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This has all happened before. Ajdabiya, Brega, Benghazi, Tobruk: these are names familiar to students of military history, as eastern Libya was fought over several times during the North African campaign of World War II.
Instead of Libyan rebels, though, it was the British who held the east, while the west was held by a force of Germans and Italians under one Erwin Rommel.
My suspicion is that Qadhdhafi is no Desert Fox. Dictators usually turn out to be poor generals, and often a dictator will hamstring his own army, seeing in it a dangerous potential rival to his position of power. If Qadhdhafi's military were competent, he would not have already lost control of the east.
I just read that the U.N. has voted to impose a no-fly zone. Let's hope the people enforcing it are not British or American.
Instead of Libyan rebels, though, it was the British who held the east, while the west was held by a force of Germans and Italians under one Erwin Rommel.
My suspicion is that Qadhdhafi is no Desert Fox. Dictators usually turn out to be poor generals, and often a dictator will hamstring his own army, seeing in it a dangerous potential rival to his position of power. If Qadhdhafi's military were competent, he would not have already lost control of the east.
I just read that the U.N. has voted to impose a no-fly zone. Let's hope the people enforcing it are not British or American.
