Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

Lotus Eaters, beware:

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/2579/1666065-lunatic_dawn_odyssey_box_front_large.jpg

A new thread so that the "Civil unrest in Egypt in Egypt (& elsewhere in 'the region')" doesn't become unwieldy.

Fuck.

wonder what its like being a journalist in march 2011

Like having some job security for the time being?

good luck libya

My girlfriend actually is a journalist, she's not getting a great deal of sleep at the moment; especially as she covers the IAEA in Vienna...

I guess deciding "what is news?" is always a question or whatever, but as someone who has never worked for a big news media conglomerate wig company or something, I wonder how they even decide what the fuck to do now. Obv this question comes with the caveat that these papers are not in japan or the middle east. This is probably for another thread too.

I'm pretty confident that most newspaper stories on these various events are drawn pretty extensively from wire services with stringers and reporters in the respective region.

Yeah, quick look shows that Chicago Tribune and LA Times are sharing the same headline story, for example.

SOMEWHAT US-CENTRIC thread title:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opération_Harmattan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ellamy

Its more like how to determine how much space to give to everything, again, maybe this is a really stupid question

we're gonna lib'ya

More than 110 missiles have been fired by the UK and US, officials at the Pentagon say.
Each costs about $600,000 U.S.D.

Bargain!

Sorry about the US centric title, the other operation names weren't public in the English speaking press at the time.

Meanwhile, from the France being France dossier:

Two senior Western diplomats said the Paris meeting, which was organized by Mr Sarkozy, may actually have delayed allied operations to stop Colonel Gaddafi's troops as they were approaching Benghazi. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the matter.

The initial French air sorties, which were not coordinated with other countries, angered some of the countries gathered at the summit meeting, according to a senior Nato-country diplomat. Information about the movement of Gaddafi troops toward Benghazi had been clear on Friday, but France blocked any Nato agreement on airstrikes until the Paris meeting, the diplomat said, suggesting that overflights could have begun Friday night before Mr Gaddafi's troops reached the city.

damn frogs

Fortunately there's nothing riding on my opinion of all this, so I can just be troubled and deeply ambivalent.

Greenwald on what The Liar said about prez war-making powers as a candidate:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/18/libya

the west's attempts to install world capitalism are getting more and more surreal and desperate. the grasp, it is crumbling, and there will be missiles before there is free food

lmao where did you c+p that from?

All US presidents, upon taking office, should receive a tattoo that reads, "Cruise missiles mean never having to say you're sorry."

I wish I knew what all these national leaders were really thinking when they decided to jump into this, because my hunch is that the calculation was only a bit more sophisticated than "nobody likes Ghadafi, so there's no real political cost for smacking him around if we all do it together".

yeah they were also like 'let's install world capitalism'

what they are always like

presumably HM will still be carping on an ILE politics thread while we're all tending to the community rice-drive and reassigning living-space to accommodate everybody

about time libya had a debt crisis anyway

"Our Violent Torpedos of Truth" would have been so much better than "Odyssey Dawn."

presumably HM will still be carping on an ILE politics thread while we're all tending to the community rice-drive and reassigning living-space to accommodate everybody

about time libya had a debt crisis anyway

― WD-40 (acoleuthic), Sunday, March 20, 2011 4:48 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah the libyan people seem really happy with the status quo. capitalism makes people so unhappy. don't really understand the first bit tbh.

Cold feet:

The Arab League’s secretary general, Amr Moussa, has announced an emergency meeting of the grouping, saying that the current situation isn’t what Arabs had envisaged. “What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians."

the current situation isn’t what Arabs had envisaged

due diligence lacking here

ruh-roh capitalism: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/libya-says-may-give-oil-deals-to-china-india/146528-2.html

dont think these guys are bombing anyone (despite defence cutbacks)

http://static.ibnlive.com/pix/slideshow/03-2011/in-pics-libya/libya_unrest_coverpic1.jpg

Right after a meeting of world leaders over action on Libya, in Paris, French jets were seen flying over Libya.

status quo is shit, oppressive etc like most/all modern top-down government but what is western capitalism if not opportunistic

quite liked 'rockin' all over the world' myself

status quo is shit, oppressive etc like most/all modern top-down government but what is western capitalism if not opportunistic

― WD-40 (acoleuthic), Sunday, March 20, 2011 5:35 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

when you think about it, top-down governments are all pretty much the same...

lj my sympathies to some degree lie with you here but you gotta realize this is like arguing about manowar with algerian goalkeeper

opinions will remain steadfast and you just look as the guy who continues arguing with algerian goalkeeper

get on my level

lol

also 'world capitalism' is kind of a lol phrase tbh

if the kids are united they'll never be divided

you do realize I have slept 3 hours since fucking 2 days ago, taken narcotics and units of alcohol into the tens in the meantime and am now writing 27 pages for someone's fucking management studies course

not that the man can't kiss my arse when I'm sober and rested

everyone read david c korten's shit btw, he's the don

peace

you need to meet a nice girl

will do in an hour when I wake her up

god when will this fucking project end, someone make a new board again, keep me entertained

i'll go start 'i love status quo'

nah dogg you always be talking funny like this it seems. listen to a hoos

suggest 'i love dongles' for the ilx IT crowd. would hold finite possibilities for lj, tho

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=47

anyway the french are at it again

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12800635

there's a 'USS Barry'?

and am now writing 27 pages for someone's fucking management studies course

ooh, someones's smashing capitalism

anyway jokes but i'd probably a BIT more cautious with the neo-neo-con shtick if the objectively-pro-gafaffi crew weren't such stinkers or, like louis, incoherent

judging from newsnight the other night stwc got literally tens of mutants out to their little do

you do realize I have slept 3 hours since fucking 2 days ago, taken narcotics and units of alcohol into the tens in the meantime and am now writing 27 pages for someone's fucking management studies course

not that the man can't kiss my arse when I'm sober and rested

You are a terrible person who should probably stop using the Internet, fyi

you do realize I have slept 3 hours since fucking 2 days ago, taken narcotics and units of alcohol into the tens in the meantime and am now writing 27 pages for someone's fucking management studies course

why would anyone have any reason to "realize" this

his tumblr was pretty explicit

he's also eaten a mess of peppercorns

#jaggerblood

omg lol

milo z you are such a hardass and I am in no way pro-gadaffi

his tumblr was pretty explicit

― Kerm, Sunday, March 20, 2011 1:38 PM (3 minutes ago)

ah, the extra nugget that presumes a degree of gives-a-shit...it's always in there somewhere, like the baby in the king cake

I am in no way pro-gadaffi

― WD-40 (acoleuthic), Sunday, March 20, 2011 6:42 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

'objectively' boo

anyway, when ppl insult others they're just mirroring insecurities they have about themselves, so I'll assure milo he's cool to keep posting by me although maybe lay off the 'god my ex is such an alcoholic slut/prise it out of my cold dead hands' posturing

WmC your inability to detect my swagalicious register is upsetting

wish I had more time to post about resource-based economies and holistic universe-energy shit, just gonna say that empirical paradigms and debt economies suck and leave it at that

wish I had more time to post about resource-based economies and holistic universe-energy shit, just gonna say that empirical paradigms and debt economies suck and leave it at that

― WD-40 (acoleuthic), Sunday, March 20, 2011 6:47 PM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark

right... ok. so, about libya.

there's a 'USS Barry'?

never gets up to full speed and very slow on the turn

Doesn't request authorization from Congressional leaders on deck getting sun tans.

lol greenwald never change:

How, then, can Obama's campaign position possibly be reconciled with his ordering military action in Libya without Congressional approval (something, it should be said, he has not yet done)?

seems like the western allies here are making a fairly conventional gamble - assist with the toppling of the current regime and the subsequent regime will be beholden to us/more likely to act in our interests. this has worked out pretty reliably in the past. real question is how long will it take to knock of Qawdawfi

I'm pretty sure that, as president, it's "no way imma wait for those dithering fuckwads to approve this!"

anyway jokes but i'd probably a BIT more cautious with the neo-neo-con shtick if the objectively-pro-gafaffi crew weren't such stinkers or, like louis, incoherent

Pretty much how I feel. Most of the people I'm reading or talking to who are in favour of intervention are cautious, conflicted and took a while to weigh up the options - most of those against are "It's all about oil, Milosevic was a sweetheart, blah". A generalisation maybe but I at least I can be sure of one thing: Neil Clark is a joke.

was kinda hoping for a 'uss dave' or a 'uss terry' or something

why does the USS Barry weigh so much?
its full of options!

that's my mark russell style political zing of the week.

Louis, I have made terrible sexing decisions in the past indeed. But I can make better decisions in the future - you will always be a terrible person who gives leftists a bad name.

took a while to weigh up the options

This didn't seem to be the case with France or UK govs? They seemed pretty keen.

well, you know what the french are like, always spoiling for a fight

Esp. when they've behind the National Front in the polls.

Not sure that getting sucked into a potentially messy war in the Middle East is a sure-fire poll-rating booster.

It's interesting - there doesn't look like there's much prospect of Gaddafi being removed any time soon. In the medium term, at least, all those British, French and American corporate interests (oil, guns, etc) are going to be hugely disadvantaged.

looks like someone just blew up his house

xpost I haven't come across anyone who's put the pro-intervention case in the same kneejerk terms as some of the antis. This is costly, risky and will very quickly become unpopular if it goes wrong - the idea that this is an easy way to a fast buck or a poll boost is idiotic, as is the idea that this is just Iraq redux.

Been reading Andrew Rawnsley's account of New Labour, with a big detailed chunk on Iraq, which has reminded me that you can make dumb foreign policy decisions (and lie to justify them) for moral reasons. It's a misunderstanding of Blair's ego and moral zealotry to say that it was all about oil and business interests. It also shows how close Britain came to not going to war, and all the different personalities, calculations, decisions and mistakes that led to it - another thing that tends to get left out of the Pilger/Neil Clark/etc view that all wars are part of the same imperialist masterplan.

xp: Gaddafi was buying his weapons from the Russians and the major oil producers were Italy's ENI, France's Total and China's CNPC. The U.S. and Britain had rather little economic interest here.

I do like how the Chinese and Russians abstained from vetoing another engagement that will divert U.S. attention away from Europe and East Asia. Someone read their Machiavelli/Sun Tzu.

This is costly, risky and will very quickly become unpopular if it goes wrong - the idea that this is an easy way to a fast buck or a poll boost is idiotic, as is the idea that this is just Iraq redux.

Exactly...which is why I've decided not to have an opinion.

I think people are being hard on the antis here. Implying that those who oppose the strikes are somehow 'pro-Gaddafi' is beneath everyone here. I happen to favour the intervention, but it's probably the first military action in my lifetime that I have been in favour of. "It's all about oil, Milosevic was a sweetheart, blah" is a disgusting characterisation of the opposition. One thing that surprised me this weekend is that I am yet to meet a serviceman/woman who supports this action.

Don't talk to history mayne though, for whom any kind of hesitation is "objectively" pro-Qaddafi.

"It's all about oil, Milosevic was a sweetheart, blah" is a disgusting characterisation of the opposition

no it isnt

Yes it is.

no it isnt

Cool! I'm so happy it's 2003 again!

lol

you can be george galloway

we still need someone with brains

let's make lots of money

Of course, Galloway was (along with a large and varied section of society) right about Iraq...

(in the binary 'good/bad idea' sense.

He was right for the wrong reasons -- he was a Saddam quisling.

That's kind of the point - people oppose or support something for a wide variety of reasons. It's not just a handful of fellow posters who are capable of nuanced thought, or complex motives.

all im hearing from the anti crowd is wide variety of bad reasons tbf

Andrew Sullivan is screaming about We're At War, and he's technically wrong, but I'm not in the wait-and-see mode: the odds are Obama won't go to seek authorization for this as he is constitutionally bound to.

(x-post) I get that, and I have no doubt that there are loads of terrible SWP types trotting (see?) out the same nonsense. It's an interesting experience to be on the 'pro' side - I opposed and protested action in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Anyway, grumpy guts, we'll see what tomorrow brings, I guess.

slim pickens riding a bomb i hope

On balance, I’m anti because
a)It westernises a region-wide revolution, making said revolution less likely to succeed in the long term
b)Americans etc yet again bombing an Arab country, how can this turn out well
c)Unless the West gets lucky with a direct hit on Gaddafi it’s going to be a protracted affair anyway - a months-long or years-long civil war is probably unavoidable, western bombs or no

ps I was in favour of the Kosovo intervention and don’t think Milosevic was a sweetheart. Kosovo was about as good as it gets for this kind of intervention, and more than a decade on the situation there is still highly unstable, held together by UN troops etc.

Also, why are we doing nothing, zilch, nada to help Bahrain protesters and yet we are prepared to bomb Libya, i.e, it is actually about Western interests

fucking hell you illiterates "objectively pro-" is a pretty well established rhetorical device read a book

Adverbs are silly.

Also, why are we doing nothing, zilch, nada to help Bahrain protesters and yet we are prepared to bomb Libya

because it's easier to justify intervention when the country has already descended into near civil war, than when the government is still in full control?

"the eggs are already broken, we're just doing a bit of whisking" vs "let's start breakin' some eggs!". as it were.

because Qaddaffi is much more easily made into a target, and easier to topple.

Er, dowd, I made pretty clear my "disgusting" characterisation was a qualified generalisation and that it obviously doesn't apply to every anti but a lot of the loudest voices (in the wider debate rather than itt) appear to be on anti-war autopilot, recycling the same criticisms from conflict to conflict. The Milosevic apologists disgust me but of course I'm not saying that's everyone.

I was pro Kosovo, anti Iraq, conflicted about Afghanistan and slow to be pro this time for pretty much exactly the reasons Zelda gives but persuaded by the Arab League request, UN consensus and increasing bloodshed.

Also, why are we doing nothing, zilch, nada to help Bahrain protesters and yet we are prepared to bomb Libya

this argument is an honoured guest and we can hardly refuse him entry after so many visits, but it always sounds to me like a maverick, mccain-esque 'let's bomb saudi arabia' warcry rather than what i guess it's meant to say, which is something like 'we're bombing libya for its oil that we already get'.

a)It westernises a region-wide revolution, making said revolution less likely to succeed in the long term

not wild about this argument: most people would rather the libyans had been able to succeed in the short term, but they didn't, and now they're asking for help. well, some of them are -- i wish we knew more about all that. i'm not crazy about western/non-western as a way of looking at anything: gadaffi's libya is pretty westernized already by being a soviet client, part of opec, etc., and the protesters/revolutionaries seem to want freedoms-that-are-called-western. i think people put too much stress on authenticity, tradition, etc. those things are very resonant fictions, no doubt, but they are fictions.

b)Americans etc yet again bombing an Arab country, how can this turn out well

again, it's not ideal. but 'dictator loosing his army upon rebellious population' can't turn out well either.

c)Unless the West gets lucky with a direct hit on Gaddafi it’s going to be a protracted affair anyway - a months-long or years-long civil war is probably unavoidable, western bombs or no

i don't know enough about the logistics. feel like his army won't want to keep going on forever even if he does.

xpost
I'm not suggesting we bomb Saudi, Bahrain, or anyone. The Saudis have basically occupied Bahrain and suppressed the revolt with only the mildest protestations from the U.S. and yet bombs are being dropped on Libya. That sits poorly with the argument that the Libyan intervention is simply a humanitarian matter.

gadaffi's libya is pretty westernized already by being a soviet client, part of opec, etc., and the protesters/revolutionaries seem to want freedoms-that-are-called-western. i think people put too much stress on authenticity, tradition, etc. those things are very resonant fictions, no doubt, but they are fictions.

If a fiction is very resonant, then it's best to pay attention to it. An uprising completely unaided by the Americans is going to be harder to argue against than one that only succeeded with American help, which historically has fatally weakened such uprisings.

hey i haven't been paying tons of attention but uh it didn't really look like the uprising was going to succeed?

the unaided uprising foundered and asked for support

we could trade historical examples on whether that means it's doomed; you might be right, i don't know, but there isn't, unfortunately, a choice between a UN-supported successful rebellion and a successful unaided one

xpost

20th anniversary

Early on April 15, 2006 – to mark the 20th anniversary of the bombing raid – a concert involving U.S. singer Lionel Richie and Spanish tenor José Carreras was held in front of Gaddafi's bombed house in Tripoli. Diplomats, businessmen and politicians were among the audience of what Libya dubbed the "concert for peace". The BBC reported Lionel Richie as telling the audience, regarding Gaddafi's supposed adopted daughter, "Hanna will be honored tonight because of the fact that you've attached peace to her name."

ready to hate Richie for using "the fact that" for no reason tbh

Libya is probably in for a long period of violence and instability with or without Western bombs. Yes, the unaided uprising asked for support, it's very, very difficult. Similar arguments were no doubt being played out 10 years ago wrt Afghanistan which, to begin with, was a bombing campaign to help the anti-Taliban forces. I don't know. On balance I'm against this intervention, but I guess it's a fine balance.

Louis, I have made terrible sexing decisions in the past indeed. But I can make better decisions in the future - you will always be a terrible person who gives leftists a bad name.

― boots get knocked from here to czechoslovakier (milo z), Sunday, 20 March 2011 20:39 (Yesterday)

can you explain this please? when it's proved wrong I hope you are there to witness it. also be mindful that you're projecting

ShababLibya LibyanYouthMovement
BREAKING: It has been confirmed by a few sources and now also Al Manara, Khamis Gaddafi has died today, as a result of burns #Libya #Feb17
1 hour ago

since when did louis become a psychologist

when people started saying really, really needless and hurtful stuff at me despite my reduced posting volume and efforts to be inclusive. it's like what is there to still hang onto? oh wait it's because I do politics wrong, or at least frame my terms with a cartoonish abandon (n.b. this won't happen when I come to write about this stuff in a more serious and scholarly register). well sorry you live in a country where two states have just imposed fascist 'emergency' sanctions which enable elected officials to be fired on a whim. please understand that a traditionally 'far-left' but overwhelmingly holistic, naturalistic and humanistic political ideology is rapidly gaining traction around the world, and that its manifestation will occur through popular consent and not violent revolution. it is not an idiocy to claim that the capitalist paradigm is showing more cracks by the year, and that the indefinite pursuit of increased revenues is unleashing a truly fucked set of values on the world's people, which they are increasingly choosing to reject.

so when the corporate powers of state unleash lots and lots of missiles, I have to set myself firmly against the action, because it is another regrettable example of intimidation and thus mediation of superiority. no set of humans are superior; we must work together, not have some of us dandle entire countries as playthings in order to leverage positive influence among an area which we've fucked up morally and physically almost beyond repair

friendly, slightly assholish reminder: if you don't engage with that and continue to insist that I'm a terrible person who will 'give leftists a bad name' all of my life (a bad name among whom?) then you really will be projecting. if you engage with it and still insist that I'm a terrible person, c'est la vie, we haven't synchronized our perspectives yet. it'll come.

Louis, I agree you've shown a lot more posting restraint the last couple of months, and I regret sniping at you. My apologies. I'll never be able to relate to your hyperbolic style, but it's my job to get over it, not yours.

Thanks, dude. There are some topics where I'm more liable to play the fool and ramp up the manic pixie quotient - completely baffling airstrikes by NATO are pretty high on that list

also can I gently suggest getting a good night's sleep will help this whole conversation, LJ...

i feel like generally speaking if being tired or drunk turns you into a raging asshole, you prob should know this & not post under such circumstances

anyway, this seems level headed and considered http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/03/at_the_end_of_last.php

feel like that article outlines a lot of the reasons why this is bad but god damn do i hate the alternative.

yeah I'm with that. On principles I think this is terrible and am against it, in the real world equation it's more of a tossup. Too early to begin following the money but I really can't figure out what US/EU interests are here beyond saving a little humanitarian face - unless they're rolling the dice to try and get a more amenable spigot-warden as Tracer said on the other thread.

this is all really pretty bizarre, out of all the barking mad dictators still in control i figured gaddafi would be the last one standing and the only one w/a grudging level of acceptance by the UN.

FASCISM is comin' back!

careful soto, round here we save humanitarian face with airstrikes!

life's a bitch

dont know why so many of you have opinions about this, seems a lot easier to sit back and form an opinion later after its clear whos right

The ironic thing is that Qaddafi is the ultimate "wrong," and yet he appears to be in the strongest position (from a maniacal despot standpoint, but still - he and Mugabe can hi-five).

Amazing how waiting/dithering/delaying/postponing the no-fly zone a mere week may have made all the difference between this being a good idea and a bad idea. History hurtling forward.

so when the corporate powers of state unleash lots and lots of missiles, I have to set myself firmly against the action, because it is another regrettable example of intimidation

I am terribly ambivalent about US military interventionism in all its forms (including Libya) - but responses such as this are just as useless as kneejerk western nationalism, and despite your claims otherwise, do amount to support for scum like Qaddafi because he is the opposition you support. I'll take my leftism in the "the only good fascist is a dead fascist" vein, thanks.

well sorry you live in a country where two states have just imposed fascist 'emergency' sanctions which enable elected officials to be fired on a whim.

shoulda been called delta dawn because awesome theme song already exists

xp

You can call him insensitive, unfair, passive-aggressive, wrong, or whatever, but you don't have to call him a terrible person. It's really not hard to stay on lj's good side because he genuinely wants to do the right thing. And I know "the road to hell is paved with good intentions," but lj is so harmless, even when he's supposedly being a dick, that I find it hard to believe that people take what he says personally.

^^^^

out of all the barking mad dictators still in control i figured gaddafi would be the last one standing

He kind of is, though, isn't he? Is there any world leader who has been around as long as him? It blows my mind that when he first became leader, the Beatles hadn't broken up yet.

Kinda amazing story (edited from Libya 17 Feb blog:

15 March:

20:03 BREAKING – Almanara Media confirms the following: Shooting and explosions have happened in Baab Al Aziziyah (a military barracks/compound with the Gaddafi family compund in Tripoli). A big fire has erupted inside Baab Al Aziziyah

16 March:

00:33 @ShababLibya tweet: The Pilot who flew his jet into Bab Azizia was the martyr Muhammad Mokhtar Osman from Benghazi. May God have mercy on your soul dear brother, your sacrifice has not gone in vain and we will continue with this till our country is free.

01:14 Almanara Media reports that two people of “importance” have been badly injured as a result of the fighter jet crash into Baab Al Aziziyah earlier and have been taken to Tripoli’s Burns and Reconstruction hospital.

23:16 Update: A trusted source has confirmed to us this story: The pilot who flew his plane into Baab Al Aziziyah took off as part of a 2 plane team with the mission of bombing strategic points in Al Guradibya base in Sirte. Their orders were to return immedietly after completing the mission. One pilot followed orders while the other flew to Tripoli where he emptied what he had left of ammunition on Baab Al Aziziyah and then crashed his plane into it.

21 March:

2:13 Almanara Media is confirming from trusted sources that Khamis Al Gaddafi has passed away on Sunday due to severe burn injuries he sustained a few days ago. The burns were caused when a fighter jet pilot performed a martyr mission and crashed his fighter jet into Gaddafi’s compound Baab Al Aziziyah.

The brigade commanded by Khamis Al Gaddafi was the spearpoint for pro-Gaddafi forces in the East, retaking Azzawiya and Zwara, and presently investing Musurata.

whoa

Er, that should be in the West rather than East.

3/16 Never Forget?

This is why you're give leftism a bad name, btw. An inability to assess situations on their own merits, rather than through a rigid ideology.

I am terribly ambivalent about US military interventionism in all its forms (including Libya) - but responses such as this are just as useless as kneejerk western nationalism, and despite your claims otherwise, do amount to support for scum like Qaddafi because he is the opposition you support. I'll take my leftism in the "the only good fascist is a dead fascist" vein, thanks.

I've assessed plenty of situations on their own merits, and I'm increasingly finding the need for a different paradigm of good actions vs bad actions. Good actions are no longer actions which militaristically depose unwanted state organs, even if the deposition is efficient and permanent. The very presence of an all-powerful interventionist military is in itself a bad action, because it perpetuates the elitist slide of resources, power and influence towards the few. Are they bombing Libya for the people? Organized campaigns of state bombing are never for the people. If the USA or the UK had an iota of compassion towards the people oppressed by Gaddafi, they'd have already used their vast wealth to organize free food, shelter and education for every Libyan. But they can't even do that for their own people, so why say it any other way than with bombs? Sure, the bombs may oust Gaddafi and sure, the people may get a more generous individual in charge. There will still be massive poverty problems and sentiments of hatred stirred by the military climate installed not only by Gaddafi but by the countries teaching Libya that international diplomacy is not a matter of engaging on a human level and helping the people, but a matter of killing humans and destroying buildings. So while of course there are nuances to this intervention and while the intentions might not be entirely greedy, the medium of the message is completely fucked. If you're so blind to it that you can't see any other way of conducting an improvement in Libya, then your version of leftism isn't the one I see growing and growing in every nation on this planet. You're stuck in a militaristic 20th century leftist paradigm; you need to realize that the different left factions need to pull together not as a movement but as a holistic way of life, supporting each other away from a crippling debt-based financial system which makes money for money's sake. It may be a cliche but we really need to concentrate on imagining the world without borders, and any military action taken upon any part of the world as a dagger to our own breast. A situation where I really do feel ambiguities, for instance, is a state-organized profit-making charitable aid initiative, for instance, or a crackdown upon religious extremism (which only ever comes from there being a corresponding extremism elsewhere). I need to read more about Buddhism and energy and stuff which a hard-nosed militaristic Western corporate capitalist paradigm doesn't think exists along with happiness, meaning or equality, but these are my current thoughts about the notion that the role of certain countries is to dominate over others with the force of arms. We need to get away from short-termist, goal-oriented analyses of success and realize that the bad action here is playing Gaddafi at his own adversarial game. I don't support his actions at all, btw; I support his individual humanity and deplore how he has abused it by seeking despotic power. But he is not the only oppressive element at play here. He's just oppressing a people who have to represent themselves in the world media. Youtube is a wonderful thing. The only good fascist, of course, is one who has discovered that their principles are not making them or their community happy or fulfilled; the abandonment of such principles will require a revolution of the mind, but killing people for their beliefs? You're the fascist. As I said before, to oppose rather than to show compassion is to mirror.

And these cheap attempts are what make you a terrible person. You're essentially a hypocrite when it comes to attacking the US vs. other states. Every American posting to ILX opposes what the far right is doing to our state.

I said that partially to explain why you might be so gung-ho at the moment (hell if I lived in either of those two states I'd be on the streets every day) and also to show you that Gaddafi is not the only person inflicting unspeakable things on his people; in fact, those bombing him are doing similar. Do you think a quarter of Libya's black male population are in jail? Does illegalization of drugs make any moral sense whatsoever or is it a clumsy means of population control? I make these points because while ILX's Americans rightfully despair at much of the shit occurring in their country, they don't all get so worked up when America takes it overseas and exercises its responsibility. The UK and in fact every developed country is perpetuating horrible, horrible things upon the world (ever read the UK politics thread?). America is just where most of the big corporations and the debt happen to be, so it's got a lot of my attention. I don't think that's unfair. In order to make the world an equal place, America has a lot to front up to, and a lot to give. Nothing personal against you as a citizen of the world but you rather jumped on Washington's dick there for a second.

make these points because while ILX's Americans rightfully despair at much of the shit occurring in their country, they don't all get so worked up when America takes it overseas and exercises its responsibility.

what????

louis you are now officially talking out of your ass with this

I must have imagined all those demonstrations I was at.

"the protest i was at yesterday did not exist"

should have put 'responsibility' in scare quotes, or not because scare quotes are rubbish

what I'm saying is that it's easy to complain about the latest hot domestic issue of the day, but harder to complain about ongoing evils perpetuated by the state organ of the country in which one lives, especially when they exist in a hazy, shady routine of just-so acceptance

sleeve, I'm saying that there is some opposition, but it's on a case-by-case basis, and a lot of stuff is overlooked! plus, clearly some people do regularly oppose Western interventionism

what I'm saying is that it's easy to complain about the latest hot domestic issue of the day, but harder to complain about ongoing evils perpetuated by the state organ of the country in which one lives, especially when they exist in a hazy, shady routine of just-so acceptance

the thing is, the stereotype of the American left is that the opposite is true. Like back in the 90s, we joked about how everyone wanted to Free Tibet, but nobody really gave a shit about the fucked up domestic situation.

louis you are now officially talking out of your ass with this

― HOOStory is back. Fasten your steenbelts. (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Monday, March 21, 2011 1:52 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

for context, this is coming from someone who once bombed shopping malls in his free time

granted i kind of gave up on louis' post, but the solution to the libyan problem is for the us & the uk to buy everyone a house & set up schools for them to get a good education?

Hoos bombed a shopping mall???

Why isn't he in federal prison

louis is kind of a big new age hippie huh

really not trying to be a dick, but that post is utterly insane

harder to complain about ongoing evils perpetuated by the state organ of the country in which one lives, especially when they exist in a hazy, shady routine of just-so acceptance

it is actually not harder to complain. you might be marginalized by doing so in the media, because that's the nature of the discourse in this country, but it's just as easy to speak out, and among vast swathes of the american populace in different kinds of language it happens often

that seems to be the core of your beef with the american left such as it is, and it's flat out wrong.

i guess insane is the wrong word, but something like that

lj it's more like the opposition is just straight up ignored but we do it anyway because what the hell else can you do except die or go to jail.

seriously dude I am probably fairly close to you in terms of analysis but you are still looking around for institutions to point fingers at, when imo the real problem (to paraphrase Octavia Butler) is that we as a species have been cursed with both intelligence and hardwired hierarchical behavior.

anyway, props to the suicide fighter pilot.

but we're not talking about libya. let's talk about libya.

can we not use the phrase "state organ" cuz i want to stop thinking about the US with a dangling penis

florida imo

it has one, it's called 'florida'

xp dammit

haha NICE JOB BRINGING THE TOPIC BACK TO LIBYA HOOS

texas is this country's balls amirite

HOOS, I don't have beef with the American left; I know it exists and that it does a hell of a lot of good work! I know my Jacque Fresco from my David Korten etc etc etc and that you, sleeve and many others on ILX stand up to this shit. But there are also plenty of people who only take it halfway. Anyway, this is all distracting from my main point, which is that armed coercion is evil.

Hardwired hierarchical behavior? That's being evolved out of us as I type.

yeah get back to me on that in a decade or so

my main point, which is that armed coercion is evil.

that's succinct, at least, though I disagree.

"I make these points because while ILX's Americans rightfully despair at much of the shit occurring in their country, they don't all get so worked up when America takes it overseas and exercises its responsibility"

^^^gonna concede that this was muddled - but the rest I stand by

as ever, ILX pounces on the one muddled line and ignores the rest

youtube is p wonderful, i agree

fwiw i thought this line was pretty muddled too

If the USA or the UK had an iota of compassion towards the people oppressed by Gaddafi, they'd have already used their vast wealth to organize free food, shelter and education for every Libyan.

right, because everyone in the USA is adequately educated, housed and fed!

read the very next sentence sarahel

But they can't even do that for their own people, so why say it any other way than with bombs?

not that that, uh, clears anything up

as ever, ILX pounces on the one muddled line and ignores the rest

― WD-40 (acoleuthic), Monday, March 21, 2011 6:37 AM (36 seconds ago) Bookmark

ideas

-some people are ignoring the rest because they think it is absurd and aren't going to bother arguing with someone they see as so far off the deep end

-some people are ignoring the rest because they agree with you and are only focusing on the portion that seems to form a large part of the point you were making before you decided to dissemble it into 'military force is bad'

i have work in the morning. i'm going to bed. good night all.

anyway louis it should be obvious to you or to anyone that pays attention to world affairs that "buy everyone in the middle east a reasonable house and provide them with good schooling" and "bomb the shit out of them for no reason" is not an either/or binary -- in iraq we've failed for many, many reasons but you could probably boil it down succinctly to the fact that we've operated too far towards the latter pole

ok, let me break this down

- I made the point that America conjures institutionally oppressive and ongoing situations both domestically and overseas. These are not flashpoints so much as a status quo.

- I then made the point that while many people, not all present but many people, are up in arms about individual policies or moments of intervention, they are not so quick to rail against the system and its ongoing ills, especially when they form the fabric of capitalist logic.

- Military force is only useful for repelling other military force; it is a self-creating paradigm with dreadful human collateral and it is the world fucking itself over.

this is necessarily polarized but it's the principle, dammit

yes but the problem is that principles very rarely equal solutions

- I then made the point that while many people, not all present but many people, are up in arms about individual policies or moments of intervention, they are not so quick to rail against the system and its ongoing ills, especially when they form the fabric of capitalist logic.

lots of people I know rail against the system and its ongoing ills vis a vis the "fabric of capitalist logic" - and they often use it as an excuse to avoid dealing with difficult issues and decisions about individual policies and moments of intervention.

they are not so quick to rail against the system and its ongoing ills, especially when they form the fabric of capitalist logic.

this is also kind of 'hi, welcome to activism, nice to have you'

lol!

the fabric of capitalist logic i inhale it

does it smell fresh?

the idea that this is an easy way to a fast buck or a poll boost is idiotic

I may be idiotic but I didn't say it was an easy way. I don't think this is the reason Sarko's doing it, but he's a politician facing electoral defeats, it's not like it won't have crossed his mind.

That and wanting to make up for being totally on the wrong side of everything with the Tunisia uprising

(and with, like, Tunisia in general for the last 100 years)

I think I continue to miss whether this operation has a stated goal aside from the vague "no-fly zone." Is the idea that by taking out Qaddafi's heavy weapons and planes that the rebels can then regroup and conceivably take out Qaddafi themselves (even though we/the UN has explicitly stated that taking out Qaddafi is not the goal)? What do we want to the rebels to gain, survival or victory?

xpost to Notinmyname, I wasn't trying to insult anyone itt or pretend that cynical motives aren't part of the whole mix. My posts come from cutting between ILX and some of the more aggravating nonsense on Guardian comment threads. I'm not in the business of calling anyone on ILX idiotic, especially not in such a complicated situation.

I think I continue to miss whether this operation has a stated goal aside from the vague "no-fly zone." Is the idea that by taking out Qaddafi's heavy weapons and planes that the rebels can then regroup and conceivably take out Qaddafi themselves (even though we/the UN has explicitly stated that taking out Qaddafi is not the goal)? What do we want to the rebels to gain, survival or victory?

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, March 21, 2011 12:57 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

i agree there is too much vagueness, and the TPM blogpost j0rdan linked to had things i agreed with too, on the question of momentum. the turnaround in US opinion hasn't been adequately been explained. meanwhile, the attacks seem to be exceeding what was mandated. there's a lot to worry about.

on the french thing: genuine question: is the french public in favour of doing this, to the extent it would help sarko in the election? i thought the french were generally solidly against war.

Can we start this thread again with all the Louis/ History Mayne shite taken out?

An American general on the news last night (it was unclear if he was was retired or not) was very frank that this was about removing Gaddafi, and that the military operations have already gone far beyond establishing a no-fly zone i.e. missile strikes have been hitting convoys, tanks, etc. And he said the "rhetoric" of the Arab League that "we cannot stand idly by" when a leader targets his own people was obviously laughable since that is what half of them are currently doing, i.e. the AL sees this as a way to get rid of a loose cannon that none of them like. How this squares with yesterday's statements from the AL to the effect of "whoa, whoa, we thought we were supporting a no-fly zone, not a full-scale NATO assault" I don't know.

... not specifically what Louis/HM posted themselves (xp)

Basically it seems like the idea is to reduce Gaddafi's heavy weapons just to the point where the rebels can win "by themselves".

i thought the french were generally solidly against war.

What, in general? Haven't seen any polls in the UK about this intervention, but getting the distinct impression the GBP are not thrilled about it.

I think the french are in favour of not having lots of brown people turning up on the south coast claiming asylum and a family in Clichy-sous-Bois.

:(

lol oh yeah

See also: Sarkozy having to fight an election against Marine Le Penn next year.

the lack of clarity among the brits is already apparent... meanwhile, has her majesty's opposition ventured an opinion?

i mean sure we need a six month policy review before really taking sides but -- a preliminary view perhaps?

For the intervention but reserving the right to carp impotently (xp)

Lol I've managed to not realise this was happening until now. Kudos to all involved.

Official: U.K. Subs Fired at Tripoli Compound

But will they give back their performance fees?

How this squares with yesterday's statements from the AL to the effect of "whoa, whoa, we thought we were supporting a no-fly zone, not a full-scale NATO assault" I don't know.

Just covering their asses. Hard to believe many Arab leaders give much of a shit about Libya being bombed to pieces. It's not like they're thinking, "Oh no, Bahrain is next," since it very obviously isn't.

An American general on the news last night (it was unclear if he was was retired or not) was very frank that this was about removing Gaddafi

"It is not or mission to kill Qaddafi. Cut off his money, food and weapons, yes. Destroy his army, that too. Blind him and cripple him, OK. Give his enemies better weapons and directions to his bunker, maybe. But kill him? No."

Recommend watching your back there, Dmitry

part of this is the_west giving a fuck when it ain't its turn

whose turn is it? Just Qaddaffi with money from Russia, China and others? Or others (the weak Arab league or coalition of African nations)?

when is it the_west's turn?

i think we weve properly reassembled our paradigm to include buddhism and energy and stuff

^ hilarious post

funny US politics note to all this:

Obama changing his mind is attrib'd to Sec. Clinton, Amb. Rice, NSCer Samantha Power

Power called Hillary a "monster" (actually didn't, but...) in 08, got fired.

well, people here think it's interesting

and they're all ladies! imagine that. ladies!

not joking/combatitive (mostly cuz i dont know where i stand on this frankly) wondering what ilx poster 'aerosmith' thinks of all this

Freddie deBoer, over the last couple days:

I believe in the importance of internal resistance movements. I believe in them precisely as long as they remain internal, because I understand, as so many seem not to, that it is a blatant and ridiculous contradiction in terms to enforce democracy by foreign military aggression. You cannot enforce democracy from without. Self-determination is the non-negotiable precondition for democracy. After we have installed our Vichy democracies, they tend to operate as you would assume such governments would. You only have to ask the minority parties of Iraq, which have reported again and again that they are excluded, marginalized, and oppressed, up to and including the disappearance of protesters.

I believe in resistance, but that doesn't mean I believe in good outcomes coming from all resistance. And this is the fundamental error, among so many, of the supporters of Libyan revolution, or of the supposed "pan-Arab" uprising: they look to this incredibly complex phenomenon, made up of a shifting multitude of actors and interests, supported by foreign powers both near and far, which proceeds in fits and starts towards whatever goal the aggregate of its parts supports at the moment... and they pronounce it good. With their child's view of the world, with their infantile Manicheanism, they feel that the must sort all actors at all times into the piles of good and bad. With their American arrogance, they believe that they actually possess the wisdom and knowledge capable of performing such a feat. With their imperial hubris, they believe that this knowledge gives them the right to impose their judgments with force and by fiat, and they will do so even while they know that doing so will kill innocent people. That's the condition of the contemporary American.

...

What disturbs me so much about those who are arguing the side of the Libyan revolution and against the side of Qaddafi is that they think that this is sufficient to justify engaging in war. That democracy insists that their opinion on the question is irrelevant to whether to go to war, or that even if we knew for a fact what was right and wrong we'd have no right to invade, seems not even to compute, not for a moment. Of course, I prefer the revolution to Qaddafi. I don't mistake my ill-informed (as any must be) preference with real knowledge; I don't mistake the value of my opinion for the value of a Libyan's; I don't pretend that my Western bleeding-heart morals have any right dictating who lives and dies thousands of miles from our borders; I don't imagine that every Libyan who is revolting has inside them some mini-American, waiting to burst forth and adopt perfectly American values. Support for democracy that is dependent on our agreement with the outcome of democracy is a sham.

i agree with the sentiments well enough, but i guess i haven't made up my mind about all this yet (max otm)

first protester with a KEEP YOUR ROSY FINGERS OFF LIBYA! sign gets a cookie from me

I believe in the importance of internal resistance movements. I believe in them precisely as long as they remain internal, because I understand, as so many seem not to, that it is a blatant and ridiculous contradiction in terms to enforce democracy by foreign military aggression.

And as we discussed on the other thread I guess people with views like this do not recognize the legitimacy of the American revolution because the French helped.

That wasn't aggression, that was France bringing its unique capabilities to bear.

or any e. european gov't after '89, yeah...

i realize that the above article does not represent all objections to or qualms with the situation, but i still think it is ridiculous to paint united nations intervention to prevent the illegal massacre of civilians by a united nations member as some kind of ghastly violation of the enlightened precepts of moral relativism because WHO ARE WE TO SAY???? weirdly this is possibly the only position actually more infantile than manicheanism.

We certainly don't recognise its legitimacy over here (xxxp)

it's true that foreign intervention perverts and damages revolutions. that's why egypt was so cool. if only everything were a best-case scenario.

and they're all ladies! imagine that. ladies!

― goole, Monday, 21 March 2011 16:13 (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

<3 u goole

the LeCarre fan in me rears its head and wonders if the military part of the opposition to Gaddafi weren't the result of plans laid years ago by the_west in tandem with various obstinate tribes and incubated for this moment to strike. This assigns a degree of competency and long-range planning to the CIA and Special Forces which I doubt has ever existed but if such plans DID get made (a "sleeper revolution") what better time than the present to have pressed the Play button?

it's true that foreign intervention perverts and damages revolutions. that's why egypt was so cool. if only everything were a best-case scenario.

I read that sentence 4 times before I realized you weren't talking about "foreign intervention perverts"... Like, hmm...does he mean the US? or the French? who are the perverts in this scenario...

well obviously the french.

though i'd keep my eye on belgium.

my money is on the French, definitely

difficult listening hour (who r u btw?? enjoyed your posts lately and i'm always like 6wks behind on the rename game):

yeah all that falls down somewhat because i think it's really pretty easy to consider QDF as being uniquely, totally horrible! like, how bad would a 'resistance movement' have to be to be worse than him? this is something that can be accurately judged from outside, relatively.

the principle of non-intervention hinges on something else than what deboer describes, in this case. practicality? like, i think the operation has a slim chance of doing anything good.

also, when was the last time a popular resistance movement turned out to be significantly worse for a nation and neighbors than the status quo ante? iran 79?

Attributing any kind of forethought to 'Special Forces' is kind of a basic misunderstanding of their role, IMO. They take orders for involvement from other parts of the government, they don't go starting revolutions on their own.

iran 79?

Significantly worse than the Shah? Are you sure about that?

I'm perhaps alone in thinking UNSCR 1973 might strike just the right ethical balance, so long as its limited to no-fly + halt armor advancing on rebel cities.

The stories out of Az-Zawiya, Zuara, and Ajdabiya of mass reprisals against civilians are pretty ugly, if true. If, at limited human cost the rest of the world can prevent similar atrocities at the larger towns of Misrata and Benghazi it was a correct decision. But it ends there. Let Libya separate into Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, if need be. Libya was an invention of Italian colonialism, just as Iraq an invention of the Treaty of Versailles.

I don't see any on reason on balance why the rest of the world should support a rebel advance on Tripoli, and the political difficulty is now whether we'll resist an instinct to bring the civil war to a speedy conclusion.

it depends on what you mean by "status quo" - the united states has sort of made a specialty of eliminating progressive resistance movements in favor of extremist resistance movements, which it can then point to as extremists who need to be crushed (i.e. Viet Cong in Vietnam; Tudeh in Iran); not sure what the most recent example of this is (Hamas?) but they must be legion

milo good point (guess i was thinkin about planning AND execution but you're right, they don't merit a mention in my fantasy scnario of ultra-clever regime change plan-makin)

part of this is the_west giving a fuck when it ain't its turn

― BIG GERTRUDE aka the steindriver (history mayne), Monday, March 21, 2011 3:32 PM (58 minutes ago)

Hold on - quite apart from any butchering, a fairly likely consequence of doing nothing would be hundreds of thousands of Libyan refugees coming to Europe. That's a pretty clear interest in the outcome. In fact, refugee and asylum and human rights protection doesn't make huge sense as a coherent, sustainable system without the will/ability to tackle such things at source. Otherwise it's a bit like having an obligation to clean up after your messy flatmate, while prohibiting you from calling him on it.

Hundred of thousands of anti-Gadaffi refugees vs. hundred of thousands of pro-Gadaffi refugees, perhaps?

xp to goole: yeah, i mean, all the "wait how are we going to do this? what's the plan? what happens if he falls? what happens if he doesn't? who's going in? with what? for how long?" questions are totally legitimate and troubling, especially since this happened so fast (and yet not fast enough). but i don't have a lot of patience for "nobody is ever allowed to touch anything outside their borders no matter what because how could they know anything about anything".

you'd need to know more about iran than i to make the call re: the shah. pretty sure though that it was clear before he fell that khomeini et al had thoroughly hijacked the country's opposition, which was not all that hard to do because the shah was so completely and nakedly a western puppet and so the revolution had plenty of inherent anti-western feeling that could be coupled neatly to fundamentalist islam. that's not the case here (though we don't know exactly what the case is here).

i am ready to oppose significant deployment of american troops to libya because i don't think they could do much except get trapped in there forever. this isn't going to happen under the current resolution, but i doubt obama would bother with congressional authorization if he wanted to do it, which is A Problem but apparently just how things work these days. in the meantime, as someone who'd been worrying about the impending massacre for weeks before the intervention, i am cautiously OK with cruise missiles and bombers, and very happy gaddafi's advance was stopped.

(i am new so you are not failing at the rename game. this is me.)

eah all that falls down somewhat because i think it's really pretty easy to consider QDF as being uniquely, totally horrible! like, how bad would a 'resistance movement' have to be to be worse than him? this is something that can be accurately judged from outside, relatively.

One of the most fruitless tasks is assessing horribleness. If we agree that Stalin and Hitler were uniquely monstrous, and other bad guys are in second or third tiers, where would you stick'em? We can agree Saddam and Pol Pot are worse than Fidel and Tito, but what about Trujillo, Mubarek, Qaddafi? What about Allende? By what standard is Bahrain's autocracy "better" than Qaddafi's regime? It's frustrating.

useful rubric: "is he bad enough to kill basically everyone in this city by wednesday y/n"

I haven't been reading al-Jazeera the last couple of weeks, but what was the perception on the streets about Mubarek's American ties – a puppet with his own brains?

One of the most fruitless tasks is assessing horribleness. If we agree that Stalin and Hitler were uniquely monstrous, and other bad guys are in second or third tiers, where would you stick'em? We can agree Saddam and Pol Pot are worse than Fidel and Tito, but what about Trujillo, Mubarek, Qaddafi? What about Allende? By what standard is Bahrain's autocracy "better" than Qaddafi's regime? It's frustrating.

― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 21, 2011 4:52 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

cant say im really a fan of turning this into some greatest-of-all-time list like we're SI ranking Jordan's competition in the all-time greats list

that's partly my point

xxp -- obv there's a certain amount of that, which is one of the reasons the u.s. admin was so comically dithering re: the revolution. ultimately i think they played it decently. not sure what the kids think at the moment.

(also: the problem of post-WWII U.S. foreign policy)

alfred:

it's a double calculus (or triple maybe): how horrible is the dude x what can we do about it really x what are the costs of doing it (or not)

sorry that's kind of obvious :/

it's a double calculus (or triple maybe): how horrible is the dude x what can we do about it really x what are the costs of doing it (or not)

...on which no one will agree. We should start our own think tank.

The ILXor Institute: We Didn't Realize You Were All Gonna Be Such Dicks About This

lol

while we're on a theoretical level, can i say that i don't really think the idea of cutting up countries is a good one? the fact that said boundaries were drawn a few generations ago by assholes doesn't seem all that salient in the here-and-now. separatism is a very weak substitute for rights-based treatment of minorities, and creates weak and dependent states in the process. maybe in cases like east timor that 'very weak substitute' was the only one on offer, not too familiar with that situation. kosovo is kind of a shithole.

i live in a country whose lines were drawn for all kinds of ass-backward reasons, AND fought a civil war to keep parts from going their own way, so, i dunno, no thanks. this goes for your catalunyas and your occitanias too. i don't really get the point of it, just looks like the return of shitty ethno-something-ism. i could be convinced tho.

the poor Kurds.

There's an awful lol in Margaret McMillan's Paris 1919 when Wilson, despairing, turns to Lloyd George after studying a map of Europe and says, "Please remind me: are we creating North or South Silesia?"

if this thread is anything like your average room then three-quarters of the people in it hate christopher hitchens, but this (pre-intervention) line is i think worth considering:

Libya is a country with barely 6 million inhabitants. By any computation, however cold and actuarial, the regime of its present dictator cannot possibly last very much longer. As a matter of pure realism, the post-Qaddafi epoch is upon us whether we choose to welcome the fact or not. The immediate task is therefore to limit the amount of damage Qaddafi can do and sharply minimize the number of people he can murder.

remember when this was going around?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articlePictures/The%20Project%20for%20the%20New%20Middle%20East.jpg

lol i had to gis long and hard to find a website that was not alex jones-y

i can't remember/find what the origin of it was either

Baghdad (city-state)

oh the lols

Islamic Sacred State vs Free Baluchistan

"west bank - status undetermined"

just a couple of i's to dot and t's to cross then

Self-determination is the non-negotiable precondition for democracy

This is one of those statements that looks great on paper until you actually apply it to the situation in hand.

the let's-just-call-this-part-here-iraq decision after ww1 really was a disaster, though, and as Imperialist as anything gets. but yeah not sure what you're supposed to do about it now. "baghdad (city-state)" isn't it.

http://www.dailyhistory.net/images/big-4-versailles-george-orlando-clemenceau-wilson.jpg

love these bros

One unique aspect to this whole shebang: perhaps the first middle east conflict, en masse, where the "blame the Jews/Israel" crew are for once out a boogeyman. Was shocked when a recent New Yorker began with an editorial about the state of Israel/Palestine, and I was all like, people still care about that? (I mean, I know they do, but that particular perennial disaster has been relegated to the b-list for the time being.)

Lost to history: what the hell Orlando's saying that's so amusing.

Clearly they are discussing the previous day's acquisition of what they used to call "hot tail."

what they used to call "hot tail."

http://go.hrw.com/venus_images/0909MC20.gif

I thought Italy was the "hot tail."

robert gates sez the US will retreat to a secondary role within a few days. other people will take up the slack. no idea if he means someone who isn't britain or france. hope so!

idk, if i were in the libyan military, id be at a 'fuck this' crossroads right now. but im not, im some message board guy. wonder what they'd post.

free baluchistan comes from this article:

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899/

"In a June 2006 article titled "Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look", Peters conducted a thought experiment by changing the borders in the Middle East: "In each case, this hypothetical redrawing of boundaries reflects ethnic affinities and religious communalism—but iran have a perfect blood border-in some cases, both."[16]

He has drawn strong criticism for his maps in the countries involved, who viewed these as a direct attack on the integrity of their borders and usually attributed the maps to US Military and US Intelligence services and government, and their future plans for the region, rather than the retired Lieutenant Colonel.[citation needed]

In a February 2008 column, Peters called for giving the majority-Serb enclave in northern Kosovo to Serbia, calling it a "cancerous issue" that "just promises further conflict down the road - like forcing an ex-husband and -wife to share an apartment after a savage divorce." In the same column, he also called for a division by ethnicity of Pakistan, writing that "Islam has not been enough to unite Sindhis and Punjabis, Baluchis and Pashtuns."[17]

Regarding Iraq, he wrote, "might it not have been wiser - as several of us suggested in 2003 - to shake off Europe's vicious legacies and give Kurds their state, Iraqi Shias their state, and the country's Sunni Arabs a rump Iraq to do with as they wished?" Regarding all these countries, he wrote, "We needn't launch an endless war to fix the mess Europeans in pinstriped trousers left us - but we'd damned well better accept that, when we expend blood and treasure to prop up phony states, we're standing on the tracks in front of the speeding train of history."[18]

In a column for Armchair General Magazine, he wrote in support for regime change in Syria, Iran and Pakistan:

Syria's determination to develop nuclear weapons apes Iran's and North Korea's nuke programs, as well as Pakistan's successful bid to join the club of nuclear powers. ... Given a choice between taking out Osama Bin Laden and his entire leadership network and eliminating renegade nuclear engineers, the latter option might do far more for our long-term security.[19]"

wonder what they'd post.

― BIG GERTRUDE aka the steindriver (history mayne), Monday, March 21, 2011 1:35 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"pls ban me from ilx for the next few weeks, i have a big project"

lol

on a srs tip, maybe the libyan military are not at a 'fuck this' xroads because what happens to them post-qaddafi is really bad.

can we just combine Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, into something appropriately Wilsonian like "Arabic North Africa"?

xp: Libyan military saying "fuck it".

The ones who sided with the rebels in the East were already in this state. After Gaddafi detained/kidnapped the families of their officers in Tripoli they just sat in their barracks while the kids from Benghazi got shot up.

maybe the libyan military are not at a 'fuck this' xroads because what happens to them post-qaddafi is really bad.

― goole, Monday, March 21, 2011 5:46 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is another big worry, yeah. ugh.

the big problem with the free baluchistan map is how lame the country names are

at first I thought it said "Belugastan" and I thought ew caviar fuck them

to fix the mess Europeans in pinstriped trousers left us

goddam it I KNOW, so SICK of this

can we just combine Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, into something appropriately Wilsonian like "Arabic North Africa"?

― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 21, 2011 5:46 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

p sure this was what a bunch of people in those countries wanted [via pan-arabism]

Trump crowing about "screwing" Qadafi out of a bunch of money is disgusting fwiw

Unconfirmed: Qaddafi's son dead in suicide attack.

Love Clemeanceau's mopey mien:

http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/image/PagesAnnexes/Annee_1918/820_GerorgesClemenceau2.jpg

DIABEETUS

this whole no fly zone is a very jed bartlett move

wouldve been a good 6-episode arc

I think the West should not have got involved in Libya, because then we could have complained about how they were propping up crazy dictators.

While it seems highly sensible to recreate the middle east as a larger set of smaller nations, of more equal size and more consistent ethnic makeup, I've got a hunch that it could rather easily lead to a lot of border skirmishes between the new ethnically-assembled nations and the older border-shrunken nations, sometimes turning into hot wars, similar to what we saw when the former USSR broke into pieces. In the former SSRs, this didn't matter so much. In the heart of Oildom, this is still nagl.

goole killin it itt

A lot of those claimed ethnic make-ups are nonsense anyway, and it mixes up religion and ethnicity. I don't see any particular reason why Shia muslims in what is now Bahrain would like to be in the same country as coreligionists in Iraq that they have never really had anything to do with. The map also ignores how intermingled a lot of these people are (though the article it comes from does not - the crazy man who wrote it was upfront about how he thought ethnic cleansing was a great idea) and it ignores all the little groups like Christian Arabs (or various stripes) and Armenians who live in a lot of different countries as small minorities.

Evidently Turkey finally relented:

AFP French foreign minister Alain Juppe has said that NATO is ready to support the coalition intervening in Libya “within a few days”.

A lot of those claimed ethnic make-ups are nonsense anyway, and it mixes up religion and ethnicity. I don't see any particular reason why Shia muslims in what is now Bahrain would like to be in the same country as coreligionists in Iraq that they have never really had anything to do with. The map also ignores how intermingled a lot of these people are (though the article it comes from does not - the crazy man who wrote it was upfront about how he thought ethnic cleansing was a great idea) and it ignores all the little groups like Christian Arabs (or various stripes) and Armenians who live in a lot of different countries as small minorities.

― The New Dirty Vicar, Monday, March 21, 2011 6:05 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

i... agree. long story short. when people say libya or iraq are fake countries, you know, i get it, but so is belgium if you want to look at it that way.

In a column for Armchair General Magazine

heh

fakest country of all is the u.s. in that regard, if we want to take it all the way

*strokes beard*

fakest country of all is the u.s. in that regard, if we want to take it all the way

More champagne!

can we just combine Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, into something appropriately Wilsonian like

I read this as Wisconsin-like.

http://content7.flixster.com/photo/11/97/40/11974065_gal.jpg

http://i54.tinypic.com/nl5vv5.gif

f u washburn county, f u very much

http://www.newdeal20.org/2011/03/21/intervention-in-libya-neo-cons-1-civilized-world-0-39224/

^^^ i think i'm starting to work out a position on this whole thing because this really pissed me off

like the defense budget was ever going to be cut

At least this particular argument pissed me off--elsewhere I've been reminded this was not done as candidate Obama promised something like it would be done, that no compelling case has been made for it to occur, that no endgame has been elucidated...so max otm is what i'm saying

i'm basically holding out for the fantasy scenario of the_west's material self-interest coinciding with a humanitarian success :D

plus a pony

so no one cares that this is unconstitutional, i guess

lol are you serious

Given the visceral hatred of the CinC by some on the other side of the aisle, I await their challenge to the Court. Precedent suggests the Consitution is just another political tool, and the Right knows they will have to abide by a strict interpretation, too.

I heard on NPR an hour ago that Obama had "informed" Congressional leaders, which I suppose meets the requirements of the War Powers Act (which probably needs a constitutional challenge or two). I'm not crazy about what's going on constitutionally either.

i'm sure this is covered somewhere else itt but how did enforcement of a no fly zone become the degrading of Gadaffi's military capability?

um that's kind of what a no-fly zone is?

I marvel at some of the objections raised against the UN actions here, alternately sad and laughable

Think of planes and tanks as the terminal twigs of a command and control branching tree. Prune severely.

i'm sure this is covered somewhere else itt but how did enforcement of a no fly zone become the degrading of Gadaffi's military capability?

― utterfilth (whatever), Monday, March 21, 2011 6:12 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

he can't use planes to bomb the shit out of his own people--any other questions?

enforcing a no fly zone

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/21/congress_war_powers_the_president/index.html

shoulda said shoot the shit out of his planes, sorry

lol'ing at the insinuation that congress would somehow do the right thing here (and in a timely fashion too)

Nah, I'm pretty sure Congress would have given him the authority, even if it is Barack Hussein Obama -- they're chickenshits when it comes to this.

The real question: would Obama have defined "this" as a war?

eh, semantics. more useful to think about what the goals are and how best to achieve them.

uh waht

presidents haven't asked Congress for shit regarding the military since Vietnam, a little lat to go putting the rabbit back in the hat, it just isn't going to happen. whether or Obama would define this as a "war" or not is mostly irrelevant. the real question at hand is how far does our moral responsibility to the Libyan opposition extend, and what does meeting that obligation entail.

I'm sure glad we got all this sorted out during the last administration.

Sorry, but that question also requires us to ask whether we have any obligation at all to the Libyan opposition, whatever it is. I'm pretty sure you'd be more uncomfortable if it was Dubya as president.

I'm pretty sure you'd be more uncomfortable if it was Dubya as president.

ugh

think you have an obligation to the UN. or not! idk. odd debate not happening here between antis who say it's all in america's self-interest and antis who say it's not in the national interest at all.

i would be more uncomfortable if george w. bush was president, yes

because george w. bush was a shitty, incompetent president

Had to say it! I'm receptive to the administration's argument that abandoning a "pro-reform" movement would send crippling shockwaves across the region; but that's where my certainty ends. I'm just shocked that some of ILX's leading liberals are suddenly indifferent to the reach of a president's war powers.

also Gates > Rumsfeld

because george w. bush was a shitty, incompetent president

What a comfort!

my feeling is that a u.s. president has zero 'responsibility' or 'obligation' to intervene in a civil war on the other side of the world, as opposed to, say, swearing an oath to adhere to the constitution.

radical, i know

seems like ppl may think it's all cool until there are troops on the ground

It's also possible that the tension between HRC's hawkishness here and Gates' natural caution eventually produces a mission with real outlines.

Sorry, but that question also requires us to ask whether we have any obligation at all to the Libyan opposition, whatever it is.

This is a perfectly legitimate question, and one I'm largely ambivalent about. On the one hand Kaddawfy seems pretty bad, and I don't like the prospect of him massacring his own people from a humanitarian perspective. And unlike other, much messier ethnic conflicts and civil wars, it seems pretty clear-cut from the recent sequence of events who the agressor is. On the other hand, should we be the world's cops? well we are in many ways, whether I like it or not. But the options here either seemed to be 1) the US acts unilaterally to intervene, possibly with disastrous consequences. I was against this. 2) We intervene in collaboration with other allies and regional powers to present as much of a unified front as possible and share the burden/responsibility of either significantly shortening or resolving this conflict. This is what happened, and while I'm very apprehensive about the outcome, this seems like the best option to me. 3) We do nothing, Kaddafeee butchers the opposition, continues to rule with an iron fist, now even more angry and paranoid than before. This is not really acceptable to me on a moral level.

I'm pretty sure you'd be more uncomfortable if it was Dubya as president.

you insult me.

i mean i dont know what to say, alfred! i am more uncomfortable with a terrible president and his incompetent DoD running a military intervention

I'm glad you're that convinced of Obama's superiority to Bush.

I sure as hell am

(but, yeah, Obama's appropriation of much of Bush's foreign policy guidelines are for now irrelevant -- don't wanna derail thread)

btw, Shakes, I vastly prefer your spelling of Q's name.

Also: your framing of the argument is the most concise I've seen to date. Dubya line officially retracted.

The Corner breaks it down for us: "Obama’s pusillanimity has been hugely magnified by the contrast with the women directing his foreign policy and the fact that they nagged him to attack Libya until he gave in."

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/262607/they-know-who-wears-pants-country-mark-krikorian

lol these guys

my feeling is that a u.s. president has zero 'responsibility' or 'obligation' to intervene in a civil war on the other side of the world, as opposed to, say, swearing an oath to adhere to the constitution.

I'm as wary of the US flexing its muscles overseas as anyone, but hardline isolationism is difficult for me to swallow.

"Zero responsibility" is basically Ron Paul's argument, isn't it?

x-post: it is for me too, but i'm in favor of overseas interventions being carried out legally with congressional authorization, not whenever a president decides it's a good idea.

I'm on board with the War Powers Resolution being unconstitutional and all, but it's still on the books so...

The Corner has been schizophrenic the last few days; these events have really confused them. Andy "Let's rape Moslems with a rolled-up copy of the U.S. Constitution" McCarthy opposes this while a couple of others wonder why Obama's been such a pussy.

please alfred, the word is "pusillanimous".

does it not matter to you that waiting for congress' rubber stamp would have been too late anyway JD

so glad you think taking the time to thoroughly resolve legal arguments that have been rather unambiguously ignored for 50+ years is more important than stopping people half the world away from dying. Supreme Court's docket is totally open this year I think, let's prep some briefs! 5 years later: we have a ruling! Too bad everybody is dead in Libya by then.
xp

btw the "three female advisors" story is 'overstated':

As has been reported, the crucial decisions were made at a pair of meetings Tuesday, which an Administration official said were far from the showdowns depicted in some accounts. Power, for instance, was present at a 4:10 p.m. meeting but didn't speak, an official said; Clinton, overseas, wasn't patched in to that meeting. Obama, told a no-fly zone wouldn't be enough to stop Qadhafi, sent Donilon to draw up other political and military options in the Situation Room, the official said; Donilon brought his notes to a 9:00 p.m. principals' meeting, at which the course was set.

"Everyone started with a healthy degree of skepticism," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said. "But everyone moved toward the final decision based on the president's urging, but also because of what was happening on the ground, with Qadhafi moving toward Bengazi and [saying] he would show no mercy."

This isn't to say that a version of the narrative isn't true: Some of the prominent women on the foreign policy team, notably -- an official said -- Rice, did push hard for intervention, and did speak in key meetings. But the notion of an internal battle fought and won, or a shift in the poles of internal politics or Obama's evolving doctrine, seems to overstate the point.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0311/Boys_against_girls_over_Libya.html

Politico, don't ever change.

haha i only bring it up here because NRO is citing it in typical classy fashion

we should poll spelling variations of the leader of libya's name

i think i've seen at least 20

xhotaphi

I heard on NPR an hour ago that Obama had "informed" Congressional leaders, which I suppose meets the requirements of the War Powers Act (which probably needs a constitutional challenge or two). I'm not crazy about what's going on constitutionally either.

― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 21, 2011 10:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

fwiw in his "informing" of congressional leaders he did specifically cite war powers

For some historical perspective, it's worth nothing that both Gingrich and (esp) Bob Dole had Clinton's back on Bosnia and Kosovo.

Samantha Power's A Problem From Hell is worth reading.

(I know both were out of power by the time Kosovo happened, btw)

both Gingrich and (esp) Bob Dole had Clinton's back on Bosnia and Kosovo

shoulda shared a cell.

for you Biden fans: Impeach Bam

Really love the particular rightwing attack on this that is basically "nothing that a group of women support (EVEN if they are UN ambassador/Secretary of State) should be taken seriously" because looool women are dumb, right?!

that said, I don't really get what is the end game here

women! never planning ahead

shoulda shared a cell.

Fail.

love the nagging angle, like at some point obama was just like "ugh, FINE whatever..."

The Bombing Moe series:

http://dickdestiny.com/blog1/category/bombing-moe/

Or the syndic version at Globalsecurity.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/

Under the SITREP banner on the right of the page.

i'm not sure why utter filth got, uh, shot down so quickly for asking how a no-fly zone turned into an assault on gaddafi's heavy weapons.

i'm sure this is covered somewhere else itt but how did enforcement of a no fly zone become the degrading of Gadaffi's military capability?

― utterfilth (whatever), Monday, March 21, 2011 10:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

um that's kind of what a no-fly zone is?

― Hyper Rescue Troop (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, March 21, 2011 10:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

blowing up tanks and convoys has nothing to do with "establishing a no-fly zone"! tanks don't shoot down airplanes iirc

it seems gaddafi is being cagey - he hasn't even turned the radars of his anti-aircraft weapons on yet. he hasn't even tried to fly any planes. so practically speaking there's a no-fly zone at the moment but he still has a lot of his assets

gorge thank you!! i love your writing on this stuff

Well, the tactical ground attacks go off (or will go off) because the US military is faced with the reality that the "rebels" are an armed rabble incapable of waging successful war even against an inept military like Moe's.

From tv pics it looks like they have soaked up all the US myth-making about military prowess over the last eight years. They've seen or perhaps heard of all the pictures of everything getting blown up -- they saw some of it over the weekend -- and now are joyful because they think they're an ally. And these 'allies' probably think all they have to do is march to Tripoli -- a long trek -- with the US blowing to smithereens anything that gets in their way.

Which it can do. But that means waging a war more a little more like it did to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. It means bombers and cruise missiles and tons of JDAMs on call, over the country, called down as the rabble advances. It kind of means they'd almost have to put special forces on the ground to help guide some of the strikes.

Now it might not turn out like that. But if the 'rebels' want to go to Tripoli, they're going to need someone around to knock out Moe's artillery and armor, all of it.

I don't think anyone believes the French or the British can do that, or that some silly token volunteers from the Arab League flying around the periphery will. So if again faced with a 'rebel' force marching into a slaughter, US assets will have to go into action.

My opinion's that they opening assault was as heavy-handed as the US military could make it precisely because someone knew this would be the situation and they were hoping to get as much as possible early. And perhaps afflict Moe's military with paralysis and a lasting fear of operation.

xpost

Thanks, btw. The kind words are appreciated.

tanks don't shoot down airplanes iirc

they can though!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1973

• demands the immediate establishment of a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians;

• authorises all necessary means to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas, except for a "foreign occupation force";

thanks Tracer...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1973

* demands the immediate establishment of a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians;

* authorises all necessary means to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas, except for a "foreign occupation force";

= lets fuck up some tanks

― ℳℴℯ　❤＼(◕‿◕✿ (Princess TamTam), Tuesday, March 22, 2011 2:55 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i understand the resolution allows the use of more force than comes with the imposition of a no fly zone. my question was how did all the talk of nfz (which in the beginning had cameron isolated and ridiculed iirc, with obama keeping well clear) become a diplomatic freefall into aggressive air strikes on military capabilities, command facilities etc etc? the same air strikes that the arab league and russia immediately distanced themselves from.

it looks increasingly as though another agenda is more important than merely protecting citizens. sure, gaddafi provoked action when he called and ignored his own ceasefire, but when the talk is now of a third war for america and other allied countries, i think we've moved on from enforcement of a no fly zone.

PM and military split over war aims

has her majesty's opposition ventured an opinion?

Overwhelmingly in favour, if the vote in the HofC was anything to go by. A few voted vs.

John Baron; CON (Basildon & Billericay)
Graham Allen; LAB (Nottingham North)
Ronnie Campbell; LAB (Blyth Valley)
Jeremy Corbyn; LAB (Islington North)
Barry Gardiner; LAB (Brent North)
Roger Godsiff; LAB (Birmingham Hall Green)
John McDonnell; LAB (Hayes and Harlington)
Linda Riordan; LAB (Halifax)
Dennis Skinner; LAB (Bolsover)
Mike Wood; LAB (Batley and Spen).
Caroline Lucas; GREEN (Brighton Pavilion)
Mark Durkan; SDLP (Foyle)
Margaret Ritchie; SDLP (Down South)

Perrin's right, the Western world is run by the fucking Sopranos. Fuck giving a shit, stooges.

i guess if i lived in america i would also say fuck giving a shit. libya is a long way away.

but even im getting increasingly cold feet on this.

as perrin says, everyone plays their role:

But I think our national values are closer to The Sopranos -- armed sociopaths trying to maintain their power and wealth by any means necessary. And if a former friend/ally/business partner becomes inconvenient, two in the back of his head. Bada bang. It's only business.

"former friend/ally/business partner"... yeah. reaching a bit there. which of these was gadaffi? either way plainly wasn't becoming inconvenient for the US.

gorge (aka dick destiny) quotes this from the new york times. just in case anyone was still wondering why bahrain is being treated differently:

The mainly Shiite demonstrators moved beyond Pearl Square, taking over areas leading to the financial and diplomatic districts of the capital. They closed off streets with makeshift roadblocks and shouted slogans calling for the death of the royal family.

“Twenty-five percent of Bahrain’s G.D.P. comes from banks,” Mr. Abdulmalik said as he sat in the soft Persian Gulf sunshine. “I sympathize with many of the demands of the demonstrators. But no country would allow the takeover of its financial district. The economic future of the country was at stake. What happened this week, as sad as it is, is good.”

US warplane crash-lands in Libya

Charlie Savage, valuable as ever, on a president's war powers.

"I don't mind a few hundred Tomahawk strikes, what really bothers me is that I was not consulted!"

#fragileegos

Seriously. Do you have a point, or are you just all of a sudden really concerned about Constitutional interpretation?

By the way, I love how the NY Times' top coverage of Libya these days comes with a D.C. dateline. And they're by Elizabeth Bumiller. You may remember Bumiller as the author of the White House Letter in the months and years following the invasion of Iraq. It contained memorable passages like these:

Mr. Bush, it should be noted, spent one hour at the Houston rodeo last week. There he patted some cows on the head and said, briefly, "I thought there was a lot of bull in Washington, D.C."

...

When George W. Bush campaigned for president in 2000, he brought along his feather pillow, complained about having to sleep in hotels and missed his cats. He wanted to be president, all right, but he also wanted to wake up in his own bed in the governor's mansion in Austin, Tex., and pad downstairs for the comforting ritual of fetching the newspapers and making coffee.

...

The next dust-up, also music-related, involved the president’s iPod, which was a gift from his daughters. It was reported in this column that an aide to President Bush maintained the device’s playlist. What was not reported was that the iPod came pre-programmed by his daughters as part of the gift. Among the email to this reporter generated by that story, nearly all of it positive, came a note from the office of the First Daughters that included the gift’s original playlist (Eric Clapton exclusively) and a request to let the public know that the Bush daughters “rock.”

my question was how did all the talk of nfz (which in the beginning had cameron isolated and ridiculed iirc, with obama keeping well clear) become a diplomatic freefall into aggressive air strikes on military capabilities, command facilities etc etc? the same air strikes that the arab league and russia immediately distanced themselves from

The rebels wanted the attacks on tanks, etc. according to the stories I read and heard. Russia, like China, never wanted anything. They're happy doing doing business with Quadaffi no matter what's happening in his country.

Take the byline with a grain of salt, but here's Jack Goldsmith arguing that Obama's policy might be unnecessary but it's not unconstitutional.

By the way, I love how the NY Times' top coverage of Libya these days comes with a D.C. dateline

this is because the four writers the nyt sent to libya were captured by the libyan government and only freed yesterday, dude

two writers, two fotogs iirc

but yes that is a fairly iron-clad excuse.

yeah sorry should have said 4 journalists

i really just wanted to pour scorn on elizabeth bumiller

"let's see, our four people in libya have been taken hostage, who should take the lead in our reporting? i know, the lady who spent three years living inside george w. bush's asshole"

i kind of regret invoking that image

worst lynch parody

i have to remember that one the next time i'm late for work. "where have you been??" "sorry, running a little late, got taken hostage in libya" "it's ok we gave your job to brett, our ceo's scheduling assistant"

Every minute this goes on, it just seems worse and worse. The biggest difference between now and last week is that now we own a piece of this mess, and will no doubt get stuck with its bloody legacy and pricey clean-up. Seriously, after the last decade of military boondoggles, how could we so blithely enter into yet another pointless and pricey middle eastern military campaign? It boggles the mind.

i've begun to wonder if that isn't the point, in a way - that now the USA and/or the_west will "own" some of the contours of this unprecedented uprising in the middle east - get to influence its eventual shape. the crudest form being that now libyans will "owe us" something. yes there are massive downsides but i suppose the thinking is that there could be massive upsides as well.

and hey, it pisses china and russia off, so

Tracer i really wonder why the stated objective of a 'humanitarian intervention' is so hard for you to accept as the real motivation for this.

what about this resembles a humanitarian intervention? we've chosen sides in a civil war. that's it.

well, go tell the president!

'they can't be this simple-minded, there must be some other calculation'

yeah well no

our "humanitarian intervention" in Kosovo simply accelerated the killing, I seem to recall

I don't see why it can't be both humanitarian AND opportunistic. it's some combination of both imho

bad show Morbz

altho as I've said before: in Libya, as in Kosov, this would all be brought to a much tidier resolution if we could execute a little targeted decapitation of the leaders in question. The Bosnian conflict wouldn't have gotten nearly so bad if Milosevic had been killed earlier, and Libya would similarly have benefited from Kaddaffey being iced earlier in this flare-up.

(and before anyone jumps on me yes I am perfectly aware of why this strategy - while most likely very effective - is also completely illegal, dangerous, and not really possible to implement)

'they can't be this simple-minded, there must be some other calculation'

yeah well no

it's plausible that all they really want to do is protect the anti-gaddafi fighters, sure. but it really is a measure of those fighters' ineptitude that close air support for their operations is being billed as "humanitarian intervention"

The "humanitarian" aspects of this are bogus. Qaddafi was just a run of the mill bad guy dictator until a small fraction of the population took up arms against him and he retaliated (which is of course no different than how Qaddafi himself took power, except he won). This was not genocide in progress. This was not pointless, malicious mass murdering of innocent women and children. This was a bad guy, with many decades of bad guy-ness to his name, suppressing a limited uprising.

Playing realpolitik here, since when did anyone give a shit about the Libyan people, any more than the millions of oppressed people elsewhere in the region at large we'd managed to more or less ignore until they started taking matters into their own hands a few months ago?

The "humanitarian" aspects of this are bogus. Qaddafi was just a run of the mill bad guy dictator until a small fraction of the population took up arms against him and he retaliated (which is of course no different than how Qaddafi himself took power, except he won). This was not genocide in progress. This was not pointless, malicious mass murdering of innocent women and children. This was a bad guy, with many decades of bad guy-ness to his name, suppressing a limited uprising.

Playing realpolitik here, since when did anyone give a shit about the Libyan people, any more than the millions of oppressed people elsewhere in the region at large we'd managed to more or less ignore until they started taking matters into their own hands a few months ago?

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, March 22, 2011 4:17 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

is this true? what are you basing your knowledge of the scale of this on? not saying your wrong per se, but you're contending a pretty diff picture than what id read so i was wondering if u have some info i dont

"Genocide". STOP USING THIS WORD, WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i can't wait to see what action the UN security council takes when pres. obiang takes his inevitable revenge on the people organizing protests on march 23rd in equatorial guinea

Also, this "he kills his own people" thing, how is that worse than killing anybody else?

x-post Well, here's what I mean. In Kosovo, there were people - men, women, children - targeted and killed based on their ethnicity. In Iraq, too (Kurds). In Afghanistan, no one would challenge the Taliban's active, aggressive, expansionist oppressiveness. Not saying they necessarily justified intervention, but at least there was some justification. But AFAIK, Qaddafi treated his whole country equally bad, and currently is repelling a rebellion.

Would we intervene on behalf of the Tibetan people vs. China? The Zimbabweans vs. Mugabe? Clearly Bahrain is SOL. Somalia began as a humanitarian mission, before we just held up our hands and said fuck it. What made Libya, of all the rotten or broken countries in the world, worth the potential costs of intervention?

i mean the guy's a total monster but i don't recall anything in libya over the last couple of months being as bad as those snipers killing 50 protesters in yemen the other day from the rooftops. the civil war in libya ramped up quick; it was soldier v soldier almost immediately. correct me if i'm wrong goole but it's the positions of rebel soldiers being protected here, not civilians.

Though of course, the rebels are "civilians."

are people actually claiming that qaddafi is committing genocide? or is that just something youre saying?

this really cant be said enough, but "there are dictators all over the world" isnt an argument against libyan intervention.

we give a shit about libya over bahrain or china because we feel as though we can make a positive difference at a low cost to our resources, int'l standing, money, investments, whatever

i keep hearing we have to 'prevent a genocide'

from

Tracer

ban tracer

I've heard it used in the media and by idiot politicians. I've heard all of the old Saddam cliches wheeled out... though, bizarrely, it was Gadaffi who brought up Hitler first, getting his retaliation in first I suppose

x-post Well, here's what I mean. In Kosovo, there were people - men, women, children - targeted and killed based on their ethnicity. In Iraq, too (Kurds). In Afghanistan, no one would challenge the Taliban's active, aggressive, expansionist oppressiveness. Not saying they necessarily justified intervention, but at least there was some justification. But AFAIK, Qaddafi treated his whole country equally bad, and currently is repelling a rebellion.

this really cant be said enough, but "there are dictators all over the world" isnt an argument against libyan intervention.

it's actually an argument for intervention ALL OVER THE WORLD. get ready, equatorial guinea

yes milo that's EXACTLY what everyone's saying

Um... Tracer, I'm responding to a paragraph which says exactly that. I didn't say anything about what other people believe.

Christ.

I, at least, never said Qaddafi was committing genocide. In fact, my point is that he is clearly not committing genocide, which in the recent past has been an excuse for intervention in various hot spots. As far as I know, he has not even been targeting men, women and children, specifically. He has been targeting a group of people who have undeniably taken up arms with the goal being his ouster or death. I don't support the dude one bit, but what is he supposed to do? Just die?

There are lots of reasons against Libyan intervention, but I have yet to hear a coherent pro that doesn't implicate a dozen other countries and/or failed states. To call this a cheap use of our resources both underplays the potential cost as well as the many potential damages, with the benefit being ... goodwill on behalf of some Libyans? Will they greet us as liberators?

hmm a couple benefits might be "libyan civilians dont get massacred by a dictator" and also "a brutal autocrat no longer oppresses a country"

correct me if i'm wrong goole but it's the positions of rebel soldiers being protected here, not civilians.

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, March 22, 2011 11:37 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'm not the guy you ought to be arguing with then. you keep saying there must be more to the administration thinking than 'protecting the libyan people', for all these other reasons, it just can't possibly make sense! nobody could really say that with a straight face!

i'm saying, yes, that's what they are doing, that's what they think they're doing. i get that people look askance at the idea of 'humanitarian intervention'. but i really don't get why you don't think Obama et al really believe that's what they're doing.

There was no genocide in Kosovo, Afghanistan or Iraq - the examples you used as potentially justified interventions. So I don't really know why you'd hold Qaddafi to a genocide standard here?

I'm not arguing about the correctness of your opposition to the Libyan action (or anyone's support for), but your argument seems terribly illogical to me.

xxp, of course

sorry for my tone, milo, you're right

for one thing, behind those 'positions of rebel soldiers' is a whole city full of people.

there are plenty of stories of gov't forces carrying out violent reprisals against non-combatants, and shelling into cities

The killing of innocent Libyan citizens is one thing, the targeting of innocent Libyan civilians another. This isn't one of those deals where a dictator invented a rebellion just so he can kill off a few thousand unarmed opponents. They started this! Again, what was he supposed to do? Give up his 40 year dictatorship and hand over the keys?

And re: freeing the country from the rule of a brutal autocrat, please. Qaddafi can get in line.

our "humanitarian intervention" in Kosovo simply accelerated the killing, I seem to recall

They were already killing people before the intervention, Morbz. Do you think they would have just stopped out of goodwill if NATO had done nothing?

the rebels held a city. the city liked the rebels. if gaddaffi had taken the city, all the rebel sympathizers or suspected rebel sympathizers in the city would have been killed. we know this because he kept saying it, on tv, in between charlie sheen broadcasts. and not that it's really relevant but it actually would have been way worse than 50 people in yemen. it's not about what happened "over the past couple months"; it's about what was gonna happen in like a week.

obviously there are a billion places in the world where Bad Stuff happens and "we" don't "care", and obviously using the word "genocide" here is a really regrettable linguistic error, but to outright deny that the u.n. has any humanitarian impulses at all is kinda silly.

The killing of innocent Libyan citizens is one thing, the targeting of innocent Libyan civilians another. This isn't one of those deals where a dictator invented a rebellion just so he can kill off a few thousand unarmed opponents. They started this! Again, what was he supposed to do? Give up his 40 year dictatorship and hand over the keys?

And re: freeing the country from the rule of a brutal autocrat, please. Qaddafi can get in line.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, March 22, 2011 12:57 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

waht

"guys, he was here, we should be cool to him"

The killing of innocent Libyan citizens is one thing, the targeting of innocent Libyan civilians another. This isn't one of those deals where a dictator invented a rebellion just so he can kill off a few thousand unarmed opponents. They started this! Again, what was he supposed to do? Give up his 40 year dictatorship and hand over the keys?

Uh... sorry, I don't think I can talk about this with you.

Right now the rebel counteradvance is being stalled 100 km south of Benghazi (10 km N of Sultan, identified from Al Jazeera footage) by daylight ambushes. Today's pro-Gaddafi MO is to hang back behind a low rise/berm, ambush lead rebel vehicles with large caliber MG fire at 700-1000 m. The rebels make frantic U-turns in confusion, drive back a couple of km, park and mill about on the side of the road. The pro-Gaddafi units use this time to plot an artillery solution on the congregation. A few burning vehicles and body parts are left in the rebel's hasty retreat.

I've completely changed opinions on the rebel chances over the past two weeks. All Libyan men serve 6 months conscription (enough for basic arms proficiency and indoctrination in following commands). I assumed that with high morale and numerous former officers they'd be ragtag but at least have someone collecting intel, setting objectives, running recon, organizing a LRDG-like raiding group etc. Now I pretty much agree with a colonel on the rebel side (quoted by Al Jaz) that the kids are "brave but suicidal". This was true with the Sunni insurgency in Iraq too. What eventually happens is that the suicidally brave are culled, leaving a smaller but more calculating core of guerrilas, but it takes a few years.

Assuming the UN coalition's orders are "enforce a no fly zone, and halt any pro-Gaddafi columns advancing within 100 km of Benghazi", this civil war could stagnate near this point on the map for quite some time.

so close to Godwining this with a reference to putting down the Warsaw Rebellion or something

xxxp: josh's point makes sense re: a head of state's right to put down violent military uprisings in his country. the intervention happened after gaddaffi made it clear a whole lot of civilians were going to be tortured to death.

Seriously, the goal here seems to be as noble as possible: free people from a dictator, protect the lives of innocents. I'm all for that, because how can you not be? But practically speaking, that alone, as noble and great an idealistic a goal as it is, is shaky grounds for intervention, especially in context. How long will we "care?" How long should we "care?" How long should a no-fly zone be imposed? What happens if/when the rebels lose? What then? We just shrug and leave Qaddafi to his malevolent whims?

haha goole are you suggesting that gaddafi's dudes were marching towards benghazi like "we are gonna kill all this women and children" and the rebels stepped in between them? benghazi is the rebel base - it's where most of their fighters are (setting aside the various tribes and factions within the libyan resistance and their differing agendas). if you're gonna crush a rebellion that's where you're gonna go. again, i'm not giving gaddafi credit for being some kind of good guy but the civilians killed in libya so far fit entirely under the "normal" kind of tit-for-tat retribution, collateral damage, and just plain mistakes that happen in any war. it is horrible but it's like, this is what happens when civil wars start.

so if the motivation behind the_west's military intervention were merely to save innocent lives, there are far starker humanitarian crises to blow billions of dollars on. right? so there have to be other motivations. i'm just trying to work out what those are. it's sorta weird how that seems like an offensive thing for me to be doing!

Like, I'm "for" intervention, in the abstract. But practically speaking, I'm still waiting for a clear idea of what we aim to achieve, and how we hope to achieve it.

How long will we "care?" How long should we "care?" How long should a no-fly zone be imposed? What happens if/when the rebels lose? What then? We just shrug and leave Qaddafi to his malevolent whims?

these are all good questions and i am not all that optimistic about our ability to answer them. but like i said upthread, i'm still glad gaddafi didn't enter benghazi.

yeah i think everyone's on the same page there. its just not clear that this is worse than the alternative

re: josh's quote DLH quoted

Defending Qaddafi on killing civilians because the rebels are among them is a bit too "Well, that Pashtun wedding shouldn't have looked like an al-Qaeda training camp" and "Palestinian parents should move their children so that when the Israelis blow up buildings they aren't hurt."

so if the motivation behind the_west's military intervention were merely to save innocent lives, there are far starker humanitarian crises to blow billions of dollars on. right?

sure, but not all of them have a pre-existing armed rebellion to back and a whole lot of international support including from the arab league whom we would be very excited to get some props from post-egypt. so yeah, there are Other Motives, but they're not all necessarily OIL! or whatever.

(well for the french there's probably some OIL! involved)

Do you think they would have just stopped (killing) out of goodwill if NATO had done nothing?

Based on everything I read at the time, some bombs might've helped 5 years before Clinton dropped them. Too bad Monica was still in high school then.

"there are dictators all over the world" isnt an argument against libyan intervention

oh sure it is.

Based on everything I read at the time, some bombs might've helped 5 years before Clinton dropped them. Too bad Monica was still in high school then.

― Fuck bein' hard, Dr Morbz is complicated (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, March 22, 2011 5:09 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sounds like rushing to war.

Worrying about exit strategy is perfectly valid, but often the game is just about retaining options til the next move. At the rate of the pro-Gaddafi advance last week there were likely to be no palatable options for intervention shortly.

this thread makin me get all morbius up in here

Josh I would just like to point out that you are totally wrong in characterizing this as something the rebels "started". Protests started out peacefully, Qaddafi reacted violently, killing innocents, arresting and torturing protesters, brutal military crackdown etc. then the fighting started.

xp

That's fair enough, though par for the course for the guy who was already a human rights pariah. But again, how is the situation any better off, now we're between him and his targets? Is this just a game of chicken, to see who packs up first? Because unfortunately I put my money on the guy with billions of ill-gotten funds who has been the repressive dictator of Libya for 40 years.

so if the motivation behind the_west's military intervention were merely to save innocent lives, there are far starker humanitarian crises to blow billions of dollars on. right? so there have to be other motivations. i'm just trying to work out what those are. it's sorta weird how that seems like an offensive thing for me to be doing!

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, March 22, 2011 12:04 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

no there don't! that's what i keep saying. there really don't. libya just 'happened.' and here we are.

But again, how is the situation any better off, now we're between him and his targets?

you kind of answer the question there

So we're/the UN is a permanent occupying force until he steps down?

Like, no one will defend the guy, one of the baddest dictators of all time. Of all time! But this is the same bad guy we just renewed ties with a few years ago to reward him for good behavior, no?

the guy with billions of ill-gotten funds who has been the repressive dictator of Libya for 40 year

these kinds of guys tend to not have real good track records fwiw. most of them come to an ignominious end.

But this is the same bad guy we just renewed ties with a few years ago to reward him for good behavior, no?

this was stupid but also totally self-serving - Qaddafi hates Islamists cuz they threaten his power, we hate Islamists cuz they blow up shit. Win win! The enemy of my enemy is my friend etc

So we're/the UN is a permanent occupying force until he steps down?

who the fuck is occupying anything?

xp Josh re "I put my money on the guy with billions of ill-gotten funds":

The French presidential election is April/May 2012.

Like, no one will defend the guy, one of the baddest dictators of all time. Of all time!

But this is the same bad guy we just renewed ties with a few years ago to reward him for good behavior, no?

Far as I know, Obama wasn't President when we "renewed ties" (which 'we' of course, had no say in) and infants are rarely politically conscious.

goole i think we are talkin past each other - i totally agree with you that the people makin the decisions (hillary, gates, obama, sarko, etc) may really be totally pure at heart about all this and are like god love this li'l ragtag group of teenage boys who are takin the fight to gaddafi, we can't just let em get deadded, this could be a decisive moment for an unprecedented wave of middle east uprising and send a message to other countries in the region that they'd better play nice - whoa but i've already just exceeded your mandate of "that's all it is" - as soon as you start making decisions based on "sending messages" or whatever we are into what i am calling "other motivations". which is fine! they don't have to be sinister! or competently thought through! or even conscious at all! but they're there. otherwise every li'l ragtag army of incompetents would get the same treatment, and they don't.

But these were ragtag incompetents with Facebook pages, blogs, and streaming TV.

Milo, I mean "we" in the sense that "we" - the US, the UN, "the west" at large - will all take the blame if this goes bad or gets worse. I've never personally authorized a single military action, and I assume neither have you.

I hate the idea of anyone dying here, short of Qaddafi himself, but it's a civil war, isn't it? If one side isn't dying the other will be. The only way to prevent bloodshed is to put peacekeepers on the ground, and I haven't heard anyone suggest such a crazy thing. Though if this were truly an international crisis I imagine all options would be on the table, not just the current tentative steps being taken.

xpost Well as I understood it the main broader motive here was to stop the region's dictators getting the idea that they can put down a rebellion with military massacres. The repression elsewhere isn't (yet) on the same scale. Also events in Tunisia and Egypt had focussed the world's attention on north Africa so this was already a bigger deal for the western public than, say, Ivory Coast - not fair, perhaps, but a factor.

dictators getting the idea that they can put down a rebellion with military massacres

But isn't this basically what makes dictators dictators?

For comparison, the cost of enforcing no-fly zones in Northern and Southern Iraq from 1991-2003 is estimated at about 1 billion/year (excluding the 1998 Desert Fox / Lewinsky distraction airstrikes). The incremental cost of flying over hostile territory isn't that much greater than that of just procuring, maintaining and training in peacetime.

Greenwald (in part):

I understand -- and absolutely believe -- that many people who support the intervention in Libya are doing so for good and noble reasons: disgust at standing by and watching Gadaffi murder hundreds or thousands of rebels. I also believe that some people who supported the attack on Iraq did so out of disgust for Saddam Hussein and a desire to see him removed from power. It's commendable to oppose that type of despotism, and I understand -- and share -- the impulse.

But what I cannot understand at all is how people are willing to believe that the U.S. Government is deploying its military and fighting this war because, out of abundant humanitarianism, it simply cannot abide internal repression, tyranny and violence against one's own citizens. This is the same government that enthusiastically supports and props up regimes around the world that do exactly that, and that have done exactly that for decades.

By all accounts, one of the prime administration advocates for this war was Hillary Clinton; she's the same person who, just two years ago, said this about the torture-loving Egyptian dictator: "I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family." They're the same people overseeing multiple wars that routinely result in all sorts of atrocities. They are winking and nodding to their Yemeni, Bahrani and Saudi friends who are doing very similar things to what Gadaffi is doing, albeit (for now) on a smaller scale. They just all suddenly woke up one day and decided to wage war in an oil-rich Muslim nation because they just can't stand idly by and tolerate internal repression and violence against civilians? Please.

For the reasons I identified the other day, there are major differences between the military actions in Iraq and Libya. But what is true of both -- as is true for most wars -- is that each will spawn suffering for some people even if they alleviate it for others. Dropping lots of American bombs on a country tends to kill a lot of innocent people. For that reason, indifference to suffering is often what war proponents -- not war opponents -- are guilty of. But whatever else is true, the notion that opposing a war is evidence of indifference to tyranny and suffering is equally simple-minded, propagandistic, manipulative and intellectually bankrupt in both the Iraq and Libya contexts. And, in particular, those who opposed or still oppose intervention in Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, the Sudan, against Israel, in the Ivory Coast -- and/or any other similar places where there is widespread human-caused suffering -- have no business advancing that argument.

I have no idea what point "just dictators being dictators" is supposed to make, tbh.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

greenwald has his uses and i'm extremely glad that he's around but god he's just this perpetual 12-year-old who can't get over Hypocrisy. OF COURSE WE LET SOME DICTATORS GO AND ATTACK OTHERS. OF COURSE WE DO. that's not a reason to oppose this happy moment when we had enough geopolitical interest in something that was also a humanitarian concern, or to assume that we have absolutely no humanitarian impulses at all.

And, in particular, those who opposed or still oppose intervention in Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, the Sudan, against Israel, in the Ivory Coast -- and/or any other similar places where there is widespread human-caused suffering -- have no business advancing that argument.

Iraq?

or to assume that we, like, plan everything. xp

Good job bundling together half a dozen hugely different situations though.

also lol "in part" because it wouldn't be a greenwald post without 8239528952 paragraphs

UPDATE: three more paragraphs
UPDATE II: wait i remembered something else to be petulant about

greenwald has his uses and i'm extremely glad that he's around but god he's just this perpetual 12-year-old who can't get over Hypocrisy. OF COURSE WE LET SOME DICTATORS GO AND ATTACK OTHERS. OF COURSE WE DO. t

I don't think that's his point – in fact he explained how and why Iraq and Libya are different.

i just like the idea of hillary having a really great dinner with President and Mrs. Mubarak

I think the "why not dictator x too?" argument can be disingenuous - as if critics of the Libyan action would be overjoyed at intervention in any of those other countries, most of whom have oil or mineral wealth or gas pipelines or something that would be brought up as a criticism. It's a bogus alternative.

I don't think that's his point – in fact he explained how and why Iraq and Libya are different.

he mentioned that a difference exists, yes, to head off the comments. but he spent pretty much all of his rhetorical time on "but they're still both wars and wars are :(" and "look at all these other dictators, if we REALLY loved our brothers we'd kill ALL of them" and even managed to fit in a quick "oil!" mention. his thesis, at least in what you quoted, is "the u.s. government doesn't REALLY care, wake up sheeple". which is booooooooooooooooooring.

"Would you like the snifters or champagne glasses?"

http://commentmideast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/t1larg.clinton.mubarak.afp_..jpg

oh sorry i forgot the part where he says "no, YOU'RE indifferent to suffering".

hahaha

But these were ragtag incompetents with Facebook pages, blogs, and streaming TV.

no this is a good point - i've been reading some pretty raw accounts by someone actually in benghazi as i type this and he has been very impressed by the media savvy of the benghazites - he says they're always busy, busy updating web sites, making phone calls, etc. but he also says - and this is just one very jaded dude talking, so take w grain of salt - that they have lied over and over again - about air attacks that didn't exist, about people killed that didn't exist - and he was sorta leaning no intervention happening because he figured the_west was not into this sort of crying wolf (and that made him anxious, because everybody on the ground could see that the rebels really WERE going to get the shit kicked out of them if nothing changed)

his thesis, at least in what you quoted, is "the u.s. government doesn't REALLY care, wake up sheeple". which is booooooooooooooooooring.

Failing to entertain, the truth sucketh

the sheeple bat-signal

besides, I agree w/ Bill Maher, the American public is more like a dog. A fat, stupid dog.

xpost

It's a bogus alternative.

besides, I agree w/ Bill Maher, the American public is more like a dog. A fat, stupid dog.

And Maher is the sheeple watching them?

look, no government in the history of ever has just "not cared". that's not how history works. governments aren't sociopaths. governments are extremely complex entities caught up in a historical tide with a huge amount of momentum, and they act based on a combination of self-interest and ideology; prediction and guesswork; selfishness and generosity. if you want to actually understand a historical moment, instead of just dropping a few emptyheaded one-liners of impregnable cynicism but of absolutely no depth or usefulness or contextual relevance, you have to consider everything, with curiosity, empathy, and openmindedness, and also you have to consider the incontrovertible fact that governments, especially in fast-moving times of crisis, do not actually know everything about why they are doing what they are doing. that's what historians are for. what ten-paragraph essays attacking imaginary people who think that the united states government is the red cross are for has yet to be determined.

i'm just kind of amazed at how easily people here for whom i have a tremendous admiration and respect can be all "the world will be a better place with (x) gone". i mean, we make fun of blair and bush and cheney for saying this stuff because these are not good justifications. even if they're true, or said sincerely.

personally it's very hard for me to see any conflict where i'd be alright with the united states sending in fighter jets and cruise missiles and whatever. maybe the congo, ten years ago? i don't know.