Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/225833/a-year-later-libya-is-still-a-mess

This piece is written by a Glenn Greenwald endorsed conservative who might be an isolationist. But I also have read other pieces on the problems in Libya and on Tuaregs who had supported Quaddaffi now returning to Mali with more weapons

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Taureg-Rebels-Vow-Push-in-Mali-After-Coup-143967086.html

Well-armed Tuareg separatists started attacking army bases in Mali's desert in January, after many Tuareg fighters returned from Libya, where they had assisted in the ousting Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

The United Nations refugee agency says the conflict has uprooted 130,000 people in and around Mali. Many soldiers have died in the conflict.

Tuareg nomads have launched periodic uprisings for greater autonomy in Mali and Niger.

holy shit.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/12/world/africa/libya-us-ambassador-killed/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The trailer was uploaded to YouTube by Sam Bacile, whom The Wall Street Journal Web site identified as a 52-year old Israeli-American real estate developer in California. He told the Web site he had raised $5 million from 100 Jewish donors to make the film. “Islam is a cancer,” Mr. Bacile was quoted as saying.

top, top work from the lad there

Yeah, what a dong. The film itself is nightmarish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmodVun16Q4

Still, feel like someone needs to go out and explain the internet to Libya and Egypt.

So essentially he made this movie to provoke some kind of mad Islamic shit. Well done, Mr. Bacile.

his name is literally sambacile

well, this guy is a shoe-in for the "thanks a lot, asshole" hall of fame now

god, rip ambassador

holy shit that video.

learning about that guy's work he seemed to genuinely care about africa and the middle east, real bummer

i have fam in the diplomatic corps and usis and the dude was a golden bear so it feels vaguely personal to me too, that's kinda dumb i know but true

his name is literally sambacile

Apparently it is a pseudonym.

holy shit that video.

― ❏❐❑❒ (gr8080), Wednesday, 12 September 2012 21:03 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The wildly varying overdubs have me wondering if it's some sort of fit-up, but I don't think there's anything non-crazy you can make from any 10 seconds of it.

It's despicable trolling. Like if 4chan decided to start a war.

A statement released on the behalf of the 80 cast and crew members of "Innocence of Muslims," a film that reportedly prompted Tuesday protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, indicates that they are not happy with the film and were misled by the producer.

"The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer. We are 100% not behind this film and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose," the statement says. "We are shocked by the drastic re-writes of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred."

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/12/u-s-ambassador-to-libya-3-others-killed-in-rocket-attack-witness-says/

i'm sure romney's press conference is getting discussed on the politics threads but yo his face here:

http://i.imgur.com/d987y.jpg

Haha, I posted that same photo over on the other thread. He looks like such an ass!

Gawker sez

"In the script and during the shooting, nothing indicated the controversial nature of the final product. Muhammed wasn't even called Muhammed; he was "Master George," Garcia said. The words Muhammed were dubbed over in post-production, as were essentially all other offensive references to Islam and Muhammed."

woah

this is fucking completely, completely insane.

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.