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| Africa North |
| Gaddafi goes Mao |
| 2011-03-31 |
| Muammar Gaddafi's purported Long March from Benghazi to Tripoli, which began on Friday, was cut short on Tuesday as his army routed and then - almost as if carried by inertia alone - chased the rebels back across a few small towns along the Mediterranean coast. The opposition performed so poorly in its advance on his town of birth, Sirte (which it claimed - falsely - to have captured on Monday), that Gaddafi did not even get to use the full gamut of asymmetric warfare tactics he had in store. As he struggles to hide his considerable forces from increasingly powerful coalition air attacks but nevertheless holds sway on the ground, the Libyan leader is very likely to be spicing up the long hours of hiding by brushing up on legendary Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong's experiences in using mobile warfare against the Kuomintang and the Japanese. ...In all, Gaddafi seems to be in a good position right now to wait patiently while consolidating his control in the west. His enemies are in a bind - as NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen put it on Tuesday, ''Clearly there's no military solution, solely, to the problems in Libya.'' It is unlikely that, even if it tries seriously, NATO can train and equip the rebels well enough to take on his army in the next few months. Meanwhile, as the air campaign draws on, costs for NATO will pile up and backlash against the operation will grow. Equipment failure - if not anti-aircraft fire - can even bring down a few warplanes, hurting the morale of the allies. At a later stage, according to Mao's doctrines, mobile warfare turns again into positional warfare, and the enemy is conquered. The Libyan leader, who left most of the oil infrastructure intact even as his forces withdrew over the weekend from key oil towns such as Ras Lanuf and Brega, appears confident that this is how his battle will develop as well. The burden is on the coalition and the rebels to prove him wrong. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #7 Interesting. Note to self, if offered chance to marry and breed with Muslim, decline. Europe, US, have more kids. God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter by Stephen Prothero is an interesting read. Prothero is a comparative religion expert. Supposedly, Islam is the fastest growing religion. Islam = The Way of Submission. And Why does it seem to take disproportionate negative attention. |
| Posted by: Fi 2011-03-31 22:51 |
| #6 Mao didn't use "mobile warfare" against the Japanese. His enemy was Chiang Kai-Shek. Mao fought the Japanese a grand total of two times. The Long March was a retreat because the heat was too much. Chiang let Mao go, he could have crushed him many times on the way. |
| Posted by: gromky 2011-03-31 22:22 |
| #5 Islamists are breeding like rabbits. But those rabbits aren't breeding nearly as quickly as they used to. Check the CIA Factbook's country comparison of total fertility rate, for instance. I found it rather startling the first time I saw it. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2011-03-31 21:53 |
| #4 Islamists are breeding like rabbits. Yes, Islam is the fatest growing religion, very scary. I have a few ideas how to fix that, but would land me in sinktrap. However, I can reveal that estrogen in the water supply would help increase impotency. |
| Posted by: Fi 2011-03-31 19:51 |
| #3 Nukes don't work in Libya? |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-03-31 19:34 |
| #2 as NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen put it on Tuesday, ''Clearly there's no military solution, solely, to the problems in Libya.'' The bulb coming on is it? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2011-03-31 17:57 |
| #1 That's not a stretch for Gaddafi, who's basically a Communist dinosaur. Still, given the moribund state of Communism, I'll take Communists over Islamists any day. Demographics is destiny. Communists are dying out; Islamists are breeding like rabbits. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2011-03-31 17:33 |