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

between the amateur movie shenanigans and the middle east foreign policy implications, this whole thing is a bit arrested development

This story is insane - there's no such person as Sam Bacile, the donors weren't Jewish, the actors were hoaxed… Juan Cole breaks it down with the aid of some important reporting by AP.

http://www.juancole.com/2012/09/romney-jumps-the-shark-libya-egypt-and-the-butterfly-effect.html

i'm still amazed that AP managed to produce quality reporting

most surprising element in this whole crazy story

Greenwald on the Administration's truthy spin of the consulate assault:

The Obama White House's interest in spreading [the it-was-the-video] falsehood is multi-fold and obvious:

For one, the claim that this attack was just about anger over an anti-Muhammad video completely absolves the US government of any responsibility or even role in provoking the anti-American rage driving it. After all, if the violence that erupted in that region is driven only by anger over some independent film about Muhammad, then no rational person would blame the US government for it, and there could be no suggestion that its actions in the region – things like this, and this, and this, and this – had any role to play.

The White House capitalized on the strong desire to believe this falsehood: it's deeply satisfying to point over there at those Muslims and scorn their primitive religious violence, while ignoring the massive amounts of violence to which one's own country continuously subjects them. It's much more fun and self-affirming to scoff: "can you believe those Muslims are so primitive that they killed our ambassador over a film?" than it is to acknowledge: "our country and its allies have continually bombed, killed, invaded, and occupied their countries and supported their tyrants."

It is always more enjoyable to scorn the acts of the Other Side than it is to acknowledge the bad acts of one's own. That's the self-loving mindset that enables the New York Times to write an entire editorial ...purporting to analyze Muslim rage without once mentioning the numerous acts of American violence aimed at them (much of which the Times editorial page supports). Falsely claiming that the Benghazi attacks were about this film perfectly flattered those jingoistic prejudices.

Then, there are the implications for the intervention in Libya, which Obama's defenders relentlessly tout as one of his great victories. But the fact that the Benghazi attack was likely premeditated and carried out by anti-American factions vindicates many of the criticisms of that intervention. Critics of the war in Libya warned that the US was siding with (and arming and empowering) violent extremists, including al-Qaida elements, that would eventually cause the US to claim it had to return to Libya to fight against them – just as its funding and arming of Saddam in Iraq and the mujahideen in Afghanistan subsequently justified new wars against those one-time allies.

War critics also argued that the intervention would bring massive instability and suffering to the people of Libya; today, the Washington Post reports that – just as the "president of Afghanistan" is really the mayor of Kabul and the "Iraqi government" long exercised sovereignty only in Baghdad's Green Zone – the central Libyan government exercises little authority outside of Tripoli. And intervention critics also warned that dropping bombs in a country and killing civilians, no matter how noble the intent supposedly is, would produce blowback in the form of those who would then want to attack the US.

When the White House succeeded in falsely blaming the consulate attacks on anger over this video, all of those facts were obscured.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/20/obama-officials-spin-benghazi-attack

Greenwald kinda getting ahead of himself about popular opinion of the US in Libya, methinks:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/libyans-hold-giant-march-demanding-militias-disband-in-wake-of-attack-on-us-consulate/2012/09/21/9203e21c-0406-11e2-9132-f2750cd65f97_story.html?hpid=z2

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/21/world/africa/libya-benghazi-counter-protest/index.html

CIA?

;-)

We see this over and over and yet never learn the lesson. The New York Times editorial page today declared the Iraqi government "on the wrong side" by virtue of its alignment with Iran and Syria and suggested that US aid - only a fraction of what is necessary to rebuild that country after the US destroyed it - should be cut off if such insolence continues. US-enabled regime change, time and again, exacerbates the very problems it is ostensibly intended to resolve.

If the Iraqi government continues to side with Iran, how much longer will it be before calls for regime change in Iraq are renewed? And how much longer will it be before we hear that military intervention in Libya is (again) necessary, this time to control the anti-US extremists who are now armed and empowered by virtue of the first intervention? US military interventions are most adept at ensuring that future US military interventions will always be necessary.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/24/cnn-journal-libya

how much longer will it be before calls for regime change in Iraq are renewed

a really, really really REALLY long time before the American public is keen to re-invade Iraq, I'll wager.

Greenwald's kinda sad/hystrionic these days

also anti-US extremists are not in power in Libya thx for playin Glenn

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012/09/23/libya-orders-disbanding-of-illegitimate-militias/57829890/1

What's Greenwald gonna say about this? That Libya was forced to do this by the US

"Who lost China?"

All the anti-Sharia (not a big fan myself) fanatacists and Muslim Bortherhood alarmists out there should remember that we don't have "permanent allies, only permanent interests" and that one of our permanent interests (or please explain why not?) should be stable democratic regimes, supported by their ppls amd capable of the slow, boring ameliorist change that anybody from a market watcher to a political advocate should realistically hope for. If a moderate Islamist candidate is elected in Turkey, in Libya, in Egypt, how essentially different are they from Christian Democrats or run-of-the-mill US candidates from both parties or the BJP or whatever? Pusing hard for short-sighted poliical outcomes is the sad hallmark of a country which only remembers its own anti-colonialist struggles in the moost puerile, hagiographic and context-free way. Engagement, useful and patient engagement that avoid pushing ppl towards radical, facile positions isn't particularly sexy but it would serve the US's and humanity's interests far better.

also anti-US extremists are not in power in Libya thx for playin Glenn

― stop swearing and start windmilling (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, 24 September 2012

hence "to control" them, jeezus effin christ

philippe reignes and michael hastings had quite a spat:
Hillary Clinton Aide Calls Reporter ‘Unmitigated A**hole,’ Tells Him To ‘F*ck Off’
http://www.mediaite.com/online/hillary-clinton-aide-calls-reporter-unmitigated-ahole-tells-him-to-fck-off/

"He engaged in a likely pattern of deception both to his probation officers and the court," Judge Suzanne Segal said in issuing her ruling.

The preliminary bail hearing began with Segal asking the defendant -- dressed in gray slacks and a white and yellow striped T-shirt, with handcuffs and chain around his waist -- what his true name was.

"Mark Basseley Yousseff," he replied.

The judge then asked again, what is your name?

"Mark Basseley," he said this time, again without spelling the name out.

Don't ever stop changing your name.

Will the US "Osama" whatever suspects it identifies in the murders?

...(I)t is difficult to imagine a more menacing policy: if the US president continues simply to execute anyone he decides should die with drones and bombs, then the only certain outcome is that there will be more and more people who view the US as a justifiable target for retaliation and vengeance. That the White House is eager to have it known that they are rejecting the option of arrest and due process in favor of secret assassination is a potent reflection of how degraded American political culture is regarding such matters, of how normalized the most extremist theories of power have become.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/19/benghazi-attack-suspects-drones

so uh, how's this going?

wow i forgot what a fly in the ointment i was in this thread :/

fwiw, last I heard, remnants of Gidoffy's army were fucking up Mali, working out of bases in southern Libya and the Libyan civil war continues to cause havoc, including plenty of civilian deaths. Thousands of refugees fleeing toward Italy in anything that floats and in some things that can't float for very long. I have no regrets concerning the position I took itt.

so uh i feel a little odd for reviving this when i did :o

re: our long dispute upthread, a parliamentary report into the intervention concludes that it strengthened ISIL

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAu7XUAUwAA5LJp?format=jpg&name=large

Ah, the old "not informed by accurate intelligence" excuse again.

"honest mistake guv!"

it's almost as if the overstatement of civilian danger, terrorist ties of the rebels, and long-term consequences were totally predictable and pointed out in real-time

Not just pointed out - the UK actively worked with Qaddafi to suppress the same groups when it was expedient!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/24/britain-family-gaddafi-legal

Tracer Hand, do you have a link to read the whole of that document? Seems important!

A further wrinkle I didn't know about was that the West also propped up Hissein Habré's murderous regime in Chad in the eighties because he fought Libyans for a bit. The policy has really been all over the place, and the only constant has been a lot of North African civilians killed.

i think this is it -

https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/119/119.pdf

Thanks! Will work my way through it all, but began with reading the conclusion, and that is pretty great as well. Is it a truly bi-partisan report? Because it seems impressively even handed, but I don't know enough to say. Don't know anyone on the committee, for instance.

Reminds me of the influence of Chalabi and Iraqi exiles, and PNAC neocons, in 2002:

the political momentum to propose Resolution 1973 began in France...

“the decisions of President Sarkozy and his Administration were driven by Libyan exiles
getting allies within the French intellectual establishment who were anxious to push for a
real change in Libya.”

On 2 April 2011, Sidney Blumenthal, adviser and unofficial intelligence analyst to the then United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, reported this conversation with French intelligence officers to the Secretary of State. According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:
a. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
b. Increase French influence in North Africa,
c. Improve his internal political situation in France,
d. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
e. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.

Yeah, the whole chapter is pretty damning. Sarkozy is such a shithead.

Xps, it's a mixture. Most of the Labour MPs (Clywd, Gapes, Hendrick iirc) are unrepentant adventurists, though Qureshi isn't. Quite a few of the Tories (Blunt, Baron and Rosindell) have voted against, or not bothered to turn up for votes on, military actions in the past. You also have the world's only pro-Russia Pole (Dan Kawczynski). It's a weird blend of people but that probably works in its favour.

81. Unpublished House of Commons Library research found that the UK spent some £320 million on bombing Libya and approximately £25 million on reconstruction programmes. However, those figures do not include the UK’s contribution to multilateral reconstruction projects, such as those run by the United Nations. In addition, Dr Adrian Gallagher, University of Leeds, pointed out that the Government reduced its estimate of the cost of the military intervention from £320 million to £234 million. Taking into account UK contributions to programmes run by the United Nations, which had overall responsibility for co-ordinating reconstruction, and the European Union, Dr Gallagher concluded that the UK “spent just under half as much (48.72%) on rebuild than on intervention.”

value for money much, UK?

ican we call this a success now

― unorthodox economic revenge (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 20 October 2011 15:26 (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

:/

Migrants stranded in Libya endure sewage, maggots, disease

By intent, and certainly a politically more palatable solution to the migrant problem than hosting the concentration camps in Italy.

Backed by Italy, Libya enlists militias to stop migrants

I anticipate this model to stop refugees fleeing overpopulation, resource scarcity, and the climate crisis will promoted in other nations of the Maghreb and West Asia (and maybe even Mexico).

I got handed a lot of shit for saying this over and over.

I am totally unconvinced that the people of Libya are going to benefit from this war, however much this is invoked as the sole purpose of our bombing.

― Aimless, Wednesday, May 25, 2011 11:58 AM (eight years ago)

Post WWII, the populations that have benefited from foreign military/intelligence agency intervention (South Korea, Kosovo) are utterly dwarfed by those that have been harmed. We're batting well under 0.1.

I am totally unconvinced that the people of Libya are going to benefit from this war, however much this is invoked as the sole purpose of our bombing.

idk what yr crowing about, you think they would have been better off getting massacred by Khadhafee? yeah ok whatever, this is an unprovable hypothesis.

There would have been a crackdown on regime change plotters in Benghazi (who had been collaborating with French military intelligence since late 2010), and least those who didn't obtain asylum. However, it wouldn't have thrown the nation into regional (and tribal) conflict for a decade.

Often, dictatorial rule is preferable to civil conflict.

Ah, yes, Οὖτις, you were the one who looked at my stated misgivings about our participation in the Libyan war and concluded that I thought "colonialism was worse than genocide". How genocide crept into the discussion is a mystery only you can solve.

"humanitarian intervention" is a bad idea that otherwise sensible ppl keep falling for

obama said in some interview late in his term that intervening in libya was his worst mistake as president, and it's hard not to agree

piracy on the Mediterranean, seems a little unlikely

― goole, Thursday, 25 August 2011 16:58 (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

does anyone want to intervene to topple haftar/the army? terrorising the south, indiscriminately or at least inaccurately shelling tripoli, how many dead civilians would it take?

are open air slave markets not a big issue in libya now too?

Often, dictatorial rule is preferable to civil conflict.

― despondently sipping tomato soup (Sanpaku), 3. juli 2019 20:28 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

My main problem with this is that dictatorial rule is pretty inherently unstable, and most often ends in civil conflict anyway.

Both Haftar and Jarvanka are UAE clients. There won't be a US led intervention.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/24/mercenaries-flock-to-libya-raising-fears-of-prolonged-war

Of course. Saudi Arabia has been using the same janjaweed to guard their own border with Yemen for several years, having learned how useless their own National Guard (ie, army) is.

Interesting article but doesn't say that NATO bombed Libya's Great ManMade River & destroyed a pipe factory, causing water scarcity since 2011. Now 4 out of abt 7 million Libyans could “face imminent water problems,” a potential “humanitarian disaster.” https://t.co/je5ASKbfGq

— Lucia Pradella (@LuGuangMing) August 18, 2021

Up to 20,000 are now believed dead in Libya. This tragedy hasn't just been caused by floods, but by NATO's 2011 military aggression and ongoing sanctions that have decimated the country and undermined its ability to prepare for extreme weather events. https://t.co/mUekVkd5Vw 1/2

— Kai Heron (@KaiHeron) September 14, 2023

Community notes does its job again

Libya was once one of Africa's most prosperous countries, but years of lawlessness have left it a fragile, divided state - ill-prepared to cope with the forces unleashed by a natural disaster. https://t.co/aFGO37ettU

— BBC News Africa (@BBCAfrica) September 13, 2023