A counter to an anti-Libya war dude

Josh Marshall presents a fairly compelling case. I disagree with it. Here's, IMO his key point:

First, insurrections like these by poorly organized rebel forces depend hugely on momentum and the perceived weakness of the leader. Not long ago Qaddafi's authority appeared to be crumbling. Numerous members of the regime were defecting to the inchoate rebel forces. It seemed like only a matter of days. Perhaps hours. The turning point came when Qaddafi stabilized the front moving into western Libya. Once that happened, once he'd halted the momentum toward collapse, it was very bad news for the rebels because as we've seen Qaddafi had all the heavy weapons and command and control on his side. By this weekend, without massive outside intervention, it's pretty clear Qaddafi had already won.

A week ago a relatively limited intervention probably could have sealed the rebels' victory, preventing a reeling Qaddafi from fully mobilizing his heavy armaments. But where do we expect to get from this now? It's not clear to me how the best case scenario can be anything more than our maintaining a safe haven in Benghazi for the people who were about to be crushed because they'd participated in a failed rebellion. So Qaddafi reclaims his rule over all of Libya except this one city which has no government or apparent hope of anything better than permanent limbo. Where do we go with that?

We're calling a time out on a really ugly situation the fundamental dynamics of which we aren't in any position to change. That sounds like a mess.

My main point is that we are, in fact, in a situation where we can change the fundamental dynamics. Gaddafi managed to stabilize the situation by using high tech weapons. He doesn't have many of them, and he can't replace. OTOH we have a virtually unlimited supply of weaponry and an unparalleled ability to destroy other people's high tech weapons. We did it to Saddam twice, and Saddam's high-tech weapons were a bit more potent then the Libyan examples.

So in the first stage we destroy as many of those weapons as possible. In the second stage we give the rebels direct ground support. That allows them to physically take most of the country back. If we're incredibly lucky this includes Tripoli. If we aren't lucky we give the rebels the weapons they need to take Tripoli.

When Gaddafi loses the capital he stops being the government, and he starts being the rebels. Sounds like the perfect time for us to declare victory and go home.

One of Marshall's minor points makes me wonder how much he knows about wars, especially African wars like this one:

Lots of countries have jet fighters and navies and missiles. But the kind of modern warfare we tend to take for granted in the US these days requires getting all those different things operating together, with all the right hardware in all the right places all at the same time, keeping everything in communication over vast distances. One key to understanding the contemporary world system is that the US is really the only military able to do that. With the semi-exception of the UK, even the modern NATO militaries operate more like auxiliaries to the US legions.

France fights African adventures alone all the time. They tend to side with the bad guys and then act really surprised when that doesn't work out strategically, but tactically the guys they back always seem to win. The reason Gbgabo has power in Cote d'Iviore today is a French intervention. The reason there was a Civil War in the DRCongo is the French covered the genocidaires retreat from Rwanda. The Brits tend to have more ethical interventions, and fewer, but they still do both. "Blood Diamonds," for example, are a thing of the past because Tony Blair said so.

That's a huge problem with Marshall's argument because it ignores one simple fact: the question Obama actually faced was not "does the west fight a war in Libya?" The question was "Do the British and French fight alone?"