Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

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.