Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

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