As I write, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has just confirmed that there will be no “boots on the ground” in Libya. There is apparently still a chance that the US, and possibly Britain, might arm the rebels, and there has also been solid talk of CIA “covert support”.
To my mind, this is all part of the general incoherence of this war. Arming the rebels, for example, would be just about as useful as putting me in the cockpit of a spaceship and pointing out Mars.
“Covert support” is just that and presumably not meant to be discussed. As for the UN resolution, it seems to provide for the protection of civilians but not for regime change.
Too bad that in the case of Muammar Gaddafi, who doesn’t do common decency all that well, the first depends directly on the second. I suppose the coalition reckoned that the protection of civilians loosely-defined would make Gaddafi go quietly. Which shows, incredibly (we’re talking experts here), that they have very short memories.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that, save for some fluke, toppling Gaddafi will require some sort of ground intervention.
That shouldn’t prove too controversial. After all, one might reasonably imagine that the right place for boots is on the ground rather than in the sky.
It turns out that such is not the case and that many actually prefer their boots flying.
The Arab League, for example, would probably not have agreed to a UN resolution to send in troops. Nor were the rebels – or at least those rebels I saw being interviewed on television – too keen on standing shoulder-to-shoulder with coalition forces, despite the obvious advantages of that. As for public opinion in the West, boots on the ground mean Iraq and Afghanistan, possibly even Vietnam and all that.
For all of these, the no-fly zone was the all-essential packaging.
I can understand why certain groups might not take happily to troops on the ground. It’s all about memory and trauma really. Rebels or not, Libyans will have heard how Italy invaded Tripoli in 1911 and proceeded to make a mess of it. They will also remember Mussolini’s mass deportations and public hangings, and how the British and the French pretty much occupied the place after the Second World War.
As for the Arab League and Western opinion, imperialist meddling and body bags are among the unexorcised demons.
So no, the reluctance to keep boots where they belong doesn’t surprise me. What does quite astonish on the other hand is the general acceptance of a no-fly zone. A complete misnomer, because it turns out to be a zone where many things do, in fact, fly. The skies over Libya are dark with jets and such airborne military wizardry. Just not those belonging to Gaddafi.
Which brings me to my question. Why should military intervention from the air be thought of as more acceptable than ground troops? I’d like to think it a useful or at least entertaining question, because it invites us to unpack the elements, so to say. A couple of examples won’t hurt.
Flying over Saudi Arabia, passengers are told that the drinking of alcohol is forbidden on the aircraft. That may sound bizarre, but probably not to Mexicans. That’s because there’s currently a hot debate in Mexico over high-altitude drones sent by the US to gather intelligence on drug cartels.
In both cases the question is whether or not, and/or to what extent, the sky above a country is part of that country’s territory. The short answer has to do with politics, the long one with cultural attitudes – although it’s clear the two are closely related.
On the one hand, land and sky are experienced as one. We say things like Constable country for example, but we might just as reasonably say Constable sky. That’s because the sky is as much part of the picture as the land (in Constable’s case that’s particularly so with his studies).
Writers too have often used the sky to evoke mood or prophecy – think Bleak House or Shakespeare’s “tempest dropping fire”. On a more mundane level we know well how the sky affects our mood and how homesick people miss a bluer blue.
At the same time we also seem to relate differently to different elements. It’s probably telling that two days of God’s work in Genesis are spent pulling apart sea, sky, and land.
Stability is not the first thing that comes to mind when we think of the sky, at least not in our culture. It’s rather a place populated by transients – clouds, migrating birds, and such. And of course by God, who certainly does not belong with us (I’m talking representations not theology) .
Land is a different matter. We take it to mean permanence, stability, and territory.
The last is important because it happens to be one of the key ingredients of modern nation-states. It’s not by chance that many of the metaphors of national territory (roots, soil, and such) have to do with land – rather than, say, sky or sea.
Since I mention permanence, birds make for a good metaphor. The part of the bird that has to do with the sky is light, streamlined, and highly-evolved; the legs on the other hand are a bit of a living fossil, all covered in scales and dinosaur-like.
My point is not that the sea and the sky are meaningless while the land is meaningful. Rather I’m saying they have different meanings, and that that of land comes closest to our understanding of territory.
I say ‘our’ guardedly because it is well known that elements mean different things in different regions. Derek Walcott, for example, has an exquisite poem called The Sea is History. That’s because in the Caribbean, with its traumatic history of Middle Passage crossings, it is.
All of this may sound rather pseudish and detached from the real business of Security Council Resolution 1973 and how best to apply it. But I don’t think it is, simply because it’s ultimately our understandings of territory that make boots seem legitimate in some places but not in others.
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