It only gets worse

By Rob Janicki
On June 22, the same day Obama announced a timed withdrawal from Afghanistan, Italy called for the immediate halt to war with Libya. Considering that Italy hosts 90% of the NATO forces engaged in military action against Libya, it would fall on France and Britain to maintain any semblance of continuing military action against Libya by virtue of the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and the British air bases on Cyprus in the Mediterranean.

Obama guaranteed Qaddafi would fall in short order and then promptly reduced the already minimal American involvement two weeks later, to a distant standoff resource supporting NATO stationed air force
contingents around the Mediterranean. Obama has led the NATO war on Libya from the rear and now Italy has taken a quantum leap toward following Obama's march to the rear. Will Benghazi be the Libyan version of Dunkirk, where Mediterranean cruise ships are hastily commandeered to evacuate Libyan rebels reeling from Qaddafi's re-emerging military forces that reign virtually unopposed with NATO in retreat?

Italy is already reeling under internal economic pressures to renew their trading ties with Libya. Western Europe needs Libya's oil. How long will it be until the NATO members with the most to lose in an ongoing military debacle in Libya, decide to cut their losses and cease military operations to oust Qaddafi? NATO military commanders are reportedly opposed to the current military strategy to overthrow Qaddafi and anything less will only exacerbate an already tenuous and misguided combined NATO military adventure in Libya.

Will Obama be able to convince Congress to shoulder the burden in the ongoing Libyan misadventure should NATO have to retreat? Not likely, in as much as Obama has received from Congress, what amounts to a vote of no confidence in continuing U.S. military operations of any kind aimed at Libya. So much for Obama's leadership skills as Commander-in Chief of America's military might.