It was just a few days ago that some Balloon Juice commenter was insisting over and over again that dirty fucking hippies were stupid because all that was going to happen was that the Arab League would start enforcing a no fly zone.
FWIW, I don’t know what I think about intervention in Libya. I’m skeptical but it doesn’t seem crazy the way Iraq did.
MikeJ
That was John Cole’s strawman.
JC
Straw men, straw men everywhere, I think.
Point 1: This is a much ‘better’ thing that Iraq War II.
Point 2: It ostensibly protects a group of protestors, that were JUST ABOUT to get slaughtered.
Point 3: This action is done through the right channels – U.N, Arab league, a true ‘legal’ coalition.
Point 4: Even given the three points above, this may still be a major eff up down the line. As Cole says, ‘what’s the endgame?”
In this case, the endgame is protected a whole bunch of civilians, about to get slaughtered.
But it could still be a tar baby, since Iraq and Afghanistan, definitely are. (Mainly for oil reasons.)
Regarding the ‘we could spend this money other places, given the deficit’ though, I think that train left the station when the tax cuts were extended for two years, and then everyone turned right around and started moaning about the deficit.
Every important commentator – and I mean EVERYONE in the ‘Village’ – is in on the deficit con. If they weren’t, they would say to every Republican, and every centrist Dem, every week, “you don’t care about the deficit, you voted for the tax cuts. So you have no authority to complain about deficits.”
In this case, as Atrios says, ‘NOBODY CARES’ about the deficit, when it’s their pet project – be that a new shiny war, or tax cuts, or whatever.
bleh
I put it somewhere between Iraq 1 and Iraq 2, closer to the former. But per John’s post below, and many others like it, it certainly seems reactive, ill-thought-out, and liable to huge negative consequences, and it defintely will be expensive. (I also have a sneaking feeling we were suckered by Cameron, who is desperate to deflect attention from his domestic policies, and by the Arab League, who are talking out of both sides of their mouth.)
Mr Stagger Lee
I am glad the Arab League is happy with our response….Not!
Just Some Fuckhead
It was prolly one of the Nicks.
FlipYrWhig
Atrios reads comments here? When was the last time he read his own (super)trainwreck of a comment section, 2002? Has any major blog declined further from its heyday than that one?
John Cole
@MikeJ: So much fail.
Davis X. Machina
While you were out we all decided you were wrong. You had your cell turned off or something.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: lolz.
Alex S.
I hope that Atrios’ judgement always depends on some Balloon Juice commenter…
The debate here is pretty good though, especially since there is no real debate anywhere else. I mean, DKos mentions it, but I can’t find a special thread about it, and not even one diary on the rec list (as I am writing this). FDL’s opinion is pretty one-sided. Elsewhere, it’s just one issue among many and the right-wing doesn’t like anything Obama does anyway. Still, their criticism is surprisingly low-key so far. It’s a difficult issue and the Obama administration only joined reluctantly. In some ways it is refreshing. The general uncertainty of the outcome forces everyone to actually think about the pros and cons of this war, and of war in general. It also foreshadows the time after the Pax Americana.
lacp
And so we have the shaggy-dog coalition: the US of A and our Eurobuddies get involved at the request of the Arab League to please, please create a “no-fly zone.” So, being all good-hearted and well-meaning and shit, we go in and start blowing up all the stuff you gotta blow up so you can, y’know, have a “no-fly zone.” And….right on cue we start getting objections from…the Arab League! “Yes, we wanted you to blow shit up, but we didn’t mean THAT much shit!” If I were a cynic, I would think that the authoritarian League members who are currently having some little problems with the democracy thing in their own countries were trying to use Libya for a “Hey! Look over there!” moment. Of course, I’m not a cynic so I’m assuming that this was all a translation problem and that the League was actually asking for the West to send more pesticides to Libya. Or maybe not.
Joe Beese
Sully has fallen out of love again.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/03/shut-up-and-leave-it-to-us.html
cbear
@FlipYrWhig:
I dunno, but it sounds like you left the ranks of commenters over at his place—which had to be a net gain.
mr. whipple
LOL.
FlipYrWhig
@cbear: U make me haz a sad.
arguingwithsignposts
There are times when we just have to have a kitteh.
ETA: First! … wait, damn!
Maude
@FlipYrWhig:
Those commenters say it’s a chat room. There are very few commenters left. I can’t remeber if the comments section was better, but it was different than it is now.
Why didn’t Atrios name the commenter? I think he did an example type comment, but I don’t remember reading that comment here.
And why the jab at Balloon Juice?
Fuzz
I think lost in this is that it really was a no win for Obama. If we bomb and go with a no fly zone then you get the (justifiable and reasonable) arguments that we’re meddling, it’s costly, we have no national interest and what is to me an important one: we’re setting a precedent that we’ll intervene militarily to stop mass casualties in other nation’s wars. At the same time though if he doesn’t we were going to have tens of thousands, maybe even more, Libyans die at the hands of Qaddafi’s army after weeks of them pleading with us and the international community to help them. Many rebel leaders have been explicitly asking for a no fly zone for weeks. People talk about the long memory of the Arab world, and thats not something they’d forget.
That said, it is annoying to hear the Europeans talking about military action they don’t have the capacity for without our assistance. If the UK and France want to cut their defense budget drastically, fine, but you have to change your policies and goals to account for that. You can’t continue to introduce resolutions for no fly zones when you don’t have enough bases to fly out of and have minimal if any air to air refueling and intel collection capabilities (cough Britain cough)
FlipYrWhig
@Maude: I don’t remember a golden age of comments at Atrios’s place. It was more like every thread was an open thread, rather than some group of people attempting to discuss, you know, “the post” or “politics.”
cbear
@Maude: I didn’t read it as a jab at BJ–I read it as a jab at our very own keyboard commandos who, while perhaps more altruistic that those on the gooper side, still share the same self righteous tone and attitude.
Corner Stone
@Maude:
Atrios wasn’t jabbing at BJ, he was pointing out the ridiculousness and naivete of the comment Uloborus made regarding an All Arab League NFZ. Cole linked to it in post 7 above in this thread.
People still seem to be willing marks, and hoping the ponies they seek are in Libya this time around.
ETA, I should add that joe from Lowell was an eager accomplice to Uloborus’ truly silly comment.
cbear
@FlipYrWhig: I’ll send you a cookie.
Anya
@Joe Beese: Sullivan falls in and out of love like a 12 year old. I hear these days he’s enamored with Mr. Orange and Bush’s former Budget Director.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
My audacityofhopeometer continues to display 0. I check it twice a day.
.
.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
the most recent accused Nick has entered a plea of not Nick. Also too, Corner Stone has been charged with fabricating evidence. Film at 11.
FlipYrWhig
@cbear: Because of the imperialist history of pastry, no cookie shall ever again be a legitimate response to hurt fee-fees.
JPL
Uloborus please take off your mask. I read the comments regularly and suddenly a new troll appears and embarrasses us all. I’m hanging my head in shame.
It’s nice to know that Atrios reads the comments also, too.
cbear
@FlipYrWhig: Ok, a hooker and an eight-ball? But that’s my limit.
arguingwithsignposts
SUPERTRAINS! Wait, wrong blog.
On a more serious note, I have stopped reading the BBS (baby blue satan) since he seems to have become the Instapundit of the left. And I rarely ever read his comments.
Marc
Duncan Black is a bitter whining asshole, and the sooner he quits blogging the better for humanity. When he isn’t sniping at the insufficiently pure he’s moaning about how he was right about something and no one listened to him, or endlessly riding one of his hobbyhorses. He personifies the failures of the left blogosphere and clearly isn’t enjoying blogging anymore. Go away Duncan, and make everyone happy.
FlipYrWhig
@cbear: I think “This is obviously a disaster” also qualifies as “self-righteous.” There could still be an interesting and pointed discussion about whether this is the wrong or right thing to do, but that’s not what’s happening so far.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@lacp: As far as I can tell, the UAE and Qatar are still sending planes to enforce the no-fly zone. In light of Amr Moussa’s statement (and subsequent back-pedaling) I think the Arab League should be front and center in this no-fly zone improsition. Only two nations in the Arab League, Syria and Algeria voted no on the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya. The other nations who voted for it should take the opportunity to put their money where their mouth is. I think the NATO forces will be making a mistake if they don’t put the Arab League members front and center on this thing.
Keith G
@Anya:
Fixed.
cbear
@eemom:
Nick’s here somewhere? How the hell did he get over to Libya in time for the hostilities he was so gung ho for—and back here so fast?
That boy is a blaze.
MikeBoyScout
It is early in the game comrade. Give it a few days for the crazy to sink in.
FlipYrWhig
@Marc: I don’t quite get how it makes any sense that the guy is a bona fide economics PhD and former professor, and yet, as far as I ever noticed, almost never has bothered to instruct his huge readership so that they might understand economics or public policy better, even in the midst of unprecedented economic crises. “Someone should do something,” a joke about policy, was as close as it ever got. It’s peculiar.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Joe Beese: Sullivan is a Fifth Columnist.
gnomedad
So is “Arab League” triggering the “Arab Lounge” ads? Meet your Arab princess!
Nom de Plume
@Marc:
When he isn’t sniping at the insufficiently pure he’s moaning about how he was right about something and no one listened to him, or endlessly riding one of his hobbyhorses.
I am curious as to when you witnessed all of this activity. Aside from the brief flurry of activity that surrounds his annual bleg, his “writing” consists mostly of open threads, which is all that his brainless commentariat wants anyway. Laziest fucker in the blogosphere.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’ve always been a big fan of Eschaton. It’s one of the only handful of blogs I’ve read daily for the last almost ten years. I like a lot of blogs but I just forget they exist if I take a day or two off.
Corner Stone
@eemom: By whom you amoral filth?
cbear
@FlipYrWhig: Flippy (may I call you Flippy?) if I may be so bold—-it’s a Western intervention in the Middle East, by definition it will be a disaster.
History, how does it work?
FlipYrWhig
@gnomedad: Ah, but “Princess” is to be taken literally. Woo away an Arab princess and do your part to overthrow repressive Middle Eastern monarchies!
And Another Thing...
@lacp: Back in the 80’s a colleague & I sat through a PR/propaganda presentation by the army about a chemical weapon containing liquid nerve agent called the weteye bomb that the army wanted to move to Utah. Their spiel was basically that the bombs were just insecticide. I kid you not, that’s what the army said. The chemical was liquid sarin. ALWAYS be suspicious.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@cbear: One of these times those people will learn how to be grateful after we blaze through there killing some, installing dictators to kill others. Or we’ll keep doing it til they learn.
Just Some Fuckhead
@cbear: Just don’t call him Nick. The jury is still out on that.
FlipYrWhig
@cbear: It feels like each successive effort is an attempt to un-shit the bed from the last failure, I agree. But all I really want to say here is that there are bad outcomes to action and also bad outcomes to inaction, and thus it’s hard to figure out what the best course would be, so if we want to fight about it we should fight about it in that spirit, not in the spirit that it’s obviously idiotic.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Barb (formerly Gex):
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
DFer
@FlipYrWhig:@Just Some Fuckhead: Is “Nick” the new codeword for “anyone challenging my closed-minded comfort zone?”
eemom
@Corner Stone:
by the wrongfully accused Nick, you odiferous excrement of evil.
FlipYrWhig
@Just Some Fuckhead: Nick doesn’t write with my characteristic panache.
JGabriel
@Marc:
I like the Baby Blue Satan. If you don’t, don’t read him.
.
arguingwithsignposts
I thought nick was all about the Bully Pulpit. so confused.
BombIranForChrist
I just wish we would hurry up and drop freedom bombs on Iran so that I can change my name back to Cuddly_Puppy_Love.
General Stuck
Welcome to the Balloon Juice Inquisition. Obot witches will burn.
Now Who brought the matches?
FlipYrWhig
@DFer: “Nick” is the codeword for “person who hasn’t been here as long as I have.” There’s a crew of veterans that once in a while gets snippy about the riffraff who started coming to the Balloon Juice club after it was already cool, thanks to them.
Tim
Of course it doesn’t. The planners and the rationale aren’t crazy like they were when we attacked Iraq. It helps, too, that other nations are participating genuinely; we weren’t even the first to begin operations. The result may not be much better, though – I’m skeptical, too.
cbear
@Just Some Fuckhead: Gotcha. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it that someone would create a sockpuppet to simply parrot their talking points.
I mean, WTF, does he think that another asshole making the same point as the first asshole is going to disguise the assholedom of that first asshole?
I don’t get it.
eemom
hey Comrade DougJ — you could do a little IP address research and reveal Corner Stoned to be the delusional adolescent schoolgirl he is before these Salem Nick Trials get out of hand. Jussayinzall.
stuckinred
“Well, now, the gum’s on the other shoe.”
— Nick Danger, on a sudden plot shift,
in The Case of the Missing Yolks
eemom
@General Stuck:
ah, good General — I see we are of one mind on this matter.
Just Some Fuckhead
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, he has a different schtick. Your thing seems to be to boil everything down to an absolutely intractable situation, then appear to go reluctantly with the President.
FlipYrWhig
@cbear: Yes, whenever two people show up at similar times and agree chummily with one other’s views, it is suspicious.
Just Some Fuckhead
@cbear:
What’s really amazing is how many people think it’s cool simply because Nick’s creatures were pushing their agenda.
Joel
I’m with DougJ here; the Iraq War (II) was a clusterfuck from the start. This feels different. At least there’s some sort of due process. I’m not saying I support the airstrikes, but I’m not ready to condemn them, either. It could get fucked. But who knows?
John W.
I’m skeptical of the operations, but the rationale for engaging is a lot stronger than Iraq was. There’s a lot of ways mission creep could sneak in, but I feel relatively confident the team in place doesn’t want that to happen. That’s not everything, but it’s something.
BTW, I don’t know why Atrios is holding the standard for political responsibility to be whatever some BJ commenter said. No one in their right mind thought the Arab League would actually be the ones enforcing it.
If two people saying something on this site make a view ipso facto a mainstream view, we’re in bigger trouble than we thought.
4tehlulz
>It was just a few days ago that some Balloon Juice commenter…
Remember when we used to mock rightards for pulling the same shit?
Good times, man. Good times.
FlipYrWhig
@Just Some Fuckhead: You know, that actually sounds about right. Yes, I like the idea of cutting Obama some slack as he struggles with intractable situations. I probably say things like that a lot. Also, I dislike Glenn Greenwald.
Dave
This is not Iraq II. This went through the UN after a request from the Arab League. Unlike W’s twisting of UN resolution to justify an unjust war, this action is being done by the book and in accordance with the UN resolution. It’s more like Iraq I.
And yes, this thing can go pear-shaped a hundred different ways. But this is the kind of thing the UN is SUPPOSED to do. If they won’t engage in this, what’s the point of having it?
FlipYrWhig
@4tehlulz: It was just a few days ago that some Atrios commenter said, “Here are some indie rock songs I am listening to. Who wants to flirt awkwardly with me?”
Mark S.
@FlipYrWhig:
No, I think “Nick” is codeword for “Democrats should never fight for anything they believe in and should just aim to take a position slightly to the left of Orrin Hatch.”
Sapient
@FlipYrWhig: You said this so well, FlipYrWhig. Yet, Eschaton is on my blog bookmarks and I look at his site daily. His continued success is attributable to obsessive compulsive behavior.
I used to enjoy the comments section – the comments seemed so hilarious. Now, not so much. It all started to change during the 2008 election. So sad. I don’t look at the comments anymore.
Bill Arnold
I am frankly more interested in how/why the administration decided on limited intervention.
Guessing on no evidence that there is a camp in the administration who believes that Qaddafi is deeply unpredictable in his behavior, that he is actually is what the Saddam Hussein was accused of being by the GWBush administration.
And that this camp believes that Qaddafi might use his poison gas supplies in terrorist operations (I’ve seen this speculation in writing, maybe the NYTimes), and that he might send a trade delegation to North Korea to explore buying nuclear weapons with cash or oil, to use in untraceable attacks on one or more Western cities.
Joe Buck
Atrios has a way of getting to the point in fewer words than any other blogger. But his comment section is useless and not worth bothering with.
Sapient
@Dave: Yes. The Texas Republican Party has long been in favor of withdrawing from the UN. It’s amazing to me that now the left doesn’t get it that a UN resolution against a dictator who is threatening to blow away his own people – that’s a good thing to enforce!
And Another Thing...
@FlipYrWhig: Basically, when it comes to supporting the guy in charge, tie goes to the runner.
Obama clearly wasn’t looking for this fight, is pushing for a new paradigm of how we interact with the rest of the world, and I think it looked like Qaddfi was ready to start a blood bath. So Obama gets the benefit of the doubt.
It’s one of those times where I’m REALLY glad it isn’t a decision I have to make.
General Stuck
@John W.:
As a matter of pure politics, it would be pol suicide for Obama to send in ground combat troops, and have the first one come home in a flag draped coffin. The country is fed up with that kind of warfare, and especially the dem base. There would be nothing much more that he could do to doom his reelection, than doing that. And reading his remarks on the matter, it sounds like he full well knows such a result. And I saw no wiggle room in his words. But he will likely be put under intense pressure to expand the current mission, and it will be a major test, likely a decisive one that he rejects those pressures. But paradoxically, and in a good way, the calls for ground involvement most likely will not come from the military itself, as they are burned out, and worn out from a decade of ground war fighting. The calls to expand will come from the right, especially neo con right, but it will also come from the dem centrists, beginning with Hillary, and others. That will be harder to deal with.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
no, his “schtick” is to actually engage in the effort of thinking about stuff — unlike the schticks of you and Stoned, which consist of 24/7, zero-content insults in the guise of bored cynicism, as pathetic cover for the obvious fact that your assholedom in real life has left you no other target than random internet strangers.
arguingwithsignposts
And just fwiw, wtf does the BBS give a fuck what some random commenter on the Intertubes says? Seriously. Does Supertrains not have anything better to do? Grow a spine, Mr. Duncan Black and stop trolling other people’s comment threads unless you are awesome enough to join us in the fray, asshole.
(btw, major props for those like TBogg who have done so)
Just Some Fuckhead
@eemom: You mean Nick, or Flippy? Because Flippy acknowledged I was correct, and Nick outed himself as a bad faith astroturfer in the Game On thread.
Marc
Progressives should have a lot of problems with the M.O. at Atrios. He’s incredibly intolerant of criticism (thus the endless “dirty fucking hippie” crap whenever anyone disagrees with him on anything). He never admits error, he doesn’t explain his reasoning, and he never engages honestly with anyone who has a viewpoint different from his own. He spawns legions of copycats posting his little quips. Many of his guest posters, like Avedon, have an unbelievably intense loathing of Obama.
Basically, he reminds me of the cool kids in high school – the ones who set arbitrary rules that other people are supposed to follow and mock anyone who doesn’t fit in or challenges them. The one-sentence approach doesn’t work anymore.
map106
@JC:
You just proved Atrios’ point. The Arab League is already withdrawing their support, this whole enterprise is more than a no fly zone, and the US is already taking charge. It’s the biggest mistake Obama has made.
I sure as shit won’t vote for him again.
Dave C
Who the fuck is Nick?
Omnes Omnibus
@map106:
Links?
mr. whipple
@FlipYrWhig: Agreed.
:)
Church Lady
Doug, it only doesn’t seem crazy because your guy is the one that made the decision. If it had been McCain, on the other hand, you’d probably think this foray into another Muslim country was batshit insane.
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: just google “bullshit”.
Corner Stone
@eemom: Link please you Cape Buffalo of Stupid ™.
All I saw was DFer deny the charge. Just like Merkin did before Nick so sloppily outed himself.
You said I was charged with fabricating evidence, which would mean posting fake logs or misquoting someone and claiming they had said the quote.
Dave
@map106: Right. The much better plan was to just let Khadaffi slaughter thousands of civilians. That’s re-election gold!
ItAintEazy
I dunno, I kind of like the wiseass chucklehead high-school cafeteria feel of Atrios comment threads. I mean, some people might complain about Obama saying it’s going to be a long, hard struggle in , others will quip “huh-huh-huh, he said ‘long’. Huh-huh-huh, ‘hard”.”
Just Some Fuckhead
@Dave C:
We are all Nick.
arguingwithsignposts
@map106:
Here comes the obot hammer: Who the FUCK are you going to vote for? Pawlenty, Romney, Barbour, Gingrich?
If you say our pal Ralph Nader I’d sign up for committing you to a mental institution.
Oh, wait, you might be “sitting this one out.” Go fuck yourself, asshole. Seriously. If you think registering your disapproval via not voting and allowing some asshat repub to gain the White House would be an acceptable solution, I have no use for your fucking ass. You want to burn your own house down, be my fuckin’ guest. But don’t expect anyone to cheer if you want to burn all our houses down, you fucking piece of shit.
stuckinred
@arguingwithsignposts: How do you really feel?
Bob Loblaw
This blog has thoroughly lost itself up its own asshole. Hilarious.
Corner Stone
@arguingwithsignposts: Let it all out AWS, it’s ok. I’m sure M_C will be back soon. We’re all a little stressed about it. We’ll get through this. Together.
ItAintEazy
@arguingwithsignposts:
The Two-Party System: the gift that keeps on giving.
Gus
Shit, this thread is starting to read like an Atrios comment thread (with a good deal less comity).
ppcli
@Dave C: It is, I believe, a reference to a troll a couple of days ago who ran the spiel “I’m a Democrat, and pro-this, and pro-that just like you, but I am troubled by argument x” – then argument x would be some obvious bullshit infinitely refuted Fox News/Rush authorized talking point. Then some other guy we had never heard of kept cropping up and served as his echo chamber. He slipped up when in one persona he referred back to something he said earlier using the other persona, with a “As I told you before…” preface.
alwhite
@Joe Beese:
So, let me get this right: stupid, pointless bullshit war started by a Republican “RAH, RAH, RAH, USA! USA!USA” but stupid, pointless bullshit war started by someone who claims to be a Democrat “This is wrong”
That, in a nutshell is why that useless piece of shit should be ignored.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@arguingwithsignposts: I love that you take on that attitude. I find that the people most willing to let things get worse are not the people who are first in line to feel the worsening conditions.
OzoneR
@map106:
where the hell are you reading this shit?
The Dangerman
@Bill Arnold:
I don’t think NK has such a Death Wish.
Now, Libya using mustard gas as a terrorist tool; entirely different matter. I would expect that response to that would be overwhelming.
I predicted this morning that the Kaddafi Clan runs off someplace; still feel that way tonight. Obviously, a nuke or mustard gas means that isn’t the outcome.
OzoneR
@Dave:
Obviously, one of our missiles might kill an innocent civilian and that’s bad.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I thought the Arab League had walked back their walk-back of their initial endorsement of the thing they asked us to do?
The Naderites and the PUMAs joined forces to create a vortex of sanctimonious crazy, but even before then the funniest people had started to drift off.
Elia
I would like to co-sign all of this.
And I’m starting to get really grossed out, watching the Obama apologists twist themselves into pretzels the past 3 months. Tribalism, tribalism, tribalism.
Mnemosyne
@OzoneR:
Not on al-Jazeera English — their liveblog reported today that more countries have come on board that were initially skeptical, like Qatar and Turkey (scroll down to 9:52 pm).
Suffern ACE
@map106:
The enterprise was always more than a “no fly zone.” No fly zone is what they tell people who then make assumptions that military operations run from “planes shooting down other planes” directly to “school children get new books and the electricity comes back on.”
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@Corner Stone:
.
.
.
.
Allan
@eemom: This, times 100.
arguingwithsignposts
@Elia:
Here’s a check:
Manning: Bad
Libya: tough call, trying to do what’s best w/o it being a u.s. thing
congress: All fucked up.
I don’t have to agree with everything Obama does to realize he’s in a tough situation here wrt libya. And if anyone thinks the neocons or the GOPers could do better, then I welcome them to vote for those fucking assholes while I’m trying desperately to get a card to another country, because that is fucked up.
Nobody should be sitting out the next election, period, full stop. Unless you want Scott Walker crazy roaming the land.
Mnemosyne
@cbear:
Libya is not part of the Middle East. It’s in North Africa, west of Egypt and east of Tunisia and Algeria.
JPL
@Just Some Fuckhead: Only at nite.
How do we know that Uloborus isn’t Atrios aka Duncan Black?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mnemosyne:
“The Eisenhower Doctrine, a 1957 foreign policy of the United States government, was the first to officially use the term Middle East.[9] Secretary of State John Foster Dulles defined the Middle East as “the area lying between and including Libya on the west and Pakistan on the east, Syria and Iraq on the North and the Arabian peninsula to the south, plus the Sudan and Ethiopia.”[9] In 1958, the State Department explained that the terms “Near East” and “Middle East” were interchangeable, and defined the region as including only Egypt, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar.[13]”
stuckinred
This some dicey shit up in here, I don’t suppose I can get an Illini-Kansas thread???
Allan
@Elia: Shouldn’t you be getting yourself arrested at Quantico? Unless you put your body in front of the Great Torturing Machine, you are complicit!
Mnemosyne
@Elia:
I’m glad to see that Marshall is able to examine the actual situation we’re stepping into rather than running around with his hair on fire screaming about how this is exactly like the Iraq War (yes, Sully, I’m looking at you).
Suffern ACE
@Elia: Wow. Who kidnapped Josh Marshall and replaced him with the old Josh Marshall.
Roger Moore
@ItAintEazy:
Yeah, it sucks, but it’s the system we’ve got and we have to deal with it. Bitch all you want, but don’t think that complaining is a substitute for doing something positive.
OzoneR
@arguingwithsignposts:
I think there is a subsection of liberals who DO want Scott Walter crazy roaming the land.
Bob Loblaw
This thread is lamer than the NCAA tournament quality of play. I’m not sure I can handle four more rounds of teams having no idea how to play in the last minute. I blame Obama.
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: Ummm. Sully is saying that this is WORSE than the old gulf war…nuances, nuances.
Elia
@arguingwithsignposts: You know, it’s possible for Obama to suck less than the neocons but still suck.
And since when is Libya a tough situation? If he just did nothing, what’s so tough about that? The dead on his conscience? Considering all of the sacrifices of one’s personal ethics it takes to be POTUS, I doubt it.
And, anyway, I’m tired of hearing arguments based around how we think he’s a good guy or whatever at heart. He very well may be–in fact, I’m pretty sure he is. So what? The point is that our system is utterly fucked and he’s clearly not much of a solution.
But even getting away from “big picture” critiques, I still think this Libyan thing is dumb; but more importantly, the way they’ve gone about implementing it has been disastrous.
Mnemosyne
@Just Some Fuckhead:
IOW, even the State Department couldn’t make up their minds about what it should be called since they called it both “the Near East” and “the Middle East”?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Allan:
Some people might consider this a “derailing” comment. Not us veterans of the blog wars of course, but some n00bs that insist on rules for thee and rules for me.
stuckinred
@Bob Loblaw: Tell us all about it coach.
slag
Not one of your best trolling efforts, DougJ. But I’m kind of with you on this:
Though I’d say I’m very skeptical.
arguingwithsignposts
@Bob Loblaw: Yes, I blame obama for both those North Carolina teams making it through to the next round. (cue @burnspesq Duke defense in 3 … 2 … 1…)
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mnemosyne: I was just suggesting it isn’t as cut and dried as, say, the Equator.
soonergrunt
@cbear: I’ll take some of that action.
Joseph Nobles
The Arab League has already walked back the “non-support” comment. No, I can’t find the link right now, it’s in my Twitter feed and I’m looking for it, consarn it.
JPL
OT…What’s up with VCU?
Elia
@Allan: Amazing zinger, dude. It’s good to know that a REAL democrat points and laughs at people like Daniel Ellsburg.
FlipYrWhig
@Just Some Fuckhead: I guess I acknowledged that you had a bead on my default position around here. I’d like to think it’s because I think things through on their merits and apply a common metric to them, rather than having it be knee-jerk support, but YMMV.
arguingwithsignposts
@Elia:
Well, since he’s not just playing for the U.S. like some EU head of state, I’d say it’s a bit different. I hate the Libya situation, fwiw.
But I’m not blaming Obama atm. I am waiting for more evidence. Call me crazy if you’d like, but I know one thing for sure: John McCain would be a whole helluva lot worse.
Mnemosyne
@Just Some Fuckhead:
To confuse things even further, when people talk about the North African Campaign in WWII, it includes Egypt and, yes, Libya.
4tehlulz
Sounds like the GOP position on global warming.
John W.
@General Stuck:
I feel pretty confident that Obama won’t send ground troops to a new theater (including Libya) unless they are peacekeepers .
(or something drastically changes like another 9/11 event, but we’ll put that one aside)
soonergrunt
@FlipYrWhig: If you’re going to have the bad outcome no matter what you do, do nothing. It’s cheaper and saves resources for later.
OzoneR
@Elia:
The throngs of people, including lefties, complaining he left a population wanting freedom to die in their city because he didn’t have the stomach to do anything about it. It’s another Rwanda, Darfur, etc.
The schaudenfreude (sp?) about this is that it’s vindicating what I said about Darfur in 2003 to hippies who bugged me with their whining over it…which was “you couldn’t handle what we’d have to do to save those people.”
stuckinred
@JPL: Making the Boilers look like a youth league team!
Elia
@arguingwithsignposts: I agree about McCain. Nowhere will you ever find me arguing that there’s any comparison between Obama and the contemporary American right or that I think there’s any national politician out there with a legit chance to win the White House who would be better than him. I just feel like this Libya thing was not thought through enough and I worry that it’s going to discredit humanitarian-driven foreign policy for a generation.
Allan
@Just Some Fuckhead: Coming from a master derailer, world-class bully, and creepy internet stalker with emaciated women chained in his basement, that’s high praise indeed.
mr. whipple
If Atrios was looking for an insane comment to make a point, why didn’t he look for one at home? It isn’t like there’s any lack of examples.
soonergrunt
@Tim: All the proof anyone should need that this is bad on every level. Timmaaaaaaay supports it.
Mark S.
How many people had VCU in the sweet 16? They kicked the crap out of Georgetown as well.
JPL
@stuckinred: What did they put in the water in Richmond, VA… I can imagine that there are bookies wondering the same thing.
Elia
@OzoneR: I think he’s pretty sufficiently proven that whining from his left is not something that represents a real problem for him politically.
Allan
@Elia: I had to go to the emergency room yesterday because I was laughing so hard at that attention whore. But why weren’t you THERE, man?
OzoneR
@Elia:
that’s a little much. Not thought through enough, we’ve been talking about this for weeks. How would this discredit humanitarian-driven foreign policy?
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Mnemosyne: Internet pedants do what Internet pedants do.
stuckinred
@JPL: Put some of this on Purdue, they are tough but thin. Kicking Barlow off the team is significant.
Allan
@Elia: Considering that the whining, inept PR stunts, and impotent tantrums from the Purist Poutrage Posse only strengthens Obama’s cred with the incredibly important moderate independent voting bloc that determines Presidential elections, I believe he views you as what people call “useful idiots.”
Mnemosyne
@soonergrunt:
Is that the same Tim? I thought that Tim had been banned by ABL.
@Barb (formerly Gex):
Just my small contribution to the fine tradition of B-J pedantry, ma’am.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Holy rollerskating fuck people.
@Just Some Fuckhead: And here I thought Christine O’Donnell was Nick. Oh.
OzoneR
@Elia:
No, but my comment didn’t specify the left, I just included them in a larger group. Honestly, it was more dangerous for him to suffer the endless attacks from the right about how the “Benghazi massacre” proved he was weak, indecisive and naive on foreign policy and not winning to make hard potentially unpopular decisions to stop atrocities in the world. Their voice drives national narratives and the left would be in silent agreement, thus he’d be defenseless…and they’d also have a logical point. Sad, but true.
what the left says is irrelevant, they’re barely a political force anyway, and even the left doesn’t know where it falls here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Is that a new religious order? They sound like more fun than the Trappists or the Dominicans.
Suffern ACE
@OzoneR:
That is a good question. If polls are to be believed, foreign aid is the least popular line item in the U.S. budget. (At least it’s the one that people want to cut to balance the budget). And I’m thinking that it is the non-military stuff that people have in mind when they think “foreign aid.” Just guessing.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Mnemosyne: Oh, I was referring to the original person, not you. Unless I’m getting confused who is correcting whom. (Had to use whom, lest this pedantry spin out of control.)
Elia
@OzoneR: Who is we? People who go on messageboards? Yeah so that’s – what- hmm 60% of the voting public right?
Anyway it could discredit that notion because if you read on how he reached this decision, those lobbying for action were overwhelmingly from the human rights bloc, and the Wise Old Men of vital interests and national security were opposed. If this goes poorly, we get a whole ‘nother round of everyone knowing that foreign policy is for Serious Adults and not bleeding heart hippies.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I may have to reconsider my position on religion…
Just Some Fuckhead
@Allan:
Everyone already knows how awesome I am. Let’s talk about you. Since you’re the new emperor around here and can have people banned for “thread derailment”, explain how it is that you can continue to derail threads? Is this one of those “It’s okay if the emperor does it” things?
Just Some Fuckhead
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
haha, funny one, Nick.
Mark S.
@Mnemosyne:
That’s gotta be a different Tim. It sounded nothing like him.
Joseph Nobles
OK, the best link I can find for the walk-back of the walk-back by the Arab League:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2011/03/20/2011-03-20_action_in_libya_has_gone_too_far_arab_league_and_russia_complain_as_civilian_cas.html
soonergrunt
@Mnemosyne:
@Mark S.: Well, the pie filter triggered, so I checked it in IE, but you may be right. I went back and rechecked the comment. This Tim is, if not eloquent, well spoken and seems to have genuinely thought through his position.
Tim, if you’re somebody new, please accept my apologies and welcome to Balloon-Juice. You’re wrong about this thing, but you seem to be wrong for the right reasons.
If you’re the old tim, go fuck yourself with a dull chansaw and then set yourself on fire and roll in excrement to smother the flames.
Have a nice day.
Dennis SGMM
I don’t like our intervention in Libya one little bit. If the Arab League, the French and the Brits want to intervene that’s fine, it’s not our fight. Having said that, I very much hope that Obama is strong enough to keep our involvement there to a minimum. I’ve already heard the “Only the U.S. has the capability to …” argument and I find it worrying because it may well be used to chivvy us into using some of our other “Only the U.S…” capabilities.
Napoleon once said that the first casualty of war is your battle plan. Hoping he’s wrong on this one.
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly Gex):
I was the original pedant, with my insistence that Libya is in North Africa, not the Middle East. Though apparently it sometimes and also on special occasions is considered part of the Middle East when the person talking thinks that grouping makes sense. So who knows anymore?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: They do, don’t they? I was still hoarding commas from last weekend, in case Omnes needed any.
It should have read:
Holy rollerskating fuck, people.
But I may like your version better. I’ll look into what it might take to start an order.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mnemosyne: It’s entirely possible to be both.
Mark S.
Stupid Longhorns were my sleeper pick to get in the Final Four.
Bill Arnold
@The Dangerman:
You’re probably right. I don’t share your confidence. Maybe partially conflating the crazy Libyans in the Back To the Future movies with reality, but Qaddafi does have a reputation. (1) someone sniping out the embassy window and killing a British policewoman, (2) Berlin disco bombing, for which Reagan claimed NSA intercept evidence, (3) Pan Am 103 (some blame Iran for this one), (4) UTA Flight 772, plus a lot of (alleged?) funding and over public support for radical and terrorist organizations. On another hand, he spent the last decade or so trying to rebuild his reputation, which is very rare behavior to see.
Anyway, the question is not whether this is a fully plausible scenario, but whether this sort of thinking is at least partially driving the BObama administration.
soonergrunt
This just in,
Ghadaffi’s, Khadaffi’s Qadafi’s Kadaffee’sCrazy Joe’s compound in Tripoli was attacked a short time ago.Can you say ‘regime change’ kiddies? I bet you can!
BTW–Crazy Joe is still alive.
Bob Loblaw
@FlipYrWhig:
Wringing your hands constantly and saying you’re glad you’re not the President isn’t as intellectually serious as you think it is…
Hint: bemoaning “intractability” constantly is as foolish as pretending none ever exists.
@Allan:
So for all your shit talking about commenting standards, you’re basically just a random buzzword generator, aren’t you?
Purist Poutrage Posse? I’d be embarrassed to lend my name to such a lame insult. Also, I think you forgot to include the word Professional there at the beginning. To really tie it all together.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Thanks, but I’m all set for commas. Feel free to use yours as you see fit.
4tehlulz
Today, Peter King is sad, for one of the donors to his Irish freedom fighters is under attack.
Just Some Fuckhead
@soonergrunt: C’mon, get real. How can you enforce a no fly zone without blowing up the guy who is trying to violate it?
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: Hey buddy, can you spare an ampersand? I got some choice semicolons to trade.
mr. whipple
@soonergrunt:
Link please?
And Another Thing...
@arguingwithsignposts: And a hearty AMEN.
Elia
@soonergrunt: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/03/20/libya.civil.war/index.html?hpt=T1
Can someone explain the “we are not going after Qaddafi” comment? Why does he have to say this in public? What law or whatever is this in response to?
Bob Loblaw
@Mark S.:
Never, ever, ever trust a Rick Barnes team.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob Loblaw: Fair enough. Those are the topics I happen to get interested in commenting about. Those, the ones about Greenwald, and the ones about cats.
Dennis SGMM
@mr. whipple:
A missile struck an administrative building in Qaddafi’s residence compound.
soonergrunt
@mr. whipple: Sorry about that.
Here linked through the headline on the MSNBC home page “GHADHAFI’S TRIPOLI COMPUND HIT”
Also the front of CNN:
HEART OF GHADHAFI COMPOUND HIT which links to Coalition Targets Ghadhafi Compound.
mr. whipple
@Dennis SGMM:
@soonergrunt:
Thanks!
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Mnemosyne: Well, I can be a pedant myself, so I hope no insult was taken. Plus, everything is fuckwacky these days.
Mnemosyne
@Bill Arnold:
I think he’s the one guy in the world that Bush’s stupid “let’s make them think we’re crazier than they are” strategy actually worked on. Plus, it was of course better to be getting money from the US post-9/11 than to be the next name on our shit list.
AhabTRuler
Well, the USAF only knows one trick, but it knows it well.
Dennis SGMM
@mr. whipple:
More than welcome! My comments may not make much sense but, I can Google like a mad thing.
The Dangerman
@soonergrunt:
I read they’ve already had journalists there to point out the circular hole in the building, claiming it was indication of a cruise missile.
Not sure cruise missiles leave nice circular holes (unless it was a dud, I suppose).
mr. whipple
“I feel like in two days max we will destroy Gadhafi,” said Ezzeldin Helwani, 35, a rebel standing next to the smoldering wreckage of an armored personnel carrier, the air thick with smoke and the pungent smell of burning rubber. In a grisly sort of battle trophy, celebrating fighters hung a severed goat’s head with a cigarette in its mouth from the turret of one of the gutted tanks.”
The goat head is a nice touch.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@soonergrunt: I’ve got a bunch of umlauts I can’t get rid of. You can have them if you’d like.
Omnes Omnibus
@Barb (formerly Gex):
I get confused, is fuckwacky more, or less, insane than bugfuck?
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly Gex):
I am geeky enough that I don’t consider being called a pedant an insult. :-) But, yes, there definitely seems to be a higher proportion of freakouts right now. Fortunately for all of us, it looks like my new ADHD medication is working, so I’ve (mostly) stayed out of the insult-fests, fun as they are.
soonergrunt
@AhabTRuler: Well, if you really are trying to shut off a genocide perpetrated by a top-down strongman regime, you go for the strongman first and see if the peons will stop what they’re doing and stand around in confusion.
@The Dangerman: It wasn’t a dud, and there’s no nice circular hole. There’s a 20 to 25 meter section of a collapsed building, the roof and second floor pancaked onto the first.
Corner Stone
@AhabTRuler: Proselytizing? Because you know some countries are immune to that kind of thing in situ.
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt:No, thank you, commas are my bag.
Dennis SGMM
@The Dangerman:
It probably depends on how the thing was fuzed. A lot of the big stuff is fuzed to go off after it’s already gone through something.
Suck It Up!
@Elia:
What person here has ever made such an argument? this is one of those ridiculous talking points that comes from the gg,fdl, dkos, du crowds. talk about tribalism.
Richard Fox
The lunatic colonel or whatever he styles himself did seem on the point of butchering the whole rebel city, and moving it a wee bit closer to genocide.
Frankly I didn’t see any alternative to stopping that, short of outside intervention. (Of course it is easy to say if one’s own skin isn’t involved, and it gives me no comfort in playing arm chair strategist of a sort.)
Having said that.. one thing I always observe… wars have a nasty habit of never going according to plan, so I am genuinely dreading how this plays out.
In a word, shit.
Elia
@Suck It Up!: I took the “he’s in a tough spot” argument to mean as much.
Also I’m pretty sure GG is always ranting about how Obama is actually a bad person who WANTS Manning tortured and WANTS to kill all whistleblowers.
But, yes, of course–we’re either with Obama/Jane Hamsher, or we’re against Obama/Jane Hamsher.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: WAI would you do that?
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Omnes Omnibus: Bug fuck has a more onerous feel to it. Fuckwacky is notable for being highly disorienting.
@Mnemosyne: Hey, I have ADHD too! Plus OCD. And I’m a programmer, so pedantry is sort of a reflex for my personality type.
Omnes Omnibus
@Barb (formerly Gex): Noted. Thank you.
4tehlulz
Would the Situation Room be considered a legitimate military target?
If so, you’d have to blow up the White House to get it.
Not saying this wasn’t attempt to whack Qaddafi, just that there would be a reason to target the compound without intending to kill him.
Cat
@Dave:
Holy F’ing Crap…
Do you know how many innocent civilians are killed every day around the world by roving gangs of aholes who are associated with a political movements?
WTF makes Libya so special?
If you just arbitrarily say these civilians need protecting, but these we aren’t going to protect you are a pretentious ahole who rarely pays attention or psychopath who is using the conflict for personal gain.
Elia
[email protected]4tehlulz: Forgive my ignorance about international law, but are they not allowed to specifically target the Colonel? Is this because it’s a UN action? Because otherwise I thought al-Awlaki sets a new standard.
Mike in NC
@JPL:
Ask Rep. Eric Cantor, as they seem to like reelecting that douche every two years.
Omnes Omnibus
@4tehlulz: Any command and control center could arguably be a legitimate military target. In addition, I would doubt that, even if the Q-man wasn’t targeted, anyone would be greatly disturbed if, in the course of an air strike, something bad happened to him.
Blue Carolinian
Holy shit….my bracket is destroyed.
Who the hell are VCU??
And Another Thing...
@soonergrunt: This will get me in a lot of trouble, but I don’t think it’s a bad idea to show the SOB we can reach out & touch him anytime we want. The obvious thing for him to do now is spend a whole lot of time moving around and sleeping a different place each night. That’ll play heck with his command and control structure.
I really don’t like us being in this, but I DO want us to be shrewd and competent about it.
soonergrunt
@Barb (formerly Gex):
Well, since OO said at 197 that he wasn’t interested, yeah, I’ll take your umlauts. I’ll give you three semicolons for each.
And Omnes, Omnibus, you don’t know what you’re missing out on, man. You could get that whole ‘serial comma’ thing going! For example:
You could also use them between closely related independent clauses not conjoined with a coordinating conjunction, thusly:
Come on! You know you wanna!
Bob Loblaw
Wait, why are people acting squeamish about potential attacks on Qaddafi himself? What makes his life worth more consideration than his grunts in the field?
Sapient
@Cat: “Do you know how many innocent civilians are killed every day around the world by roving gangs of aholes who are associated with a political movements?”
No. How many? Cite?
Viva BrisVegas
It’s one thing to be sceptical and its another to be paralysed.
The big difference between Iraq and Libya is UN Security Council Resolution 1973.
All this whinging about the US “going it alone yet again” kind of forgets that in Iraq Bush had deliberately decided to go it alone. It was his choice to do so, there was no international arm twisting. It was an American clusterfuck, with a bit of British window dressing.
UNSC Resolution 1973 represents that rarest of things, international consensus. The UN response to the Libya problem is how the UN is supposed to work. Its a multilateral response to an untenable situation.
Libya may or may not be another quagmire, but it is the first time in my memory that the UN Security Council has actually attempted to perform the function for which it was created. That at least seems a a good thing to me.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@soonergrunt: Sweet! I’m a programmer. I need semicolons like nobody’s business. I’ll rummage around to see if there if I have any other punctuation lying around if you have more semicolons for trade.
soonergrunt
@Elia: He is a walking command and control node, doing things that the UN resolution specifically allows the attacking force to stop.
That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a good idea. You gotta leave somebody alive to turn the bad shit off. There really isn’t much of (if any) alternative to Crazy Joe.
Joel
@4tehlulz: In this case, your name is apropos.
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: In one of ABL’s two spaces after a period threads, I came down firmly on the side of the Oxford, or serial, comma. I just happen to have plenty of punctuation on hand at the moment. Furthermore, I have little use for umlauts.
soonergrunt
@Barb (formerly Gex): you probably have a shortage of parentheses, brackets and braces, like most programmers.
Hey, can anybody help Gex out with the brackets and braces and parentheses?
Sapient
@Viva BrisVegas: Yes!
Dennis SGMM
@soonergrunt:
I have a shitload of Vietnamese diacritical marks in a cigar box in the closet. Any interest out there?
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus:
Fine.
Snob.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus:
I may never forgive you for this.
stuckinred
@Dennis SGMM: got any mpc?
soonergrunt
@Dennis SGMM: We should open an exchange.
I think somebody might be able to use the Viet diacritics in another language, if you don’t need them for the Vietnamese.
Carl Nyberg
I’ll stand up for Atrios as a blogger.
The comments… whatever. People leave comments. It doesn’t seem like a meaningful conversation.
PeakVT
Atrios meta? Well, at least it’s new, unlike Sully meta.
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt: Artillery lends dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl.
@Yutsano: It was rather horribly good, if I do say so myself.
Dennis SGMM
@stuckinred:
Sure do, along with some occupation scrip, and a couple of 200-piaster notes (Which, IIRC were worth less than a buck).
The Dangerman
@soonergrunt:
In which case, I read a bad report.
There’s another report that one of the Kaddafi sons (Kamish? Leader of one of the elite brigates) died as a result of burns suffered 2 or 3 days ago; so, if true on timeline, probably not one of ours took him out.
soonergrunt
@Bob Loblaw: Yeah. If you’ve committed to blowing the shit out of the low level schmucks, why should the guy at the top who runs around in a military uniform half the time and insists everyone address him as Colonel be any different?
kdaug
You know, it would be awesome if we had a kind of rotating headline for what people are actually talking about it the damn comments.
Anonymous Arab League comment to Vietnamese diacritical marks in a cigar box? Really?
Keep this up, and we’ll be a pack of vitriolic jackals with whiplash.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: ba muoi ba?
Barb (formerly Gex)
@soonergrunt: The problem is that programming requires so many punctuation symbols that it is hard to trade any of them. I don’t use too many question marks so I have plenty of those to trade. Thanks for the call out for parenthesis, brackets, and braces. It really sucks to run out of those.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: I think it was an inevitable low-hanging curve ball. I’m just amazed none of us came up with that sooner.
Elia
@soonergrunt: Hmm. I kind of just assumed that killing or arresting him was the goal. I can’t imagine he’ll be cooperative even if it’s clear that he’s lost…
I’m confused by what seems to be the normative standard that we’re not allowed to admit to targeting him specifically.
soonergrunt
@Omnes Omnibus: You redlegs just keep telling yourselves that. Or actually shouting it at the top of your lungs to each other.
DPirate
Here is what Obama thinks about the executive authorising military action: Yeah, right…
Or did, maybe, before he decided he doesn’t need us anymore.
stuckinred
@Dennis SGMM: choi duck!
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: Until you need us.
Omnes Omnibus
@soonergrunt:I have the framed print.
Joel
@soonergrunt: @Elia: my interpretation is that’s its a variant of monarchy rules. You don’t kill heads of state because there might be a day when someone pulls your card.
4tehlulz
@Elia: @Bob Loblaw:
Executive Order 12036 bans political assassination by the U.S. Government.
I don’t know off the top of my head about int’l law though.
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: Hey, I am ALL about the combined arms thing. I am all over that shit. 100% believer in arty support. Gunships, too.
Or should I say HEY, I AM ALL ABOUT THE COMBINED ARMS THING! I AM ALL OVER THAT SHIT! 100% BELIEVER IN ARTY SUPPORT! GUNSHIPS, TOO!
@Omnes Omnibus: is it in all caps?
Yutsano
@Joel: I’m thinking of the emperors of the water planet on “Futurama” who constantly assassinated each other by drinking the current ruler.
(edited for clarity)
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: How bout signal?
Elia
@DPirate: I think Matty-g’s take on this issue is pretty convincing.
I emailed Sully earlier making the same argument but he seems to either find it unconvincing or not care, because he’s still fucking that “no consultation with Congress” chicken.
tkogrumpy
@Bob Loblaw: I didn’t know this blog only had one “official” asshole?
stuckinred
Illini within 4 at the half after being down 12!!!!!!!
Arundel
I stopped reading Atrios long ago. Just got tired of all the one-sentence quippy posts, with a link and no explanation. “This thing. Check it out.” Just lazy blogging, boring site, don’t see why his opinion is of any interest.
Elia
@4tehlulz: Thank you, kind sir/madame.
stuckinred
Marquette dumps the Cuze!!
AhabTRuler
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, but what about diareses?
@Yutsano: Emperor Frye’s Assassin’s Assassin?
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: You’re coming in broken and distorted.
kidding. I like signal guys. I don’t understand the radios anymore, which was probably as good a reason as any to retire.
The AN/PRC-148 does everything, and it weighs about what an old style police radio weighs. But I’m damned if I can figure out how to program and load it.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: Shit, last one I saw was a prick 25! 5×5
being a dumb ass truck driver in the Arty and Signal doesn’t really qualify me to say a whole lot.
Yutsano
@stuckinred: Is there an intact bracket anywhere?
stuckinred
Frickin Greg Anthony called us Illinoize!
soonergrunt
@Elia: Does he realize that Obama consulted with the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and the Senate? That’s pretty much all that’s required in the short term. If this thing goes on for more than 2-3 weeks, then we need to start looking at an AUMF or war declaration or what have you, but right now, we’re good by US law.
Not that I believe this is a smart or needful thing for the US to do, because I don’t, but that is a separate issue.
stuckinred
@Yutsano: Someone has to be ahead. I’m in a calcutta with 7,500 in the pool so if the Illini can win this I’m choppin in high cotton!
DPirate
@cbear: Like democracy, right?
@Dave: Worked for everybody else.
Who is this guy on CNN squealing over how wonderful we are? The arab guy, I guess he’s an arab. He’s been all for hours and they keep going back to him for claptrap like how “Mercy is the mission of America” in the world.
They are also running CNN commercials with stuff like “Will America succeed in Libya?!?” amd “TARGET KHADAFI! How far will the US go to get rid of him” over flashing lights and read in a cliff-hanger voice.
Tune in next week as The Lone Ranger tells Tonto to stop calling him shithead!
CayPDX
I wish it were me, because then I would be famous.
stuckinred
@DPirate: The 8,000 dead Libyan’s proly would have agreed.
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: Well, I trained on and used a PRC-68 for the first several years. The new stuff, like the MBITR (PRC 148) I showed you earlier, and the PRC 117 and the PRC 152 are freaky smart radios that do pretty much everything you can imagine. Flip a switch and go from short-range low power line of sight to SATCOM with email. Flip it again, and you can talk to airplanes. The problem is that there’s only about twenty people in the battalion that understand how the fucking things work. I’m a fairly bright guy, but I look at the new radios, and all I can do is call for the Private who just graduated Infantry school and order him to run the damn thing.
Omnes Omnibus
@AhabTRuler: I can coexist with them,
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: That’s would have been a high number in 1/79th Arty Bn!
stuckinred
The PRC-25 was about the size and weight of a case of soda. With its battery “can” included, call it a case of soda sitting on top of a six-pack. (It actually weighed slightly more than that, 23.5 pounds)
Dennis SGMM
@soonergrunt:
I wonder whether or not things would change if Congress reasserted its sole authority to declare war. Declaring war seems much more sobering than passing an AUMF. It also implies that we have an identified enemy and that it will end at some point. The words “military force” seem to me to be a euphemism for “We’re going to blow shit up and kill people, some of whom are innocent bystanders.”
DPirate
@soonergrunt: What law, is all I can say to that. Policy, yes, but Law with the capital L?
@Elia: Not sure who Sully is, though I see the name mentioned here a lot. Does Yglesias’ post really matter, even if accepted as truth? Seems like just an apologia for executive power. Ok, so Obama’s an enabler, and that doesn’t help anything other than perhaps certain libyans. Maybe I am not giving it enough attention.
Yutsano
@stuckinred: Yet another case for how William Shatner changed the universe. One of the more light-hearted but well-sourced documentaries on Discovery Channel.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: Clearly, they are; though I know you recognize a semicolon would have been nicer there. I’ve got more ampersands than I’ll ever use, so perhaps I should offer some to soonergrunt. I adore semicolons, and believe one can never have too many.
MikeJ
@John Cole: I am truly deeply sorry I don’t see every comment here.
Even sorrier I can’t go back and change what I said like you can to cover up fuckups.
Yes, you found one person who said it was only a no fly zone, in spite of the fact that the UN didn’t vote for that.
soonergrunt
@DPirate: Article 1, Section 8; and Article 2, Section 2; US Constitution.
There’s no War Powers Law. There’s a War Powers Resolution. And this is because any attempt by the Legislative to usurp the President’s role as Commander in Chief would probably be as unconstitutional as the President’s attempt to declare war.
Neither side has ever taken the dispute to the Supreme Court because:
A) they don’t want their own Presidents having their hands tied, and
B) they are afraid that Congress will have its’ power limited.
In other words, both sides are afraid to find out.
hamletta
@soonergrunt: Didn’t the Vietnamese get the diacritical marks from those wacky Portuguese?
Obama’s in Brazil, he could probably use a few.
My grandmother was fluent in French. She could get by in Spanish and Italian. But she always said Portuguese threw her for a loop.
soonergrunt
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I’ll take ’em! Particularly if you can wrap them up with the hooker and the 8-ball from the other guy earlier in the thread.
soonergrunt
@hamletta: I don’t know about the diacritical marks, but I made a killer deal earlier on some umlauts. You want some?
Dennis SGMM
@hamletta:
A french monk created them in the 1700’s.
srv
@soonergrunt: 200+ years later and we’re still winging it. Signs of a mature republic.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@soonergrunt: You are a hoper, aren’t you? I might be persuaded to toss in a few cookies, however, since I’m practicing a recipe that Mr. Q decided he really likes.
John Cole
@MikeJ: If you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about, how about not firing out the gate running your damned mouth. You were the one who started this thread calling them my strawman, now that the comments are pointed out to you, rather than acknowledge you are wrong, you start in on me for having the nerve to point out you are wrong.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Cole: Cranky blog-owner is cranky.
Allan
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It’s amazing how much power you ascribe to me. Last time I checked, this was Cole’s blog, and I can’t have been the only one asking him to ban that logorrheic trainwreck girlfriend of yours, no matter how hard you try to pretend that it’s all about me.
General Stuck
@Omnes Omnibus:
Shit, I’m just glad I didn’t call Cole the next Chairman Mao, like I was planning to. Can you imagine?
eemom
goddamn. Look at all the fun I missed in a mere three hours away from the ‘puter.
Allan
@Bob Loblaw: If I were writing to please you, that might hurt my feelings. Good news! I’m not.
DPirate
@soonergrunt: Article 2, Section 2 does not touch upon executive authority to wage war or commit the military before congress gives the go-ahead. At least in my opinion. Is this the sentence you indicate?
Because I would say that obviously requires that he be “called into service” by congress.
From Wikipedia:
I am going to read the resolution; I never have read it and I am left twisting in the wind with wikipedia here. If this is correct, though, then it seems there was not legality to this (unless there is some other thing saying he can do it). I am unaware of them authorizing it or of any attack or serious threat.
Do you know better?
War Powers Resolution
FlipYrWhig
@Arundel: He used to be a good aggregator, the guy who sifted through all the nonsense and chose the most relevant stuff. I don’t remember him ever adding anything substantive to any discussion. The last interesting thing he did was choose to run a blog pseudonymously, which was a big issue at the time, in, like, 2002, when everyone was worried about how trustworthy blogs were — giving rise to the long-running “blogger ethics panel” joke. But that was a long time ago, and he’s still around. He’s kind of the blogosphere equivalent of Cokie Roberts.
Corner Stone
@eemom: Well before you stick your hand back inside your frumpy sweatpants please link to where someone has charged me with fabricating evidence.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
That is sheer garbage.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Not ideologically. Because he’s a legacy, a pundit from a bygone era.
eemom
@Corner Stone:
oooh, that hurt your dainty little fee-fees did it?
well, I have news for you, pencil-dick: “fabricating evidence” is not a term strictly construed according to your constipated imagination. It pretty much encompasses all the baseless accusations of sock-puppetry you’ve hurled at various alleged Nicks at various times based on nothing more than delusions spawned by a mind half-crazed by manic Nick-fixation.
Take heart, however. At the rate you’re going there’ll be a category in the upcoming DSM-V manual named especially for you.
Corner Stone
@eemom: So what you’re saying is that you completely lied out of your ass when you said I was “charged with fabricating evidence” ?
Gotcha
eemom
@Corner Stone:
nope. That’s not what I said, at all.
Wanna try again?
Corner Stone
@eemom: Not really. I’ll just hear more frustrated grunting noises from you as you butt your head into the wall and wonder why it doesn’t move.
OzoneR
@DPirate:
In the resolution, it says this
The 2 could and probably does include UN Resolutions and NATO Resolutions.
That said, this is whole thing is ridiculous. The idea that this is illegal is ridiculous, whether legally bound or not, we’ve had a history of the President authorizing troops for UN mission going back to Korea and Gulf War I, and NATO in Kosovo. There’s already established legal precedent.
Comrade DougJ
@Arundel:
Atrios is one of my very favorite bloggers. I guess not everybody “gets him” but I love his stuff, brief as it is.
Ija
@Elia:
So, in order not to discredit the humanitarian action faction, the solution is never to do anything they recommend, since if we do it, there is a possibility that it won’t go well, thus discrediting the humanitarian crowd?
I guess that could also apply to liberal policies. We shouldn’t enact anything recommended by liberals since there is a possibility that the policies will fail, thus discrediting liberalism. We should all just be for liberalism and human rights in theory, not in action. Because god forbid if the things we actually believe in are implemented, the failure might discredit our beliefs.
Yup, got it.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Ija: Isn’t the “let’s not change anything lest it go horribly wrong” view the basis for conservatism?
FlipYrWhig
@Comrade DougJ: Do you also love David Letterman? Because he’s also been doing the same tired bits for years, long past the point where he even pretends to enjoy himself while doing them, until it seems like he’s decided that he’s being meta and detached and ironic, but from the outside it looks like a bored, deflated bunch of nothing, and when you ask about it you get stories about how funny it was when he first said “preznit giv me turkee.”
Ija
@Barb (formerly Gex):
Well, I guess since we are all isolationists … opps, sorry, non-interventionists now, there’s no reason we can’t all be conservatives too.
DPirate
@OzoneR: Not if it hasn’t been challenged in court. Even so, things can be overturned by a higher court, and the argument you state smells a lot like “once it’s been this way it must always be this way”.
I agree, it would be ridiculous to think anything would ever come of charges of illegality, and that the UN resolution is likely enough to make it ok, but this war powers resolution does not point to that. More is needed.
Clarification that specific statutory authorization applies to UN resolutions, for instance. I have not seen mention of the UN or organizations like it in the war powers resolution, so I think they were not including that, but limitting this passage to our own internal legislative procedures. Whatever legislation we have defining the extent of our involvement with the UN would suffice provided it binds us to UN resolutions without congressional action.
You know what’s funny? I now think that the president is not CiC until “called into service”. What that means might be interesting.
Dick Hertz
Anyone else remember the Sam Kinison comedy bit about Reagan’s sexual arousal at the thought of having killed Khaddafy’s daughter in the air raid?
http://vodpod.com/watch/5524607-liveleak-com-sam-kinison-on-ronald-reagan
Sam
Of course it is crazy. I went to Iraq three times – more Americans ought to see the effects of war before they decide to be the “good guys” by either starting or supporting one.
You do not make any friends by bombing and shooting. There is nothing humanitarian about bombing and shooting.
War ought to be a last resort, reserved for responding to a direct threat to our country.
As to the specifics, can anyone name a single person we are “protecting”? I don’t want to hear a lot of generalities, I want a specific name. Then I want to know why we are protecting that person. Is it our job because we took an oath to protect people worldwide? Is it because we need to protect oil for Italians?
Not just crazy, immoral.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Sam:
So a human life only has value if you know his or her name. Gotcha.
OzoneR
@Sam:
we’re not trying to make friends with anyone. I mean how did you people think we would’ve stopped the genocide in Darfur or Rwanda had we stepped in? With flowers and music?
Funny, because it apparently was three weeks ago.
kay
@OzoneR:
If there isn’t, we have a whole branch that is (sometimes) in an adversarial or watchdog role with the executive in , and it isn’t courts.
I don’t know what’s going on (yet) but I think this separation of powers whining is ludicrous. Congress has a lot of power. Obama used the tools that were available to him. Big shocker. The executive moved! If Congress are adversarial to his position, or want a debate, or want to slow him down, that’s their job.
Boehner’s statement is laughably weak, and utter bullshit, purely for political consumption. He’s requesting the President explain something? He has WAY more power than that, and he was briefed. Why didn’t he move?
I felt the exact same way when Democrats took Congress in 2006. The executive moves, and legislative counters.
The people who are most concerned with the proper role of the President in relation to Congress seem to be the same people that always look to the President to reign himself in. That’s not going to happen. It’s supposed to be adversarial, in this situation. President grabs to absolute limit of legal power, Congress grabs back. If Congress are not making noise, you have to ask Congress WHY that is. It’s just silly to expect this to be the President saying “you first!” and Congress replying, “but of course, thanks for allowing us to do our job”.
They’re not waltzing at a ball. If they’re on opposite sides (I don’t think they are, but that’s a different issue), they’re adversarial.
If the GOP House doesn’t counter Obama’s move, do Sullivan and Larison expect Obama to back off and hand them their many, many tools? Why would he do that? He’s the executive, and he acted with the legal mechanisms at his disposal. He’s not leading the opposition to his own policy. Congress can act, with or without his permission.
I didn’t let Pelosi off the hook when she didn’t act aggressively to limit Bush. Conservatives are going to let the GOP Congress off the hook and whine about the executive grabbing too much power? We have a remedy for that. Congress.
It seems like the people who are most concerned about executive over-reach completely ignore the other two branches, and therefore buy in to the idea that the President is king. Why is that?
soonergrunt
@DPirate: The phrase “when called into service” is satisfied by the fact that the military exists.
That wasn’t the way they intended it. The founding fathers wanted no standing military. They intended for militias to be the primary military capability of the United States and for the national army to only exist in times of emergency when it would be “called into service” that is, created from the militias.
And these positions are not mine, per se. I accept them for the same reason that the vast majority of people accept them, which is that this is the way these things have worked since day one.
kay
Pure dodge. He’s incapable of initiating a debate in Congress? Since when? He’s waiting to see how it plays out politically.
I love how the executive is now in an oversight position over his own actions. Boehner is waiting for permission, and John McCain took his objections to cable television, rather than the Senate, where he actually has power. They’re all just helpless bystanders to the massively over-reaching and/or inept Obama.
bjacques
(sorry, reposting from a couple of threads back.)
Has anyone actually *read* the UN Security Council “no-fly zone” Resolution 19/3, ((main points here — c/o The Guardian)?
The talk about the all-Libya no-fly zone rose to a fever pitch a few days ago, even as it looked like the Libyan opposition really needed a “no shelling the crap out of opposition-held towns” zone. Well, the resolution does in fact include one, and orders a cease-fire to boot.
Qaddafi agreed to comply with all of the above, with his mouthpiece incidentally misquoting the part about exemptions for commercial and humanitarian flights. Meanwhile, Qaddafi’s tanks raced toward Banghazi and al-Ajdabiya, shelling all the way, so they ensconce themselves in the middle of town with the opposition civilians as human shields.
They got what they deserved. Highway o’ Death Parte Deux? Fuk yeh!
If Qaddafi wants to hole up in the middle of Tripoli with his loyalists volunteering to catch bullets for him, let him. Build a wall around them and let them sit there and rot. It’s a bonus if his sons (and daughter or two) are with him, but they probably aren’t that stupid. I’d love to see if he can buy food, water and electricity (and waste removal) on credit.
The US and the coalition can still mess this up, but I’m pretty happy with them so far. (BTW, can anybody identify that jet-compressor-thingy the Libyan government guy claim is a missile part? Tomahawks use turbofans, but I–meaning my Google fu–can’t tell if that was part of one).
Also, the Tomahawks are already paid for. Too.
soonergrunt
@stuckinred: No thanks. I’m trying to cut down.
I’ve never had the 33, but I’ve had Brazilian Penga and Korean Soju.
soonergrunt
@Carl Nyberg: 3
soonergrunt
@srv: So are the British and the French and they’ve been at this longer, comes to that.
At least our constitution is written down.
soonergrunt
@kay: That is excellent!
soonergrunt
@bjacques: And now the Tomahawks that were paid for have to be replaced, with magic fairy dust, I suppose.
bjacques
@Soonergrunt:
Eventually, sure. Depends how many are in stock. That last bit was really more about OMG Teh Deficit!!1! I could have left that out. It does raise an interesting point, though. Is it only the US firing Tomahawks? Otherwise, someone’s got to be coordinating other friendly ones. The British SAS were supposed to be in the country, spotting targets. It would be a waste to double up on missiles, because that would make the deficit hawks cry.
Just Some Fuckhead
@soonergrunt:
With a 14 Trillion dollar national debt, I’m not entirely certain they have actually been paid for.
FlipYrWhig
@Sam:
I don’t know the name of anyone who was a NYPD firefighter on September 11, which is why I don’t care what happened to them. Oh, wait, no, that’s stupid, I got it all backwards. I mean _even though_ I don’t know any of their names, I _still_ care what happened to them.
FlipYrWhig
@soonergrunt: Yup. That’s also why the notorious, I mean, celebrated because it’s so clear and wonderful! 2nd Amendment exists, so that citizens will have guns in the event they form “the militia.” It’s like just-in-time sourcing for a military.
joe from Lowell
Day three, John.
How are those ground troops coming?
So much fail, indeed.
John Cole
@joe from Lowell: Goalpost shift. Again.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: The sad part is joe from libya really thinks he has you dead to rights, Mr. Horowitz. How fucking stupid does that make him?
kay
@soonergrunt:
Obama is going to say “exigent circumstances”, and, with the rationale he’s given, that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
Then it’s Boehner’s job to ask questions, right? NOT on FOX news, but in his official capacity.
I have no idea how completely absolving Congress of any responsibility for action serves the cause of an accountable executive.
In a weird way, they’re consolidating executive power, by demanding Obama somehow “consider” or presumptively defer to Congress. We hand the whole thing over, both executing and restraining, to the executive and then are outraged when he acts to promote his own position, using the tools he was given?
I don’t think it will work. I don’t think anyone intended it to work like that, ever.
It’s along the lines of “business will police themselves without enforcement of regulation”. Yeah. Sure they will.
Ronbo
Now that we’ve flipped under/for Obama, how many BJ’s are running to sign up and fight with their life for the newest CIA-Obama war?
None. It stinks. We’ve put party above human life. BJ, you’ve turned to the dark side…welcome to the Republican way! (Oh, please continue to call yourselves Democrats – it fools most everyone.)
kay
@soonergrunt:
The executive power abuse people also clipped the Boehner quote to exclude this:
Well. That’s a strong statement in opposition. What did dhe say, again?
During the last few weeks as the Obama administration struggled to seek international support from NATO and the U.N. Security Council for a no-fly zone and military strikes, the conflict in Libya cut across normal ideological lines and party divisions.
So, what’s really happening here, based on what we know?
1. Congress had weeks to debate this, but chose not to.
2. There’s a split in both the Senate and the House, and it doesn’t follow Party lines, which may be why the neglected to debate it for weeks.
3. Proponents are (big surprise)relying on “time is of the essence”, or, “exigent circumstances”.
But we’re all going to wait for Obama to give Congress permission?
We’re going to be waiting a long time.
Amish demanded Congressional leadership convene ON FACEBOOK. Isn’t he a member of the majority Party in the House? Why is he relying on Facebook?
Just ridiculous.
arguingwithsignposts
@Ronbo:
And a hearty fuck you right back.
kay
@arguingwithsignposts:
Turns out, it’s a little more complicated than “who’s the real Democrat”.
Congress has been being sort of… coy.