding) in civilian areas. Does that give them free reign with no fear of attack?  For some perspective look at how Syria handled the Hama uprising in 1982.

The Syrian military shelled, exploded, gassed, and shot an entire village of some 10,000-ish people in which rebels were operating from in cooperation with the locals. No one around the world even blinked an eye back then. Or look at how the US military in Iraq had to operate in civilian areas to engage hostile militias. Or how Israel had to fight their last war in Lebanon when Hezbollah combatants fired rockets from civilian neighborhoods and near UNIFIL locations.

We have two trends working together in a dog-chases-tail scenario.. The Internet allows instant sharing of accounts and video of atrocities, so leaders can no longer quell a rebellion without the world finding out immediately. And the preferred tactic of rebels, insurgents, terrorists, whatever you call them has become to use civilians as shields and wage tactical attacks against the enemy from populated areas. Combined, these two forces will lead to more rebellions and chaos. Fine, you say for people over there.

But what about if some radical armed militia here in the US decides to wage attacks against the government or military from civilian locations? You think we might see some collateral damage in the response? oh perhaps. No I am not trying to compare our two nations' military forces in any way. Of course the US would take every effort to avoid any civilian casualties, but it happens.
  
Hopefully someday in the future, assuming we can stop the violence by killing enough of the military and security  forces, we can hand off the protection of the new Libya to a new batch of soldiers who will get to wear uniforms and be targets for the next rebellious "civilians". Good luck with that.

Why do we want to get in the middle of that hot mess?