The Free Libya air force redux

Update at bottom: Why this will not be a short-term war for us

Don't you love it when a plan comes together? On March 20, I wrote in "The Free Libya Air Force?" that,

If indeed we want the rebels to succeed in taking over governance of the whole of Libya, instead of the rump state it claims to have established in the eastern part of the country, then the Allies' air forces must play the same role there that the US air forces played in the first months of the Afghanistan campaign: be the air force of the indigenous army to support its offensive operations against the government army.

The Free Libya air force, a.k.a. Armee de l'Air, headquartered
in Paris, plows the  road for the Libyan rebels

And so it is.

The BBC's Ben Brown in Ras Lanuf says: "It's been a remarkable day for the rebels. After seizing Ajdabiya, they have advanced westwards alsong the coastal highway at breakneck speed. Town after town as fallen to them - Brega, Ugayla, Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawad. It has been hard at times for us to keep up with them. The rebels are in a state of high excitement, exhilarated. They can hardly believe the progress they have made. They have been firing their guns into the air in celebration, blaring their horns, screeching their tires and doing wheel-spins. But the truth is that they never would have made this breakthrough if it had not been for the devastating coalition air strikes outside Ajdabiya on Thursday and Friday. They destroyed dozens of Col Gaddafi's tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery pieces. [Italics added]

And Time mag:

But the Libyan civilians populating the front line, as it shifts from Benghazi to Ajdabiyah, Brega, and Ras Lanuf, have little doubt that rebel advancement — and safety from government shelling and siege — is heavily, if not entirely, dependent on allied air strikes.

So my apologies to retired British Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, who in fact did foresee accurately that what the UN thought it was "mandating" and what the Allies would do were two different things.

Update, March 28: Now US Gen. Carter Ham makes the same point:

TRIPOLI, Libya — As rebel forces backed by allied warplanes pushed toward one of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s most crucial bastions of support, the American military warned on Monday that the insurgents’ rapid advances could quickly be reversed without continued coalition air support.

“The regime still vastly overmatches opposition forces militarily,” Gen. Carter F. Ham, the ranking American in the coalition operation, warned in an e-mail message on Monday. “The regime possesses the capability to roll them back very quickly. Coalition air power is the major reason that has not happened.”

But read between the lines: as many of us discerned very early, American forces will be involved in Libya for months to come.