Libya for the Long Haul?

Three months in and we're still not sure what – or who – we're fighting for in North Africa.

The House of Commons voted almost unanimously (save one dissenting Liz May) to extend Canada's Libya mission to the end of September. That the opposition NDP and Liberals gave their full support to the mission bodes well for a less rancourous Parliament, suggests the National Post's John Ivison. “Canadians would have been shocked - shocked - by the outbreak of civility in the House,” he writes of Foreign Affairs Minster John Baird applauding Liberal Leader Bob Rae's contribution to the debate. Ivison figures the vote was NDP Leader Jack Layton's first stab at proving his party has matured and moved to the centre. “The NDP's conciliation of the government line is sure to provoke fireworks at the New Democrat convention in Vancouver this weekend,” he writes, but “the election result gives Mr. Layton the authority to triumph over the partisan gravitational pull of his party's traditional ideology.”

A grownup House of Commons is all well and good, but it doesn't make up for the fact that Canada entered Libya “with lofty ideals but scant actual knowledge,” opines Jeffrey Simpson in The Globe and Mail. Halting Moammar Gadhafi's advance on Misrata to protect civilians from certain massacre was a laudable aim, but our political leaders' “nonexistent” understanding of the country on which we're dropping bombs leaves Libya's future up in the air. The National Transitional Council, made up of members “who seem to have more in common about what they oppose than what to build post-Gadhafi," is a de facto ally, but beyond that and token aid gestures, no plans for a post-Gadhafi Libya have been offered by anyone in NATO.

Further to that, what happens if Gadhafi's still clinging to power at the end of September, asks Peter McKenna in the Ottawa Citizen. “How does this military operation actually end? Where are the policy off-ramps?” he wonders, suggesting that Canadians will tire of the mission if its cost – pegged at $60 million by the end of September – doesn't bear any results on the ground. The public very likely wouldn't support deploying ground troops, yet doing so remains a “very real possibility,” as it could give the rebels enough strength to topple Gadhafi. “I know that no one wants to go there, but sometimes saving innocents requires putting heavily armed soldiers in harm's way,” he writes. “That is what happens when you intervene in other countries armed with good intentions and humanitarian impulses.” Indeed, no good deed goes unpunished.