GUY RAZ, host:
Here in the studio with me is NPR senior foreign editor Loren Jenkins.
Loren, let's go back for a moment. This began in mid-February. What began as a series of peaceful protests, I don't think anybody could have imagined would come to this.
LOREN JENKINS: Not at all. You know, this began after we've had the protests in Tunisia that led to the president fleeing and the change of government there in January, which was followed by the protests in Egypt for a month that led to Hosni Mubarak being retired by his army. And February 15th, the Libyans took it upon themselves to follow the example of their neighbors in Tunisia and Egypt and turn out in the streets for peaceful demonstrations.
These were - there were a series of them day after day. On February 17th, there was a Facebook call for a day of rage on Friday.
RAZ: They - yeah.
JENKINS: And one thing led to another. There were big demonstrations in Tripoli against Gadhafi. He then rallied counterdemonstrations of his supporters. There were clashes, one thing led to another. It got more violent.
Eventually, one week after these started, Gadhafi finally came on air looking distraught, gave a rambling, rambling speech that seemed half mad from the barracks that had been bombed by the U.S. and then he cracked down.
RAZ: That's NPR senior foreign editor Loren Jenkins speaking about the situation in Libya.
I'm Guy Raz. You're listening to NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
Welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.
At this hour, Tomahawk cruise missiles are destroying Libyan air defenses, and French fighter jets are attacking Libyan tanks near Benghazi. American and European forces launched a series of attacks today, the first steps toward establishing a no-fly zone in Libya.
After meeting with other European leaders in Paris today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the allies are acting to protect Libyan civilians.
Secretary HILLARY CLINTON (U.S. Department of State): We have every reason to fear that left unchecked, Gadhafi will commit unspeakable atrocity.
RAZ: Now, that didn't stop Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi from sending his forces into Benghazi, and Clinton said he had to be stopped. Gadhafi is now calling on people around the world, Africans, Arabs, Latin Americans, Asians, he said, to stand by Libya against the attack. And he says he'll now open stores of weapons to the Libyan people to defend themselves.
NPR's Eric Westervelt is in the eastern Libyan town of Tobruk. It's a place controlled by the anti-Gadhafi forces.
Eric, tell me what you are seeing at this hour.
ERIC WESTERVELT: Well, Guy, it's late at night here, and it's been a tense and quiet evening most of the night. But as word spread of the initial air and missile attacks, we've had some street celebrations here in Tobruk, people honking horns and firing off celebratory rounds from their guns.
Tobruk is really the only other major rebel area outside of Benghazi, and a sizeable number of people (unintelligible) the fighting there today to the relative safety here.
I spoke to one man tonight, a Libyan businessman, Ahmed Galao(ph), who's helping the provisional government. He left Benghazi today with his wife and teenage children after a day of attacks from Gadhafi forces. He says the last 48 hours for him have really been an up and down rollercoaster of emotions, from the - from euphoria of the U.N. vote to the nightmare of artillery strikes this morning.
Here's what he told me.
Mr. AHMED GALAO: To see what happened in Benghazi last night and this morning is just horrifying. And coming immediately after the celebrations - after the United Nations' resolution, everybody felt that's it. You know, we are protected in a way. But he carried out his promise. He came through Benghazi, and he bombarded it with everything; his planes with these Katyusha rockets, with his gunships every - and anything. I mean, it just didn't stop. The whole night, it was bo-boom, bo-boom, bo-boom.
WESTERVELT: Now, Guy, Galao and many others from Benghazi have taken shelter here in Tobruk. They're waiting and watching as the Western military response continues. Guy?
RAZ: Eric, it seems right now as if the international community has clearly staked its place here. It is now not just backing the opposition forces rhetorically, but militarily. Is there a sense now - I mean, there have been series of setbacks for the rebel forces in recent days and weeks. Is there a sense now that the tide is starting to turn or will definitively turn?
WESTERVELT: Well, among the rebels, provisional council members and spokespeople you talk to here on the ground, Guy, there's certainly a hope that that will happen. Many of them, as I said, have fled Benghazi and are now here in Tobruk.
Some that I talked to, you know, they're praising the international response. But they're also saying, you know, we hope that they go aggressively against Gadhafi's ground forces, not just their radar installation sites. One of them said, you know, I want them to go after all his forces, neutralize them. He said it's a little bit late, but it's not too late for the international community to really take on, on Gadhafi. And they're cautiously optimistic that the military action goes far enough that they can turn the tide.
RAZ: That's NPR's Eric Westervelt in the eastern Libyan town of Tobruk, covering the story for us tonight.
Eric, thanks so much for your reporting.
WESTERVELT: Thank you, Guy.
RAZ: And we're joined here in the studio - Rachel Martin is in the studio with us, I should say. She covers the Pentagon for us, and she's been monitoring story coming out of the Defense Department.
Rachel, what is the latest that you're hearing from officials - U.S. military officials at the Pentagon?
RACHEL MARTIN: Okay. Guy, this is what we know at this point. But today, approximately 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from U.S. and British ships in the Mediterranean, ships and submarines. These missiles struck more than 20 integrated air defense systems, so they're really going after Moammar Gadhafi's communication centers, anything, air defense systems that would prevent the establishment of a no-fly zone.
Most of these operations took place in the western part of the country, along the coastline. But it's really hard to tell exactly how effective, if at all, they have been at this point. As Eric just mentioned, it's very late there.
U.S. Defense officials say they're waiting till dawn to be able to assess just how effective these strikes have been in this first phase of what is said to be a multi-phased operation.
RAZ: Well, that's a question. It's the first phase. Is there any sense of how long this will take? And have they made clear what the objective is?
MARTIN: Well, they have said that the objective at this point is twofold; to prevent anymore civilian casualties, especially in Benghazi, naming Benghazi, actually, articulating that as a place of concern. But then, the second objective is to prevent Gadhafi from interfering with the establishment of a no-fly zone. So those are fairly broad objectives.
As far as the timeline, they've been very cryptic about trying to box themselves in with naming any kind of definitive timeline. They said that right now, all we can say is we're in the first phase of this. We don't know how long it's going to take. The U.S. is at the lead of the command and control of this initial phase. They say within coming days, though, they expect to be able to hand off that lead, hand off that command and control structure to the international coalition.
RAZ: Nobody is talking about, at least publicly, about Gadhafi's fate.
MARTIN: No, they're not. And that's a very kind of glaring vacuum in the conversation. U.S. Defense officials say that part of this will entail going after Gadhafi's ground troops. But when pushed about whether or not this means going after the leadership, i.e., Moammar Gadhafi himself, they say that they just can't comment on that.
RAZ: Rachel, as you know, the Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, just a few weeks ago, testified about this in front of a congressional committee, said, look, this is a military intervention. Let me be clear about what establishing a no-fly zone means. A lot of people interpreted that as a sign that perhaps he wasn't too keen on getting involved.
I wonder if you've gotten that sense from your sources in the military, and if so, does it seem that, at least for the moment, they're perfectly happy to let the French and the British take the lead here.
MARTIN: I think that's exactly right. I think that Secretary Gates comes from a position - he's one foot out the door. He's about to end his tenure as Secretary of Defense, we can expect in coming months. I think he's very reluctant to get the United States involved in a third war in a Muslim country in the Middle East. And I think he was being used as the - by the administration as kind of the guy out there saying, let's be careful. Let's hold the reigns a little bit.
Last week, his most recent public comments on the establishment of a no-fly zone, he said this is not a matter of a whether the U.S. can do this. We can do this. It's how wise is this. We should be very measured, very deliberate. So that's, you know, what we've seen from the administration, really weighing their options over the past couple of weeks as many critics has - have come down on the administration for that.
But at the same time, Defense officials say, you know, when we're told to do something, we do it. So we've now gotten the order to move forward with the establishment of the no-fly zone, so that's what we're doing.
RAZ: That's NPR's Rachel Martin. She covers the Pentagon for us. And she's covering this story, of course, in the latest developments out of the Pentagon.
Rachel, thanks.
MARTIN: You're welcome.
RAZ: We're joined now by NPR's Scott Horsley. He's our White House correspondent. He's been monitoring the situation as well throughout the day.
Scott, the president is in Brazil at the moment, which is a bit odd. He is in Brazil on a completely different - for a completely different reason, the trade mission. What did he have to say about this today?
SCOTT HORSLEY: Well, he did - after meeting with some business leaders in Brazil, he took pause to make a statement about the operations. He said that the military operations are limited and that they are in support of an international coalition. He also - repeatedly, he said yesterday that he is not authorizing the use of any U.S. ground troops. And he stresses, as Rachel's been talking about, that the U.S. forces will be carrying out the - their responsibility is sort of weighted towards the front-end of this operation and then that there'll be a hand off at some point, that what the U.S. responsibility is to use its unique capabilities to enable a no-fly zone to be led by international partners.
RAZ: Scott, the president, for weeks, was reluctant, really reluctant to commit U.S. forces to take part in any kind of intervention in Libya, saying: Look, the best thing to do is allow this uprising state to sort of unfold organically, to let the people in these countries take control. What began in Libya as a series of peaceful protests, of course, became something much darker and more violent.
What was the point at which the president said: Okay. Now, the United States is going to get involved.
HORSLEY: Well, I think we'll be dissecting that timeline in weeks to come. But a couple of points, I think, were important: One was last weekend, when the Arab League stepped in and said, we want to see a no-fly zone. We heard Secretary Clinton say earlier today that changed the diplomatic landscape. That made it clear that this would not be simply the West against an Arab country, but that the Arab League was invested.
And then, when it became clear that the U.N. Security Council would go beyond simply a no-fly zone, but would authorize broader military action in defense of civilians, that addressed, I think, the concern or one of the concerns that some of the military planners have, which was that simply a no-fly zone, if that's all it was, might not even be effective.
So it was- you had both a buy-in from the Arab League and then you had the international community saying, we're willing to go beyond just a no-fly zone. I think those were two important factors in the president's decision.
RAZ: Scott, what about congressional pressure? I mean, the recent days, weeks, I should say, we've heard from Senator John Kerry, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, from Senator John McCain, both of whom called for an intervention. Did that - do you think any of that had an impact on the president's thinking?
HORSLEY: Well, the White House has sort of downplayed the influence of Congress here. I think what they were seeing, though - and the president talked about this in his remarks yesterday when he said that the U.S. - you know, we've heard some advisers of the president arguing that the U.S. did not have a vital national interest at stake in Libya.
And what the president himself said yesterday was that there was, of course, the humanitarian issue at stake - what would happen to the civilians in Libya if Moammar Gadhafi made good on his threats - but also, that fact could have a - destabilizing a fact throughout the Middle East. And I think that was very much of a concern.
And finally, for a president who has put so much, invested so much of himself in the idea that the international community should act collectively, I think he was very alarmed with the prospect that we would see Moammar Gadhafi remain in power after the U.N. and other international bodies had spoken out so forcefully against him. So he sort of said: Look, we've spoken out as an international community, now we really have to back that up with force or the voice of the international community won't mean very much.
RAZ: That's NPR's White House correspondent Scott Horsley.
Scott, thanks so much.
HORSLEY: My pleasure.
RAZ: And in the studio here with me is NPR's intelligence correspondent Tom Gjelten and also our senior foreign editor Loren Jenkins.
Gentlemen, thanks for being with us.
TOM GJELTEN: (Unintelligible).
JENKINS: Hey, Guy.
First, to you, Tom. You covered the First Gulf War in 1991. You covered the Bosnian War in the mid-90's, both the only two other examples in modern history of no-fly zones being established. How does this operation compare to those?
GJELTEN: Well, Arab power was critical in both those operations. Obviously, they were very different experiences. In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and then there was - and the international coalition, not unlike this one, was quickly put together to force him back out of Kuwait. He had brought in a lot of tanks into Kuwait. And once the air strikes began, he tried to bring them back again.
And if you recall, there was a long column of tanks on the highway screaming back toward Baghdad, and they were wiped out. They were slaughtered by air power. We saw a very effective demonstration there of the power of air strikes against ground forces.
Clearly, that's something that people in Libya would like to see repeated in the - judging from Eric Westervelt's conversation with people there in Tobruk. They are disappointed they haven't seen enough of that yet.
You know, the big issue following that war was why that coalition, the U.S. and Western Forces, didn't go all the way to Baghdad...
RAZ: Yes.
HORSLEY: ...to take Saddam Hussein out. He lived to haunt them for another dozen years before there was another war. That question would certainly be asked again today if this operation stopped short of removing Gadhafi from top power.
Now, as far as Bosnia is concerned, it's a very different situation. But again, air power was very decisive there. The strikes were against Bosnian Serb targets. You had both the Croats and the Bosnian governments poised to take advantage of that - of those air strikes, and the war was actually blocked to a pretty quick end after those air strikes.
RAZ: And we should mention, the last time, I believe, that French war planes were involved in a military intervention.
HORSLEY: That would have been in those NATO air strikes in Bosnia, which is now, you know, back in 1995.
RAZ: Loren Jenkins, let me bring you into the conversation here, because I guess it's a good time to remind everyone listening, including ourselves, that this began as a series of peaceful protests, part of a wave of uprisings across the Middle East and parts of North Africa, a series of protests that quickly turned dark and violent. How did it get to this point?
JENKINS: Moammar Gadhafi. Basically, he wasn't like the Tunisian president or the Egyptian president who basically decided when their people rose up, demanding reforms and changes that they weren't going to attack their own citizens violently.
Moammar Gadhafi is a different beast. When he got threatened, he replied with every source of violence he had, using, you know, flags in the streets, militias and finally his army and his air force, artillery, tanks, attacking any village that rose up against him mercilessly.
RAZ: And unlike his counterparts in Tunisia and in Egypt, he is clearly prepared to die.
JENKINS: That's what he says, and I believe him.
RAZ: What do you make of this idea, Loren, that just a short time ago, this was somebody who was hailed by Western leaders as somebody who is reformed, who had made a turnaround?
JENKINS: Well, as I say, it's hard to understand why the West was so quickly willing to look at him as somebody who would change his spots, someone who one day was a terrorist, the next day he was going to be a great leader. I think it was about oil. It also was about he had a nuclear development that he was prepared to give up in exchange for the West lifting the sanctions. He wanted to be able to sell (unintelligible) and the oil companies wanted to come in. And they were pressuring their governments to relax and believe that Moammar Gadhafi was somebody else.
RAZ: Tom Gjelten, we got about 15 seconds left. Where do you see this going?
GJELTEN: Well, I think one of the things we've seen today is how sequence this is going to be. It's not going to be a quick operation. We have the air defense taken down, and then there's going to be bomb damage assessment after that to see if those defenses really have been taken down. Only then will we see the kind of air strikes that we were expecting from the beginning to enforce the no-fly zone and really push back the ground forces.
RAZ: Tom Gjelten, Loren Jenkins, Rachel Martin and all our correspondents in the field will be with us in the coming days and hours.
You're listening to continuing coverage of the military action in Libya. And to recap now, in case you're just joining us, European and American forces have launched an attack on targets in Libya. The U.S. has sent cruise missiles to take at Libyan air defenses. France has sent fighter jets. It's an all - it's all in an effort to establish a U.N. sanction no-fly zone in Libya.
And President Obama says the U.S. role will be one of support for its allies.
President BARACK OBAMA: The United States will contribute our unique capabilities at the front-end of the mission to protect Libyan civilians and enable the enforcement of a no-fly zone that will be led by our international partners. And as I said yesterday, we will not, I repeat, we will not deploy any U.S troops on the ground.
RAZ: That's President Obama speaking today in Brazil. The goal, says Western leaders, is to protect the Libyan people from their own leader.
We'll have more on this story in the coming hours and on npr.org. This ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.