a thread about the civil unrest in egypt (& elsewhere in 'the region' if necessary)

Ha. Oprah, benign dictator that she is, should run for president of Egypt.

The best/smartest thing the US can do is start quietly supporting/fostering the creation of a nascent government in Egypt (offer money, folks to oversee elections, etc.). In Libya, it really has to be more wait and see. Not that we don't want Qaddafi gone - everyone does - but that if we start actively supporting the opposition and they lose, then by default we're officially at war with Libya. Another unintended (or, in some circles, certainly welcome) consequence would be a no-fly zone detente that builds Qaddafi up as a Saddam-like straw man, thus setting the stage for a future extension of ill-fated military meddling in the middle east. Besides, things are changing so fast in several different countries that it feels too soon to commit to a specific vision of the middle east.

the general impression i get from journalists on the ground is that libyan rebels dont want u.s. involvement at all; it's important that their revolution be homegrown and without the taint of us imperialism (esp. now that qaddafi and chavez have been making noise to that effect); one article i read quoted a bunch of fighters saying theyd accept turkish intervention but not US

obv i dont know how far that feeling extends among libyans, could just be the press is eager to think that were doing the right thing by not intervening.

you gotta think that attitude would also be affected by their coming success/failures. I can understand the desire to want to be featured in an 'I got this' gif but w/ every massacre that view is gonna soften a tiny bit. anyway I'm for every country in the world except america intervening.

xpost I have read quotes from Benghazi rebels that diff from this. Basically "we would welcome a no-fly zone as long as no foreign feet hit the ground".

oh yeah ive read that too, i guess i dont quite mean "no u.s. involvement at all" but certainly not troop deployment

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022805624.html?hpid=topnews

BENGHAZI, LIBYA - Locked in a standoff with forces loyal to Moammar Gaddafi, opposition leaders here debated Tuesday whether to request foreign airstrikes against the longtime ruler's military installations and other key facilities.

Members of a council governing Benghazi, Libya's second-largest city and the center of the anti-Gaddafi movement, said the issue has taken on increasing urgency amid a realization that the rebels cannot match the weaponry and firepower of the Gaddafi loyalists and that, without foreign help, the stalemate may never end.

it's not just gates, the whole pentagon is pretty chilly about this. but they sort of were about iraq too lol

well all we gotta ask ourselves is "would the world be better off without gaddafi in power" and BAM DEAL DONE

Kuwait brokers an agreement that the UAE will stand with the government of Oman to protect its "stability and security"

http://www.wam.ae/servlet/Satellite?c=WamLocEnews&cid=1293605285429&pagename=WAM/WAM_E_Layout&parent=Query&parentid=1135099399852

through all this i imagine the wargamers and strategyheads in the american government sitting around their offices and their heads just kind of softly exploding

Clearly we need a no-fly zone ASAP to enforce sanctions and allow the inspectors to finish their work searching for Qaddafi's admitted WMD stores and then ... oh, wait.

Encourage the revolt now and watch while it fails. Then invade in 2023.

plan^

xpost I have read quotes from Benghazi rebels that diff from this. Basically "we would welcome a no-fly zone as long as no foreign feet hit the ground".

― every man and woman is a sitar (Jon Lewis), Thursday, March 3, 2011 12:12 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh yeah ive read that too, i guess i dont quite mean "no u.s. involvement at all" but certainly not troop deployment

― max, Thursday, March 3, 2011 12:15 PM (55 minutes ago)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/03/world/africa/03libya.html

“Yes, they won,” said Iman Bugaighis, a spokeswoman for the rebel governing authority, which asked Western nations to conduct airstrikes against Colonel Qaddafi’s strongholds on Wednesday. “We don’t know how long it will last. He’s getting stronger.”

this is in the hardcopy of the paper, but it's been removed from the version now available online. dunno what to make of that

Wow hmmmmm...

oops!

shakey how do you reconcile this embarassing mishap with your love of the woman's music?

my what?

lol kevin

Clearly we need a no-fly zone ASAP to enforce sanctions and allow the inspectors to finish their work searching for Qaddafi's admitted WMD stores and then ... oh, wait.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, March 3, 2011 5:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

u need 2 set yr motherfucker 2 'receive'

ie this is poor analogizing

n e ways, what are you saying, that the UN shouldn't have tried to hem in saddam? because all intervention is bad?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zW4AKrOIak

"Al Jazeera has been the leader in literally changing people's minds and attitudes. And like it or hate it, it is really effective. In fact viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it's real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and arguments among talking heads" - Hillary Clinton

^^^ Hillary OTM

hahahahaha

awesome lol Hillary

hillin it itt

because it's real news

99 % true although even some supporters agree Al Jazeera pulls their punches re certain places like Lebanon, Syria and Iran and uh, what's the country they receive financial support from-Qatar.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1733536/al-jazeera-in-talks-with-comcast-time-warner#

And I guess she did say you might not agree with it

even some supporters agree Al Jazeera pulls their punches re certain places like Lebanon, Syria and Iran

lol like American media doesn't do this all the fucking time re: our allies/financiers

i watched a bunch of al jeezy recently like everyone else and like 95% of it was a static shot of tahrir square w/some reporter talkin out their ass over it - aka p much what our cable news looks like when something happens in a place where they have reporters - feel like a lot of the love going their way is mostly based on that a) people were under the impression it was some sort of terrorist news network b) western news presence/expertise in the region was so lame

I think it's more than that. It's a matter if programing choices. At times over the last couple of months, I've wanted realtime news about the major stories of the day. AJ provided that and msnbc CNN, etc. didn't.

Local Kebab Shop and middle eastern market which cooked my lunch today has added a massive Libyan Revolt Flag to its facade.

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government struck hard at its opponents Friday, waging fierce battles to wrest control of the town of Zawiya from rebel troops and firing on peaceful protesters after Friday prayers in Tripoli, witnesses said.

from the New York Times

a successful insurrection/rebellion requires 2 things: the support of the general populace (looks fairly certain in this case), and a steady supply of weapons (they are probably lacking on this front)

Britain is preparing to send advisers to help anti-Gaddafi forces in eastern Libya, it emerged as Nato commanders were instructed to draw up plans for a wide range of military options, including a no-fly zone.
As the situation in Libya was deteriorating rapidly, ambassadors representing Nato's 28 nations tasked military commanders to start planning for what an alliance spokesperson described as "all eventualities".

In addition to unarmed advisers deployed to Benghazi and other towns in eastern Libya - where British officials are in touch with a range of opposition figures - the government has placed on alert air, sea, and ground forces that could quickly intervene in the conflict if ordered to do so.

Typhoon jets would be deployed to RAF Akrotiri in one of the two sovereign base areas in Cyprus, while 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland - the Black Watch - is on 24 hours' notice to help in evacuation and humanitarian operations, defence officials said.
An RAF airborne radar and early warning aircraft is based in Malta where the Ministry of Defence has also set up a forward joint task force headquarters. Officials yesterday declined to say what intelligence they had gathered on the quality and number of pro-Gaddafi aircraft and armour.

Not so sure this is a good idea, but it does make the british government look slightly daft for decommissioning the carriers.

Ed, the current British government is Dafty McDaft with a touch of idiot evil - you KNOW this.

Don't the Brits and the French have some kind of agreement on carriers?

I think the agreement was to argue about it when one or other of us has finished building a carrier.

Oh, and britain no longer has any aircraft capable of landing on a carrier and delayed the order for the replacements so hey arrive sometime after the new carrier does.

otm

and the thing with this

Typhoon jets would be deployed to RAF Akrotiri in one of the two sovereign base areas in Cyprus

don't think typhoons can, as it were, deploy their ordnance to the ground yet

alright for a no fly zone as long as we ask someone else to take out the anti aircraft weaponry first.

This cartoon becomes more apt every day

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/2/28/1298936813850/Steve-Bell-01.03.2011-001.jpg

x-post Just saying that there enough analogous comparisons to several aspects of Iraq (RIP) that I could easily imagine the US getting drawn into a similar spiral, should we get involved and Qaddafi survives. Then again, to get involved in Libya with the ouster or killing of Qaddafi the explicit goal has just as much potential to backfire. Hence, do what we're doing - stand back cautiously and watch the situation, helping when it comes to humanitarian logistics but keeping away from military intervention for the time being. As sad as it may be to watch Qaddafi attack his own people. in many ways we have to let this sort itself out, a la Sudan but even more so.

I think it's worth taking the risk.

al-Gaddafi vs el-Qaddafi

don't think typhoons can, as it were, deploy their ordnance to the ground yet

The UK Typhoon is ready for air-to-ground attacks. Doesn't make western planes bombing tripoli any less likely to encourage support for Gaddafi.

First para of Krauthammer's latest column:

Voices around the world, from Europe to America to Libya, are calling for U.S. intervention to help bring down Moammar Gaddafi. Yet for bringing down Saddam Hussein, the United States has been denounced variously for aggression, deception, arrogance and imperialism.

Both these sentences are objectively true.

So, you just have to love the sleazy way he insinuates that the "voices" in the first sentence are coming from the same people who did the denouncing in the second sentence. He then spends his entire column exposing the hypocrisy of... unnamed, unknown and unidentifiable shadow people.

This would be an impressive exercise in empty rhetoric, if it weren't presented to the world by the Washington Post as having some kind substance worth publishing. This misleads people into thinking he is saying something, so they jump to the conclusion that his artful insinuations are correct.

any less likely to encourage support for Gaddafi

This is an unknown. Will it play into his rhetoric? Yes, absolutely. If it were successful in aiding in his ouster and we didn't subsequently fcuk with Libyan self-determination and politics, would we come out looking better than if we let him win a war of attrition or hold out indefinitely in his present pockets of support? Quite probably.

Hypocrisy of strawmen, Aimless.

The problem is not just Gaddafi's rhetoric, which it would play into, but the wider narrative of post-colonialism in which the deciding force is never the people themselves but the Western powers. Most of the people in Libya will have lived through the '86 bombings, probably without fond memories.

http://defensetech.org/2011/03/03/nato-troops-already-in-libya/