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

I live through something similar every day in South Florida. Cuban-Americans insist on treating Fidel as if here Stalin, and the comparison doesn't even do justice to Fidel's particular kind of rottenness.

here = he were

should probably--hey look!--Wait And See before we start calling deploying a couple belgian jets "plunging the USA into another war".

the point of the resolution was to delay an otherwise totally inevitable torture-sodden massacre while people try and figure out how it can be prevented or at least minimized. that is the aim. pretty okay with that for the moment.

When you start sending military jets, belgian or otherwise, into a country's air space, with orders to shoot at Libyan aircraft, then you are engaging in a very public, very open act of war, and it matters little whether the Libyans succeed in shooting the jets down, or only succeed in being shot down themselves.

well, I'll concede to the pro-action faction that the UN, specifically the Security Council, has voted to go ahead with the no-fly-zone, and Libya is violating UN policy. It's not quite like Iraq.

In a stark message, Obama said: "Muammar Gaddafi has a choice. The resolution that was passed lays out very clear conditions that must be met. The United States, the United Kingdom, France and Arab states agree that a ceasefire must be implemented immediately."

He said this meant:

• All attacks against civilians must stop.

•  Gaddafi must stop his troops from advancing on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, and pull them back from Ajdabiya, Misrata and Zawiya.

• Gaddafi must establish water, electricity and gas supplies to all areas.

• Humanitarian assistance must be allowed to reach the people of Libya.

"Let me be clear: these terms are not negotiable. These terms are not subject to negotiation.

"If Gaddafi does not comply with the resolution the international community will impose consequences and the resolution will be enforced through military action."

Ok, how the hell does this work? Aerial attacks work when you have a convoy going through the desert to assault Benghazi. But what do you do to force an army to retreat from a city it holds? It may be that the_West can bomb random Libyan infrastructure until Ghadaffi concedes, but that is far from inevitable and would surely build up collateral damage.

Livestream of bombing of central Benghazi.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12794589

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20110319/capt.1f2f3ebeed864243ab6bebbedd759148-1f2f3ebeed864243ab6bebbedd759148-0.jpg?x=400&y=227&q=85&sig=OsAmG1KbqH1dUOuT5bIygw--

A warplane of Gadhafi's forces is seen being shot down with the pilot parachuting out of it over the outskirts of Benghazi, eastern Libya, Saturday, March 19, 2011.

Wow, now that's a picture.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12795971

According to Al Jazeera, that's one of the two operational rebel planes.

wheeeee

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/51749000/jpg/_51749022_011220819-1.jpg

Really appreciate the BBC marking "rebel headquarters" on their satellite map of Benghazi. As with Al Jazeera providing realtime targetting information to Gaddafi's bombers, I don't think journalists will feel very welcome anywhere in Libya soon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/africa/20libya.html?hp

Colonel Qaddafi addressed President Obama as “our son,” in a letter that combined pleas with a jarring familiarity. “I have said to you before that even if Libya and the United States enter into war, God forbid, you will always remain my son and I have all the love for you as a son, and I do not want your image to change with me,” he wrote. “We are confronting Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, nothing more. What would you do if you found them controlling American cities with the power of weapons? Tell me how would you behave so that I could follow your example?”

But for Western leaders, the risks of the military intervention are probably less military than political, given the possibility of a divided Libya with no clear authority. Many of the leaders in Paris have called for Colonel Qaddafi to quit, and it may be that military intervention leads to negotiations with the opposition for the colonel and his family to go.

you're the one who needs history lessons, my friend. mayne

― Rich Lolwry (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, March 18, 2011 11:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

not even taking a position on this discussion but this is such a missed opportunity imo

and it may be that military intervention leads to negotiations

"it may be" is the whole gamble in that toss of the dice

Operation "Odyssey Dawn" underway - U.S. submarine launched cruise missile strikes on airfields and air-defense missile strikes. Operation names have definitely improved under the Obama administration - this is up there with "Sand Flea" or "Dewey Canyon".

Also, Mohammed Al Nabbous, the Benghazi founder of the shoestring livestreaming Libya Alhurra TV which I linked last night, died in fighting today. Audio only for the morbidly curious.

'odyssey dawn' is an awful name, sounds like a shit racehorse

Come now, aren't you eager for some righteous smiting in the land of the Lotus Eaters?

odyssey dawn is badass fuiud

feel like we should have a separate 'military action in libya' thread tbh

the uk has missiles?

yes but usually they're reserve for emo bands at glastonbury

well that makes them perfect for Odyssey Dawn

libyan action homeric amirite

hoo boy

I kinda wish Qaddafi WAS Saddam Hussein

Beyond being a longtime dickboy for the US, right?

The FRENCH bomb people now??

BreakingNews Breaking News
Arab League criticizes airstrikes on Libya - AFP http://bit.ly/gtGCrF
32 minutes ago

arab league getting clever - want one of those no fly zones that dont involve bombing

Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

the ticker says [elements of the] yemeni army is joining the opposition?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/21/yemen-military-commanders-opposition-tanks

Three Yemen army commanders, including a top general, have defected to the opposition calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, as tanks were deployed in the streets of the capital.

Dear people of Bahrain:

As the majority of you are Shia and Iran is run by fundamentalist Shia, and the US uses Bahrain as its personal port, you are condemned forever to authoritarian rule. Even if everyone of you gets a facebook page and pledges allegiance to American style democracy we will be sure that you can still be manipulated by Iran.
Good luck, now you know how people in China and other places feel.

Sincerely,

Western governments (and anti-imperialists who believe you can only have democracy if you magically do it on your own)

I am not aware of any existing shi'a political organization that is not allied with/funded by/directly controlled by Iran but feel free to prove me wrong

my impression is that a lot of the protesters are not doing it 'as shias' if you see what i mean. it shouldn't be automatically reduced to that anyway. but i don't know enough, about, say, the economic lot of the bahrainians. do the protesters have sources of finance locally? or are the shias locked out of the economy?

(as well as the political hierarchy)

They're locked out of everythng else, very much the poor relations I think

I find it hard to believe Bahrainian Sh'ia could go ahead and set up political organizations easily anyway. Are all of the protesters there really Iranian funded and controlled?

Yemen: President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s grip on power looked increasingly tenuous Monday as top generals, tribal leaders and diplomats turned against him, apparently dividing the military and leaving the long-serving former army officer barricaded in his presidential palace W. Post

Guardian take:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/21/yemen-regime-army-chiefs-defect

As NPR's Dina Temple-Raston has reported, the unrest in Yemen worries counterterrorism experts. That's because "al-Qaida's arm in Yemen has been one of the terrorist group's most active affiliates. (And) it is home to radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the English speaking-imam who has been accused of inspiring and directing young jihadists to attack the West."

man, egypt and mubarak, possibly libya and Godawfulli, i love metal and jjjusten, and now yemen and saleh - this has been a crazy month

Probably shouldn't post this under my actual name, but fuck you Lord Bell. This morning has been soul destroying and I'd quit if I could afford to.

Afraid you're going to have to explain that

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/middleeast/22bahrain.html?hpw

Bahrain-

But in the past week or two, the nature of the protest shifted — and so did any hope that demands for change would cross sectarian lines and unite Bahrainis in a cohesive democracy movement. The mainly Shiite demonstrators moved beyond Pearl Square, taking over areas leading to the financial and diplomatic districts of the capital. They closed off streets with makeshift roadblocks and shouted slogans calling for the death of the royal family.

“Twenty-five percent of Bahrain’s G.D.P. comes from banks,” Mr. Abdulmalik said as he sat in the soft Persian Gulf sunshine. “I sympathize with many of the demands of the demonstrators. But no country would allow the takeover of its financial district. The economic future of the country was at stake. What happened this week, as sad as it is, is good.”

To many around the world, the events of the past week — the arrival of 2,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and other neighbors, the declaration of martial law, the forceful clearing out of Pearl Square, the military takeover of the main hospital and then the spiteful tearing down of the Pearl monument itself — seem like the brutal work of a desperate autocracy.

But for Sunnis, who make up about a third of the country’s citizenry but hold the main levers of power, it was the only choice of a country facing a rising tide of chaos that imperiled its livelihood and future.

x-post re Lord Bell pr man for Arab governments

Bell has come under fire for working for the Egyptian Ministry of Information and the Economic Development Board of Bahrain because of the uprisings in those countries.

He accused Radio 4's Today of getting its facts wrong when it said he represented the now fallen Tunisian government as part of a wider report into Bell Pottinger's work for controversial foreign regimes

we don't bomb bankers - never have, never will

xpost

Aaron Bady well worth reading on the West's approach to Yemen:

The situation in Yemen has been steadily intensifying for some time, but this was a big escalation. 46 people were killed — in videos like this one, you can see bodies being carried away every ten seconds or so — while many hundreds, easily, were wounded. And that’s what our ally’s security forces were willing to do in the open. Yemen’s government then declared a state of emergency, which raised all sorts of concerns; as Amnesty International notes, for example:

Torture and other ill-treatment are widespread practices in Yemen and are committed, generally with impunity, against both detainees held in connection with politically motivated acts or protests and ordinary criminal suspects.

In response, Secretary Clinton produced the usual boilerplate:

We call on Yemeni security forces to exercise maximum restraint, refrain from violence, and permit citizens to freely and peacefully express their views.

“Maximum restraint” is an interesting development in the rhetoric, by the way, if you’re as morbidly fascinated as I am by the way words go into Clinton or Obama’s mouth to die. When live fire was used against protesters in Bahrain, for example, we got the same escalation in rhetoric from (state department spokesperson) Mark Toner:

The Bahraini government must exercise maximum restraint as it deals with this situation and must ensure that GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) forces do so as well.

http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/yemen/

Moammar Gadhafi's snipers and tanks are terrorizing civilians in the coastal city of Misrata, a resident said, and the U.S. military warned Tuesday it was "considering all options" in response to dire conditions there that have left people cowering in darkened homes and scrounging for food and rainwater.

Heavy anti-aircraft fire and loud explosions sounded in Tripoli after nightfall, possibly a new attack in the international air campaign that so far has focused on military targets. But conditions have deteriorated sharply in Misrata, the last major city in western Libya held by the rebel force trying to end Gadhafi's four-decade rule. Residents of the city 125 miles (200 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli, say shelling and sniper attacks are unrelenting. A doctor said tanks opened fire on a peaceful protest on Monday.

just a dictator soin some dictatin', nothing to see here...

Dictators gonna dictate

Good luck Bell Pottinger:

The European Union has defended Bahrain's violent repression of pro-democracy protesters, with the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton's right-hand man downplaying the crackdown with the comment "accidents happen".

Twenty-one people have been killed and up to 100 others are still missing after King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa unleashed his security forces last week, putting an end to two months of growing protests that had threatened the legitimacy of Bahrain's monarchy and stoked sectarian tensions throughout the Gulf.

The UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, has denounced the beating of medical personnel and the takeover of hospitals by security forces.

But Robert Cooper, one of the EU's highest-ranking diplomats and councillor to Ashton on the Middle East and the Balkans, told MEPs: "I'm not sure if the police have had to deal with these public order questions before. It's not easy dealing with large demonstrations in which there may be violence. It's a difficult task for policemen. It's not something that we always get right in the best western countries and accidents happen."

Briefing MEPs after a fact-finding mission to the Gulf, Cooper stressed that two of those killed were police. He said that Bahrain, home to the US fifth fleet, is "a rather pleasant, peaceful place".