The Libyan mission is creeping, no doubt
With Britain sending a 'military liaison advisory team' to Libya, how many more boots on the ground will follow?
Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 19 April 2011
Mission creep is an unpleasant condition brought on by a surfeit of military ambition and lack of self-knowledge. Symptoms include fantasy-like delusions such as the highly contagious belief, known as Sarkozy-itis, that the sufferer alone knows what's best for the world. This is typically followed by cold sweats and hot flushes when political reality proves otherwise. Mission creep is not treatable and hindsight is the only cure. It usually ends in disaster.
Such was the case in Vietnam, where President John F Kennedy's decision to increase the number of US "military advisers" to the south Vietnamese regime opened the path to all-out war. Mission creep struck again after the US intervened in Somalia in the early 1990s, producing another debacle. In fact the term was coined at that time by the distinguished Washington Post columnist, Jim Hoagland. Afghanistan since 2001 has been not so much creep as rapid crawl into a military never-never land.
Britain's announcement that it is sending a "military liaison advisory team" of experienced officers to Benghazi to assist the rebels' national transitional council looks like another outbreak of the disease. Foreign secretary William Hague was adamant the British army was not taking charge of the campaign against Muammar Gaddafi. The "advisers" would not be arming, training or directing the rebel forces, he said. To which the world-weary response must be: just give them time.
(More here.)
Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 19 April 2011
Mission creep is an unpleasant condition brought on by a surfeit of military ambition and lack of self-knowledge. Symptoms include fantasy-like delusions such as the highly contagious belief, known as Sarkozy-itis, that the sufferer alone knows what's best for the world. This is typically followed by cold sweats and hot flushes when political reality proves otherwise. Mission creep is not treatable and hindsight is the only cure. It usually ends in disaster.
Such was the case in Vietnam, where President John F Kennedy's decision to increase the number of US "military advisers" to the south Vietnamese regime opened the path to all-out war. Mission creep struck again after the US intervened in Somalia in the early 1990s, producing another debacle. In fact the term was coined at that time by the distinguished Washington Post columnist, Jim Hoagland. Afghanistan since 2001 has been not so much creep as rapid crawl into a military never-never land.
Britain's announcement that it is sending a "military liaison advisory team" of experienced officers to Benghazi to assist the rebels' national transitional council looks like another outbreak of the disease. Foreign secretary William Hague was adamant the British army was not taking charge of the campaign against Muammar Gaddafi. The "advisers" would not be arming, training or directing the rebel forces, he said. To which the world-weary response must be: just give them time.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Where is Code Pink? Where is Eve Ensler, Barbara Lee, Arianna Huffington, Janeane Garofalo, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jody Williams, Naomi Klein, Benazir Bhutto, Helen Thomas, Julia Butterfly Hill, Amy Goodman, Doris Haddock, Cynthia McKinney, Gael Murphy? Where are the armchair generals demanding to know the plan, the strategy? This is laughable if human lives were not at stake.
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