One of the newest lines of spin in the comments here when I mock the “Arab League No-Fly Zone” is “Hey- the UN resolution explicitly called for more than a no-fly zone.”
No shit. I’m well aware of what the resolution said, which is why we have been mocking the people who, when we noted the Resolution was about to pass, insisted that this was an Arab League measure and that the US would not be involved. That morphed quickly into “the French and British are the ones who are really leading this,” and when we pointed out the French and British really couldn’t engage in this kind of mission without the US help, we were mocked again. Now that it is clear that the US is spearheading this mission, the new spin is “Hey, this was in the resolution all along, anyone could read it.” And the people making these remarks think we’re the dumb ones. Once again, I recommend people look at the FITD technique.
Look, I honestly hope something magical happens and we are out of this in no time and the “good guys” win:
In 2007, when American combat casualties were spiking in the bloodbath of the Iraq War, an 18-year-old laborer traveled from his home in eastern Libya through Egypt and Syria to join an al Qaeda terrorist cell in Iraq. He gave his name to al Qaeda operatives as Ashraf Ahmad Abu-Bakr al-Hasri. Occupation, he wrote: “Martyr.’’
Abu-Bakr was one of hundreds of foreign fighters who flocked into the killing zones of Iraq to wage war against the “infidels.” They came from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Oman, Algeria and other Islamic states. But on a per capita basis, no country sent more young fighters into Iraq to kill Americans than Libya — and almost all of them came from eastern Libya, the center of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion that the United States and others now have vowed to protect, according to internal al Qaeda documents uncovered by U.S. intelligence.
The informal alliance with violent Islamist extremist elements is a coming-home of sorts for the United States, which initially fought on the same side as the Libyan fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s, battling the Soviet Union.
According to a cache of al Qaeda documents captured in 2007 by U.S. special operations commandos in Sinjar, Iraq, hundreds of foreign fighters, many of them untrained young Islamic volunteers, poured into Iraq in 2006 and 2007. The documents, called the Sinjar documents, were collected, translated and analyzed at the West Point Counter Terrorism Center. Almost one in five foreign fighters arriving in Iraq came from eastern Libya, many from the city of Darnah. Others came from Surt and Misurata to the west.
On a per capita basis, that’s more than twice as many than came from any other Arabic-speaking country, amounting to what the counter terrorism center called a Libyan “surge” of young men eager to kill Americans.
During 2006 and 2007, a total of 1,468 Americans were killed in combat and 12,524 were badly wounded, according to Pentagon records.
Today, there is little doubt that eastern Libya, like other parts of the Arab world, is experiencing a genuine burst of anti-totalitarian fervor, expressed in demands for political freedom and economic reforms. But there also is a dark history to eastern Libya, which is the home of the Islamic Libyan Fighting Group, an anti-Gaddafi organization officially designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization.
I have no way to verify that, don’t know who David Wood is, so it may be nothing but garbage, but it would not surprise me. Anyone speaking with any certainty about this is full of shit, and we probably will not know the result of this action until some American city is smoldering in a decade or two. And what happens if Qaddafi remains in power? Will Libya remain a hot spot in perpetuity? Will we have to enforce sanctions for decades to punish Qaddafi, starving who knows how many Libyans in the process (because as we know, Qaddafi will be the last to feel the pinch from sanctions)?
This is just a god damned mess, despite all the gleeful bleating about a coalition and how the Arabs love us for this.
Villago Delenda Est
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
Also depending on which day of the week it is, like one of the ones with a “r” in it.
Thus it has ever been.
soonergrunt
@Villago Delenda Est: So on Tuesdays and Sundays, a terrorist is a Terrorist?
This is exactly what I was talking about when I stated that the US shouldn’t get involved because nothing good will come of it for the US.
The Moar You Know
Don’t forget
PolandQatar (maybe, they’ll get back to us on that).agrippa
Of course it is a mess. This mess is going to get more interesting as events unfold. And, there are, and will be, more interesting “messes”. There are other places that merit watching: Yemen; Bahrain; Jordan; Syria.
Life is unfair; and, deserve has nothing to do with it.
BGinCHI
The West supports dictators for the sake of stability (oil) and this makes radicals, especially religious ones, who are mobilized against the root cause of the dictatorship. I’m not at all surprised that this happened in E Libya.
But, is supporting, or spearheading, a move to topple Khaddafy a move in the right or wrong direction? This is not, yet, Iraq, and there’s a false equivalency there. If this is done skilfully it may spread some measure of reversal of past practices.
It’s early days though, and there are many ways we can fuck this up. If we do, it will be a combination of ignorance and arrogance.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
To be fair, there never was a good answer to this. Either:
1. Civilians would have been slaughtered by the thousands in Bengazi;
or
2. We could have subjected American involvement to teabagger dithering and bullshit in Congress;
or
3. We became part of the overall effort to do the one really important thing that the UN was ostensibly created for.
Obama chose Option 3. Obviously, the teabaggers had been floating their competing narratives from day 1, and will consolidate around the “its unconstimatooshinal and soc!alistical. Had he opted to do nothing, he’d have been tagged with “he’s dithering and good people are dying”.
RP
So…which is it? And isn’t Qaddafi also arguing that the rebels are being led by Al Qaeda? Forgive me for not taking anything he says seriously.
Maybe you should take a deep breath and stop blogging about Libya for a couple hours.
mclaren
As the late lamented Bill Hicks remarked, American foreign policy is that scene from the movie Shane where Jack Palance throws a gun down on the dirt and tells an old prospecter to pick it up.
“I ain’t gonna pick it up, mister, you’ll kill me!”
“I won’t kill you,” says Jack Palance. “Pick it up.”
When the old guy hesitates, Palance shouts “PICK IT UP!”
So the old guy feebly reaches for the gun on the ground and Palance shoots him dead.
“You all saw it,” shouts Jack Palance gleefully. “He had a gun!”
Villago Delenda Est
The SERIOUS fucking mess is the powderkeg that is Saudi Arabia.
Oh, we like to imagine that it’s stable, being that it’s got all that oil and all, but it’s not. There are various fractures in it…Sunni/Shia, of course, and the most fanatical (and denounced by most of the rest of Islam, Sunni/Shia split aside) and oppressive sect of Islam there probably is, which controls Mecca and Medina and finances actual Muslim extremists all over the world…the Wahabbists.
Saudi Arabia is a powderkeg, fueled by oil, youth, and religious repression.
Zifnab
WHY ARE YOU SO UNSERIOUS?!
The Dangerman
Nagonna happen.
Almost surely yes, as they have been for recent history.
See 1.
MattR
@The Dangerman: Sounds like Rumsfeld’s post Iraq invasion planning.
“What happens if there is civil unrest and we are not greeted with flowers?”
“Nagonna happen”
stuckinred
@mclaren: Same idea on the rope bridge in McCabe and Mrs Miller!
cleek
sweet.
how long till we start hearing about “flypaper” ? (the kind which oddly which only seems to adhere to us)
cause, once the flypaper doctrine has been invoked, we’re stuck there until we’ve made the world safe for freedom.
stuckinred
Anyone speaking with any certainty about this is full of shit
That’s slowing it down here quite a bit isn’t it?
The Dangerman
@MattR:
I’m just saying that we (collective we, including UK, France, etc.) aren’t going to leave Kaddafi in power. Not after all this shit going down; he can retire to a golf course someplace (still my feeling) or he can be killed (probably by his own military staff). Personally, I’d like to see his ass indicted over Pan Am 103 and let’s let that run its course, but … don’t see that happening.
Zifnab
@BGinCHI:
He’s a military dictator, a petty tyrant, and a fascist thug. The world will be a better place with Kquadaphibby gone. I can’t imagine much more of a “wrong direction” then whatever direction that asshole is going in.
That said, revolutions – particularly violent civil wars – are hard to come out of positively. I don’t see how this doesn’t end in another military dictatorship propped up by oil money. Maybe Libya will luck out and get a Jordanian monarchy that pretends to give a shit, this time around. :-p We can only hope.
joeyess
I’m sorry, what is the “FITD technique”?
FlipYrWhig
@stuckinred: Except for the kind of certainty involved in stating that it’s certainly a bad idea. That’s totally cool.
boomshanka
clusterfuck.
i believe i just reached my tipping point. i never expected obama to be perfect, and i’m a pragmatist when it comes to politics so i understand and accept that he couldn’t get the public option, or that financial regs aren’t as strong as i’d like, or even that gitmo is still open. but this? launch another war and take a fucking vacation? nobody forced his hand here, this is his war of choice.
Culture of Truth
If only Switzerland were involved in operations to find caches of poisonous gas.
Then an enterprising reporter could caption a photo “Ham and Swiss with Mustard”
piratedan
maybe its more along the lines of “yes, he’s a filthy degenerate, scumbag, fascist dictator, but he’s OUR filthy, degenerate, scumbag dictator”…. we sat back quietly when Mubarak was deposed because he was our erstwhile ally, but the Big Q, he’s got no friends, who’s gonna allow him and his family safe sanctuary?
Superluminar
@John Cole
Do you actually have any links or quotes for what you’re asserting pro-interventionists here were saying? Where was the “gleeful bleating”? You might have the odd off the rails commenter, but I’d say 90% of us who have supported this action have been well aware of the problems involved. It’s like you’ve left a bunch of strawmen trampled on the floor as if run over by so many Libyan tanks, and are constructing a giant Wickerman for your opponents here…
cleek
if we’re still in Libya come fall 2012, it will be very tough for many of us to support the Democratic party. i hope Obama knows this.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
Pax Americana has been such a fickle bitch. Sure, the threat of a civilization destroying set of irresponsible nuclear strikes has pretty well disappeared, but the brilliant Reaganesque meddling in AfPak and Middle Eastern affairs has left a problem that will take a few more decades to soothe.
And let me say, from the depths of my heart, how much I despise the legacy of the nuclear cold warriors, and their pretenses that creating more of those fantastically expensive and forever unusable nuclear weapons made the world “safer”. Their lies about being able to maintain any sort of a society after a nuclear exchange was the cruelest joke of all.
FlipYrWhig
@cleek: Has anyone offered an explanation that Libya is the central front in the war on terror or anything along those lines? All the rationales I’ve heard are the Clinton-era “humanitarian invention” rationales, not the Bush-era “convergence”/”global reach” ones.
Ija
I think you mean anyone speaking who support the intervention. Those who oppose it, can speak with all certainty about American cities being bombed as a direct result of this intervention and it is just fine and dandy.
I get that you feel like you have some atoning to do after Iraq, but not everything is like Iraq.
soonergrunt
FlipYrWhig
@Superluminar: But otherwise it won’t feel nearly as brave to be against the same thing 95% of the liberal blogosphere is already against by raising exactly the same obvious questions they are!
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@piratedan:
I think that was more of a case where it was apparent that Egypt’s military was not going to mow down thousands of people in support of Mubarak.
Khadafy wasn’t giving the impression of having the willingness to demonstrate the same level of restraint.
Bob L
Sort of damn if you do, damned if you don’t. It could be quite easily argued that by not doing anything we are supporting yet another Arab dictator who is thwarting Arabic popular will for the convince of western buisness.
While who knows what the consequences are, at lest Obama did it the right way by making it word opinion that forced the US to reluctantly do this, rather than the Bush doctrine of shoving our dicks in the rest of the world’s face. At lest this way we can say “Look dear, I know I am wrong, but you were the one who unzipped my pants,..”
Dave
@boomshanka: War of choice? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that this was a unilateral attack by the US. I thought this was a Chapter VII authorized mission of the UN, that was voted on 10-0 by the Security Council and had abstentions from China and Russia (which is akin to a yes vote in these kind of things).
Scott P.
I honestly don’t know anyone except perhaps a few neocons who are “gleeful” about this. What many have said is that this is more like Kosovo or Desert Fox than the invasion of Iraq.
And yes, if Qaddafi prevails, we won’t be able to go back to the status quo where we turned a blind eye to his regime in return for nuclear non-proliferation. But after the events of the last six weeks, we weren’t going to be able to pretend it never happened even if we hadn’t intervened.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, the Powell Doctrine, which, in a moment of supreme irony, was stabbed in the back by Colin Powell himself, seems to be fully dead.
We get involved in things without bothering to ask how we’ll get out.
Now Obama is jumping in with both feet in this Libya thing, and there’s no thought as to how to get out of it.
Ronc99
America LEADS the world in killing its own. When some other smaller nation tries to do same, we send cruise missiles in under the guise of “In God We Trust” — Don’t we American FEEL SO SPESHUL, today? I don’t. Obama was always Wall Street and the military industrial complex’s BITCH. I got off that train when I heard Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers were being brought in to clean up the mess THEY created. And no, I didn’t join the TeaHadists, either — they are like Soros, Koch addicts.
Shame on America!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MikeJ
http://xkcd.com/386/
WarMunchkin
I don’t agree with “there was no really good option” people. Civilians are killed in mass numbers by dictators all over the world. We didn’t enter merely to save civilians, or else we would have entered in Sudan. The humanitarian reason is, as always, the coverup and the bait for people to favor military action “reasonably”.
We did it because for some reason, people cannot shake the idea that the United States can waltz in with a military strike and people will magically love us because USA is number 1 and freedom is spreaded. Obama viewed it as an opportunity to change public perceptions of the U.S. in the Middle East.
FlipYrWhig
@Ija: We’ve been here before. There was Vietnam, and for decades everyone (rightly) worried that the next war was the next Vietnam. Enough of them worked out well enough that prevailing opinion swung, and war started to look easy, and like a good way for America to strut around like cock of the walk. Then there was Iraq, and now for decades everyone is going to worry that the next war will be the next Iraq. It’s a good impulse, but, as you said, it’s not the same thing as an argument.
boomshanka
@Dave
It can be a multilateral action and still be a war of choice. We formed a coalition for the Iraq war too, remember?
John Cole
No, I meant exactly what I said. I have no idea what is going to happen, and the only thing I have been talking about with any certainty is the bullshit that has been fed to us to date. I have no idea how this will play out.
And yes, after the last decade, my default position is to not get involved. I need to be persuaded otherwise. I don’t see how that is such a crazy lesson for me to have learned, and I don’t see why I’m an asshole because no one has made a persuasive argument why this needs to be done. Instead, we’ve been fed the nonsense about an Arab League no-fly zone and the rest of the stuff we’ve talked about over and over again.
Ija
This blog is becoming as hysterical and breathless as Sullivan’s. Time for me to take a break. I get enough lectures about being a supporter of American imperialism and thus being objectively pro-“killing of innocents” from my Berkeley relatives.
FlipYrWhig
@WarMunchkin: Isn’t important Obama advisor Samantha Power one of the leading experts on the idea of humanitarian intervention? I don’t think it’s fair to say that humanitarian intervention is _always_ a veneer over imperialism. Which is not to say that in practice there won’t be a lot of problems.
John Cole
@Ija: Really? Exasperated “WTF ARE WE DOING” is the same as Sullivan’s hysterical rants about an Imperial Presidency?
Bob Loblaw
@Ronc99:
I really hope that’s satire.
This Libya shit has dropped the internet’s collective IQ a good 15 points already.
Ronc99
Obama is a phony, John, don’t you get it yet???
cleek
@FlipYrWhig:
give it time.
one al-Q attack against our inevitable peace-keeping forces and we’ll be rolling out the FP-911 (aka military grade flypaper).
Viva BrisVegas
The big difference between Iraq and Libya?
Iraq was essentially an unilateral war of choice based on lies, which at the time nobody outside of the US believed was being fought for the benefit of the local population.
Do you really wonder that Arab youth was radicalised by it? As to why more eastern Libyans, maybe Gadhaffi liked seeing troublemakers find trouble far away from Libya. Particularly troublemakers from outside his powerbase in the west.
Libya is the result of an UN Security Council Resolution and is a response to a real, as opposed to phony, humanitarian emergency. Or does nobody believe that Gadhaffi would have gutted the rebels on the spot?
Risky yes, unjustified no. This is what the UN is supposed to do.
Fuzz
You can argue against this if you want but why does everyone completely ignore the Libyans who were asking for our help? Plus yes, we know that eastern Libya has lots of former jihadists, Zarqawi actually said that he wanted to personally visit the place (specifically Darhan, a little town on the coast) to thank them for sending so many fighters/bombers.
FlipYrWhig
@Ija: But how will you find out the latest news about Bradley Manning’s underpants?
Dave
@boomshanka: Only if you mean the First Gulf War. W’s War misused the UN resolution and was never waged under UN auspices.
BGinCHI
@Zifnab: Yeah, that’s what I was trying to get at. It’s tricky and involves a lot of moves on a chess board without rules.
And remind me what the road to hell is paved with?
kay
@cleek:
I think he does. I also think that’s why Congress are pretending to be blind-sided, “who? us? we had nothing to do with this!”
Do you see this as any way politically beneficial? I just don’t.
It’s an odd group, an odd alliance:
cleek
@Dave:
yes. it is.
again, you can tell this by the fact that the vast majority of UN members are not participating, by choice.
Poopyman
So a tiny bit of Googling and Wiki–ing tells me that:
a– In 2007, American troops in Iraq uncovered a list of foreign fighters for the Iraqi insurgency. Of 112 Libyans in the list, 52 had come from Darnah.Darnah has the reputation of being the most pious Muslim city in Libya.[12]
b– The population of Darnah District is 163,351
c– The number of fighters from Misurata was not found, but it’s indicated that it is less than Darnah’s. Misurata’s 2006 population was 550,000.
So my conclusion is that his argument uses statistically insignificant numbers. Doesn’t in and of itself invalidate his argument, but caveat emptor.
boomshanka
@Dave
What does the UN resolution have anything to do with it being a war of choice? There’s no imminent threat to our national security – it’s not a preemptive strike or self-defense in any form. It’s a war of choice.
Corner Stone
@joeyess: Foot In The Door.
You let the fox in the henhouse and he’s going to do what foxes in henhouses do.
Dave
@cleek: Again, the ratio of members to participants doesn’t make a UN action legitimate or illegitimate. Only a handful of UN members sent troops to East Timor. Does that mean the UN should pull out and let the Indonesians back in?
Just Some Fuckhead
Hmm, just noticed I also have “birth pangs of Democracy” for a bingo. *crosses fingers*
mclaren
@John Cole:
Goddamn right!
Why is this considered such a bizarre “unserious” position today? This was America’s foreign policy for 150 years. Stay the fuck OUT of other countries unless they directly attack you.
It worked pretty damn well. Why not go back to it?
NonyNony
@John Cole:
This.
Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, but no one actually knows. We NEVER KNOW how an intervention is going to go from the outset, no matter how much pundits and administration officials want to pretend that we do.
And that’s a damn good lesson to learn from the clusterfux of Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course, it was a damn good lesson to learn from VIET-FUCKING-NAM as well, but I guess it’s one of those things that we have to learn over and over and over again, generation to generation.
Cat
@Zifnab: ur doin it wrong…
Y R U NO LOVING FREEDOM BOMBS?
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@WarMunchkin:
You accomplish what you can, when you can.
Villago Delenda Est
The point here is (and I believe it’s been made in the past?) is that bombing the shit out of people is contraindicated to winning hearts and minds.
Just Some Fuckhead
@cleek:
Damn, I didn’t put that one on the bingo card. Or “We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”
Corner Stone
@cleek: When President Obama “reviewed” the situation in Afghanistan, all three suggested options involved escalation. Our leadership is completely enthrall to the MIC.
MBunge
I’m not a huge fan of getting involved in Libya, but if liberals and folks like Cole and Sullivan are going to have knee jerk hissy fits every time the U.S. takes major military action because Bush II’s Iraq debacle left them with a bad case of Battered Spouse Syndrome, I think that’s going to be fairly problematic both in geopolitical and regular political terms.
Mike
stuckinred
@mclaren: While you are at it let’s yank the vote from these womens and re-segregate the schools!
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@Viva BrisVegas:
FTW
Dave
@boomshanka: Because the UN Charter allows for the UN to intervene in situations like this. It’s why the UN went into East Timor. It’s why the UN is in Cyprus and on the Golan Heights.
If the UN doesn’t intervene in these instances, to protect the innocent, then why have it? Khadaffi was about to make a city burn. I’ll be damned if I am going to be ashamed or angry about the US being involved in a UN operation to prevent that.
jayackroyd
In my tweet stream on Sunday, I was barraged by pro-administration voices running out various, pretty weak arguments about why the attacks were, variously, an obligation on the part of the US, a real act of a coalition force, part of our treaty responsibilities, expressly covered by a law that refers to deployment in response to a Security Council request and, besides, what kind of stupid fuck would act like a Pat Buchanan isolationist. Hmmmm?
The similarity to rightist trolling was unmistakable. And now we’re seeing a rerun of W’s strategy of rolling justifications.
Last night, Joe Wilson pointed out that instability in northern Africa freaks out european countries on the Mediterranean, which is part of what is going on here. Refugees and other problems ensue for Italy, France et alia.
If you want to hear for yourself, it’s about halfway in.
http://bit.ly/fXq9Cm
nancydarling
John, I read this David Wood article a couple of days ago and my first thought was “civil war”. Wood’s bona fides look pretty good.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-news/reporting/david-wood
FlipYrWhig
@Villago Delenda Est: Except that some people tend to like it when you bomb the shit out of the people who were on the verge of bombing the shit out of them. I mean, “shooting people” isn’t a good way to win them over, but if you’re being held at gunpoint, you’re probably going to feel OK about the sniper who takes out your captor.
Villago Delenda Est
@MBunge:
Yeah, it’s sort of like that bad taste the Germans have in their mouths from that entire “pre-emptive strike against Poland” thing back in 1939.
Fuzz
@mclaren:
That was never true. Even in the 20s and 30s we were occupying and fighting small wars in central America and the Carribean, plus the Phillipines. Then came the cold war. If you’re talking about the 150 years after independence, the world has changed a lot since the 1800s. No country acts the same way as they did back then.
FlipYrWhig
@jayackroyd: Good thing running from blog to blog repeating what the prevailing opinion already is is nothing like trolling!
Cat
@Poopyman:
This should be in the wiki entry for ‘How to derive wrong conclusions from statistics’
Your conclusions might be more likely if it was as easy to get into Iraq as hoping on a bus in Tripoli and getting off in Baghdad for the low low price of 19.95.
Given that there is a clump of people from certain cities shows there is a strong recruitment program in those cities.
AAA Bonds
I’m unnerved by the ease with which liberals have moved the bar of foreign intervention to “less expensive than Iraq”.
Here’s a question: is it really evidence of hard-nosed realism when someone says, “We don’t have to take long-term responsibility because no matter what happens, we’ll never put troops on the ground”?
Because to me, that sounds like irresponsibility. It sounds like we don’t REALLY want the war we’re fighting, and we’re not REALLY invested in a place where we’re launching missiles at people.
And practically, it often doesn’t work, because Americans don’t like to think of themselves as people who would do that. It’s very hard to defend withdrawing from a war when the time comes to put soldiers on the ground or give up on our favored side. Politically, it’s much easier to move to an “advisory capacity” (i.e., putting Marines into combat) until an “incident” justifies further involvement.
boomshanka
@Dave
That’s great and all that the UN Charter allows military action, and if you think it’s the right thing to do then you should support it. But the UN Charter doesn’t mandate US action, and it has nothing to do with whether or not this is a war of choice.
You just happen think it’s a good choice.
joeyess
@Corner Stone: ah, yes. I should have known. Thank you.
Frankly, I think this whole business is bullshit anyway. We wouldn’t be doing a damn thing if it weren’t for the fact that the Crazy Colonel has the temerity to be sitting on top of our oil.
The one thing I can say is that everyone should be seriously rethinking our energy policy. If this is the only way to fuel our cars, heat our homes, move our goods and power our manufacturing base, we’re in for a lot more of these oil wars in the years to come.
Cynical? You’re goddamn right.
cleek
@Dave:
i’m not talking about legitimacy. i’m talking about choice.
kay
@mclaren:
I don’t know why you think it’s being treated as if it were bizarre. In this instance, that just isn’t accurate.
There’s lots and lots of (good) questions about this, across the spectrum. There’s no accusations of fifth columns or being unpatriotic. No one is threatening anyone with mushroom clouds.
That was Iraq. I don’t see that happening here. Do you? Honestly? You may well be in a majority among the “serious”, from what I’ve read, on this one. I don’t see opposing or questioning this as unpopular or somehow disallowed. I just don’t think that’s what actually happening. It did happen, once, with another war, but is it happening here?
fasteddie9318
@Viva BrisVegas:
Then why isn’t it doing it in the Sudan, the Yemen, Bahrain, the Ivory Coast, Myanmar, or anywhere else where similar conditions exist? This isn’t just a pie-in-the-sky critique; the very understandable perception that the West has a double standard with respect to these kinds of interventions has real world ramifications.
Dennis SGMM
Correct me if I’m wrong. We’ve heard plenty about why the U.S. is intervening in Libya but, I haven’t heard one word about what conditions will have to obtain for us to stop. That concerns me because it is eerily reminiscent of the opening of our other two endless wars.
I wouldn’t feel real good about our sticking our oar in Libya under any circumstances. I would have felt a lot better about it if Obama had clearly stated what has to be achieved for us to stop our involvement.
elmo
I don’t understand all of the handwringing. We’re bombing an Arab country to protect its people from a horrible dictator. We’ll be greeted as liberators.
Sure, it might be messy, but freedom is untidy.
Campionrules
@mclaren:
Hardly. America has been dabbling in all sorts of foreign intervention since basically the birth of the nation. Mexico, Cuba, the Philippines and various other military ‘expeditions’ within our ever growing sphere of influence.
Suck It Up!
So that includes you and everyone here on this site who actually speak of this with certainty?
Dave
@boomshanka: I guess my issue is using “choice” with the implication it’s the same as W’s War. And it isn’t. There is a difference between choosing to be part of a UN-authorized action to stop a slaughter and choosing to ignore the UN because you want to prove you’re better than your daddy.
Corner Stone
@MBunge: Yeah, I hate it when we spend $3T dollars and don’t bother learning anything from it.
Corner Stone
@elmo:
You know, now that I think about it, it has been a while since I’ve had any flowers or sweets. And I’d kind of like some.
I am all for this military action non-action!
Dave
@fasteddie9318: Except we have. We did it in East Timor. In Cyprus. In the Sudan and in Darfur along with the African Union. The problem is that too many times, these missions don’t have enough firepower to enforce their mandate.
Can't Be Bothered
I’ve never seen John tilt at windmills so hard. You’ve now gone on a three day rant about one person’s comment. The freakout of ZOMG!!! we are the worst ever! this is a catastrophe!! really seems to be some sort of subconscious trauma bubbling up from having been such a cheerleader of Iraq. The comparison here is clearly to 90s Balkans not Iraq II. I’m as anti-war as the next guy, but your repeated conflation of Libya with Iraq is intellectually lazy and doesn’t really do anything to burnish your cred as being an anti-war dude. There are plenty of ways to make reasoned arguments against what we’re doing there right now and you’ve managed to miss most of them. For an example of a good argument, I suggest heading over to TPM and seeing what Josh Marshall wrote yesterday. In one sentence, you say speaking with certainty signals being full of shit and in the next imply the result of this will be a nuked American city? Jesus christ, man.. take your own advice and blog about dogs or something for a couple posts.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@fasteddie9318:
You do what you can, when you can. Know your limitations, then triage.
Fuzz
@fasteddie9318:
Because the people on the ground, and the UN, have not asked us to. Plus there already are thousands of UN peacekeepers in the Ivory Coast, they’re just mostly from Arab and Central Asian countries. Same with Sudan, there’s thousands of blue helmet soldiers there. In Yemen we aren’t doing anything because the president there hasn’t started killing people by the thousand, and in Bahrain we’re afraid of the opposition groups because they’re Shias, its not uncommon to see pictures of Hassan Nassrallah and Iranian ayatollahs in Manamana (I spelt that wrong I know). Myanmar is a very close ally of China’s, so frankly they can do whatever they want and no one will say anything because Beijing will become enraged.
The situation in Libya sucks but I don’t think it exposes hypocricy any more than the actions of any western country in their dealings with the Mid East.
NonyNony
@MBunge:
Personally, I think knowing a few things about any conflict we want to get into is a good idea:
* What is our objective? Is it something we can state clearly and is it actually attainable?
* What is our exit strategy? When does our role in the conflict end?
This conflict already passes the “does it have international support” test, and it’s obvious that there isn’t really a “national security interest” here since this is a “humanitarian” war rather than a “security” war. But in any conflict where we can’t answer those questions, we shouldn’t be getting involved.
And, frankly, there’s no indication of an exit strategy here, nor is there any indication of a clear objective beyond “regime change” (to what? Who are we backing? What kind of regime is sufficient?) and “stop him from dropping bombs on his own people” – the latter is a fine objective to have but it’s not like once you’ve accomplished it you can pack up and leave – you have to be there until he’s either ousted or dead and replaced by someone else (who may or may not be interested in bombing their own people).
Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy
Why has the UN abandoned its duty and responsibilities in the partition of Mandatory Palestine?
Bethanyanne
This is excellent news for John McCain.
Brandon
The Republicans, with an assist from the neocons, played Obama like a fiddle on this. He doesn’t intervene and he was a wimp who was dithering while freedom loving innocents were slaughtered, just as they were looking to us for help in overthrowing a tyrant. He intervenes and he’s still a ditherer, but he’s now a dictator who just got America involved in another Somalia, with no clear American interest articulated and no exit strategy.
boomshanka
@Dave
That’s something you’ll have to live with. There are similarities beyond it being a war of choice.
But just so I can get this straight: you support this military action because he went through the UN, but it doesn’t bother you that he bypassed Congress and the American public?
Suffern ACE
@kay:
No, the people who oppose this just are amoral folks who sit on their sofas thinking “I got mine, fuck the Libyan people.”
Cat
@fasteddie9318:
I agree, but you will find few who do I think. Policing the worlds tyrants is a full time job which nobody wants.
General Stuck
Maybe I missed it, but don’t recall anyone saying on this blog, that they knew how this was going to turn out. I know I didn’t, and the fact that some folks early on made statements that it would only be the Arab League doing the actual flying and bombing, seems like an understandable error at that time. And not something to go completely fucking insane with multiple threads mocking those commenters. I never cared whether Americans did most of the flying, I only care that our involvement ends very soon and it is turned mostly over to others. And absolutely no ground combat involvement by the US. The rest of this bullshit seems to me some kind of cathartic rant for those who supported Bush’s war in Iraq, and since I didn’t, those straw men to me are just that straw men.
And I hate agreeing with Loblaw, that this so called debate, that is more hysteria, has lowered the IQ on this blog and throughout the lefty blogs. It is not Iraq, and I seriously doubt it comes anywhere near it.
Keith G
@cleek:
Oh for fuck’s sake. Then I asssume you will be so happy to roll over and let the GOP rub your belly? Or will you just swollow hard after much drama and vote to keep McCain away from the DoD?
Scott P.
Of course it does. We all know that. The question is whether the existence of a double-standard is an argument against intervention in cases where you can get a coalition to support intervention.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brandon:
Meanwhile, the vermin that are the Neocons had no exit strategy for Iraq or Afghanistan, but it’s not like the also vermin of the Village care. The Villagers have the attention span of gnats.
On second thought, my apologies to gnats.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brandon:
Meanwhile, the vermin that are the Neocons had no exit strategy for Iraq or Afghanistan, but it’s not like the also vermin of the Village care. The Villagers have the attention span of gnats.
On second thought, my apologies to gnats.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brandon:
Meanwhile, the vermin that are the Neocons had no exit strategy for Iraq or Afghanistan, but it’s not like the also vermin of the Village care. The Villagers have the attention span of gnats.
On second thought, my apologies to gnats.
FlipYrWhig
@Fuzz: Or, to put it a different way, just because it’s “hypocritical” not to get involved _everywhere_ doesn’t mean that the US shouldn’t get involved _somewhere_.
jayackroyd
@FlipYrWhig:
I suppose so. Which blogs are you talking about?
brendancalling
i’ve been reading, ominously, that the hand off expected in days is now expected in weeks.
Soon it will be months, and then it’s our baby. That’s so teh awesome i think I might skip lunch and just start drinking bourbon out of the bottle now.
Dave
@boomshanka: The president has to go through Congress to declare war. This isn’t a war. Sorry but that’s the case.
Or would you prefer the spectacle of the Teabaggers pontificating for days on end?
AAA Bonds
@General Stuck:
Still not sure why this is okay.
Rob
Another Tripoli cable about jihadists from Libya is here :
http://213.251.145.96/cable/2008/06/08TRIPOLI430.html
There may be three factions : the Libyan anti-imperialist rebels (who hate Ghaddafi AND the US), Ghaddafi and his mafia, and the Western powers who want Ghaddafi out and who are momentarily aligned with the rebels.
Good sources say that the Arab League agreed to support the NATO military operations (including NFZ and any and “All necessary means”) if and only if the GCC, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia could quash the rebellion in Bahrain. They later criticized the bombing (which they knew was necessary) in order to appear to be concerned for civilian casualties, as kabuki for their populations to consume.
Obama and others have a chance here for once to garner some good PR in the Arab countries (where US and British policies are unpopular for all sorts of good reasons – Israel/Palestine, overthrowing Mossadegh, genocide against Iraqi children, abandoning the first gulf war Iraqi uprising which could have overthrown Saddam, etc.)
http://bit.ly/fACkk0
Yes, it’s complicated.
Holden Pattern
@Suffern ACE:
One hopes that this is snark intended to satirize the pro-bombing position. Because if it’s serious, it’s ah… assholish.
joe from Lowell
Clearly not, since you seem to think that the resolution only calls for a No-Fly Zone.
Actually, some of us were claiming that from the beginning. And said so repeatedly.
Did anyone say that there wouldn’t be US help, or are making up new straw men?
Actually, the US is only “spearheading” one part of the initial stage of the mission, with plans for a declining role and a quick handoff of command authority within days. But don’t let the facts of the situation interfere with your certainty, Horowitz.
Wait wait wait – accurately describing the resolution and telling you to read it is “spin?”
John, you have completely lost your objectivity on this.
Cat
@Fuzz:
lol.
Sorter Fuzz:
We totally sent some guys to take care of that problem over there. What do you mean it wasn’t enough? Thats besides the point anyways, everyone else does it too!
jayackroyd
@NonyNony: I also looked up the Powell Doctrine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell_Doctrine
By my count, the Libyan action was at 1 for 10 on day 1, 0 for 10 by day 2.
Keith G
@Villago Delenda Est:
Seriously?
I guess I define jumping in with both feet differently.
kay
@Fuzz:
That just seems like a poor way to ask the question, or get the answer.
Because it’s not really determining “hypocrisy” is it, or that isn’t why I would ask that question, “why here, and not somewhere else”? I’m making a point with that question, not looking for an answer.
If you’re earnestly asking that question you just want to know “why here?”, right? Adding “and not somewhere else” is a route to presupposing an answer to “why here”? but it’s not a particularly good or logical way to get to the real answer.
Why not just ask the question straight?
Unless the question is “are we hypocrites?”, I don’t know how the comparison works to find anything out.
Tsulagi
I like that AQ jihadi application form. Primarily concerned with how much money the applicant was bringing with him and how much was pilfered along the way by their own middlemen. Gotta love religion. And how does one verify previous sterling job performance in their chosen martyr occupation if they’re standing in front of you breathing?
Where’s your sense of adventure? In a short eight years in Iraq we’ve managed to facilitate control of that country from a single major corrupt asswipe we didn’t like posing no security threat to the US or really anyone one else to a collection of mini-me corrupt asswipes aligned with Iran. No doubt civilian leadership could do it better and quicker this time around. Lessons learned and all that. But if Biden starts promoting a Chalabi-esque George Washington of Libya, all bets are off.
MattR
@Dave: When exactly does it become a war?
@joe from Lowell: Yes it is spin. If I propose a bill and promise everyone that it will not raise taxes and then after it is passed it turns out that it does in fact raise taxes, then it is pure spin for me to say that everyone should have known that it would raise taxes (even though that is an accurate description of the bill).
boomshanka
@Dave
I just wanted to be clear where you stand.
So UN approval = Good War, but there’s no need to consult with peon Americans and their silly democratic bodies.
boomshanka
@Dave
And god forbid we spend “days” debating the issue.
cleek
@Keith G:
if you disagree with my assertion, feel free to disprove it. explain how our the Dem base will be excited about supporting the Party, if we are still militarily involved in Libya, come Fall 2012.
Dave
@boomshanka: As opposed to “Let’s sit on our hands and watch a city burn and people die because George W. Bush was a shitty president and now everything we do with the military = THE WORST THING EVER DONE.
MBunge
@Villago Delenda Est: Thanks for demonstrating my exact point. By the way, the ghosts of the Rwandan genocide just Tweeted me their continuing thanks for the U.S. not getting involved in their country.
Mike
Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)
So apparently I’ve gone from “America-hating fifth-column pacifist traitor” to “one of a small niche of liberal interventionist hawks” in the space of eight years, without changing a single position or opinion.
I’ll just note that if you’re reflexively against intervention, then you’re implicitly arguing for the “stand by and let Kadafi slaughter his own people” position. This is not exactly a position of moral strength.
Obama’s stated that there will be no US ground troops, and France and the UK were going in no matter what we did.
So, are you accusing him of lying? Or do folks think he’ll get sucked into this deeper, in ways not anticipated?
Alex S.
Heh, John is milking that one careless comment by Joe from Lowell to death.
joe from Lowell
@MattR: OK, anyone who first claimed that this was only a No-Fly Zone, denying that it would involve strikes on the Libyan command and control or the ground forces threatening the rebels, would be disingenuous in making the argument “read the resolution.”
General Stuck
@AAA Bonds:
I never said it was “ok”. Only that now that we are in, that we get out soon. What I don’t understand is a bunch of people cheering on these revolts when they started, and turned out fairly well in Tunisia and Egypt, and now that it was about to turn out into a massacre from a failed revolt, there is such ideological fervor for letting that happen, or us not being in on evening out the playing field, at least, for the rebels. I can understand being reluctant, as I am that also. But this tribal fury and conflation with Iraq is just bullshit, imo. As is the witch hunting on this blog for anyone not toeing the blog line.
kay
@Suffern ACE:
I just don’t think that’s accurate. I watched the Iraq coverage and I watched (some) on this yesterday and you’re just not going to convince me you’re being silenced or demonized for opposition or trepidation. It isn’t happening.
Not to mention that you’re in a majority in opposition (if polling is to be believed) which also makes this different than the last war.
I’m not really buying the “once again, we’re being ignored, scorned and marginalized” in this specific instance. I don’t think it’s true.
Dennis SGMM
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta):
Remind me of how long we’ve had troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama may well mean what he says, just as meant what he said about getting our troops out of Afghanistan. Shit happens and the military seems to be becoming more and more the tail that wags the dog.
Just Some Fuckhead
@boomshanka: I see what yer doing here. You are trying to act like we are at war with Libya. We are not. We are simply in a state of openly declared armed hostile conflict with another nation. War is hell. This is more like sipping mint juleps while playing checkers by the pool.
soonergrunt
@MBunge: Man. I thought it only seemed like everybody was on Twitter.
Pococurante
Actually our Wise Women of War have been pretty consistent on why the US got involved, and it revolves around the response of other Arab countries to Libya’s successful use of oppressive force against its own people.
I personally have no interest in Libya, and was quite prepared to munch popcorn while Europe handled it. I’m very concerned that we’ve stepped in and disagree strongly that we have.
But at the same time I am very sympathetic that some action was needed to head off Saudi Arabia’s
humanitarian intervention in the Sudetenlandviolent proxy suppression of protest in the Gulf region. Let alone the likely Syrian bloodbath, the country that defined Hama Rules after all.There are no easy answers. I agree with Madeline Albright’s statement today on NPR that what we’re seeing in that region is the dreaded sea change the world for decades has known was coming.
joe from Lowell
@Alex S.:
It was careless. By not explaining exactly what I found idiotic about John’s comment, I’ve let him continue to pretend it was his observation that there would be more than an Arab League No Fly Zone, rather than his prediction of an ever-increasing American role culminating in ground forces.
Fuzz
@Cat:
Yep, ya got me!
Actually someone said why aren’t there troops in Ivory Coast and Sudan…and I said there are. It’s true. The UN sent them,they wear blue helmets that say ‘UN’ and a lot of them come from Indonesia and Jordan, and that comment had nothing to do with Libya. ‘Everyone else does it too’ is about how every western country has allies they favor over others, it’s how foreign policy works. It doesn’t make a country evil because they consider some countries more important to their interests than others, it makes them he same as every single other place on Earth. If you want to argue thats a bad thing, go ahead, but that’s a separate argument.
elmo
@Suffern ACE:
I know you’re being sarcastic, but from where I sit, “fuck the Libyan people” is a rational response to an untenable situation. The world can be an awful place, full of awful people. Sometimes awful people kill decent people. Sometimes awful people kill awful people. And there are just too damn many awful people out there to control them all.
“Fuck the Libyan people” wouldn’t be my way of putting it. But neither would “Fuck the Congolese people,” or “Fuck the Iranian people,” or “Fuck the Chechen people,” or “Fuck the Burmese people,” or — shall I go on, or am I making my point? The practical reality is that we have to deny our help to oppressed people all over the world, and if that means saying “Fuck them,” then let me be the first and most enthusiastic.
The United States of America is the wealthiest nation in the world. We have chosen to spend a significant portion of that wealth in the development and deployment of the most advanced military in the world. This was sold to the American people as being necessary for their own protection, and on that basis, it was approved. And a certain amount of power-projection, such as in the Straits of Malacca, is necessary for the protection of the American economy. So be it. But when did it become the obligation of the American taxpayer and the American soldier/sailor/airman/Marine to place that military might, and those military lives, at the beck and call of other nations? Nations, by the way, who could afford to build their own military juggernaut if they so chose, but have sensibly decided against it because the Americans always pick up the slack.
I’m tired of it. Yes, it’s terrible, I’m a terrible coldhearted person who doesn’t care about suffering children. I know. But the truth is, I do care about suffering children, and I know that there is fuck-all that American bombs can do to prevent children from suffering. No matter how many bombs we drop, children will continue to suffer. Everywhere. Some will suffer who would not otherwise, specifically because of our bombs.
That’s what bombs are for, after all.
joe from Lowell
@General Stuck:
It’s like I keep saying: The most important thing to Protest People is their self-image as Protest People.
Before there was talk about western intervention, the best way to identify oneself as Protest Person was to identify with the protesters in Libya. Once the western powers began to do so, however, reliving the runup to the Iraq War overtook that solidarity as the best way to be a Protest Person. And, of course, their earlier sympathy for the Libyan opposition now serves to undercut their narrative, so now they have to slime the Libyan protesters in a the same manner that they mocked Pat Buchanan and his ilk so harshly for when he was doing the same thing during the Tunisia and Egypt episodes.
It really is tribal. It’s pretty disgusting, though. This “friend of my enemy” business is pretty shady in general, but to see it done to the Libyan opposition because the “enemy” with which they are “friends” is the United States/NATO is pariticularly repellent.
ruemara
Has anyone else besides me heard the ap story that our involvement has now finished? Or is near to finished? Because it makes a lot of John’s posts the past 24 hrs a bit moot.
Fuzz
@kay:
I thought the person was saying we look hypocritical for bombing Libya and helping their rebels but not say, Bahrain. I think to an extent we do, only promoting democracy in the countries where the guy is already gone (Egypt) or where we hated him anyway (Libya). At least I thought that’s what we were getting at anyway, maybe I read it wrong.
Loneoak
Fresh Air had Robert Baer on last week and they discussed the Libyan rebels a little. Baer’s memoir was the inspiration for Syriana and he spend some time in the field working with Libyan rebels from the eastern part of country who were trying to assassinate Qaddafi. ‘Trying’ is the operative word — Baer described them as the most unreliable fighters he ever worked with. Most of them were Islamist mystics, and would boil pages of the Koran and drink the ink as tea in order to get wisdom for battle.
Sounds like some great allies for a short and precise war.
cleek
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta):
i believe the phrase is “objectively pro-KGQaddafy”.
kay
@Suffern ACE:
Well, you have Diane Feinstien and “other Democrats” who chose to remain nameless who (apparently) wanted to stand back and wait for Congress to act, so I don’t know that you’re this reviled voiceless minority.
I’m just not confident this is lining up the way the last one did. In reality.
soonergrunt
@elmo: Nothing but a sustained standing ovation from me. That’s about it. We cannot, and should not be responsible for happiness around the world.
The fact that helping them gets us fuck-all in exchange is just icing on the cake. We get blamed whether we do anything or not, no matter what happens. So why not save the taxpayers a few bucks and do nothing?
Seriously. I was standing in my cubicle, clapping just now, and my coworkers are looking at me, like ‘WTF, dude?’
jibeaux
Hell, I usually know just what to think about everything under the sun, but I’ll be damned if I know what to think about Libya.
joe from Lowell
@kay:
If you go back to Balloon Juice during the runup to the Iraq War, you can find John quite frequently using his front page to demonize people who dared to split from the his party line.
You know, sort of like the last three days.
The interesting thing about David Horowitz is how he completely changed sides from left to right, but even in his new partisan home, he still demonstrates the same intellectual habits.
boomshanka
@Just Some Fuckhead
Hmmm, you know, I really do like mint juleps.
Freedom Bombs for everybody!!!
Cat
@Fuzz:
Has it ever crossed your mind that maybe we, we as in all human beings on this planet, are doing it wrong?
kay
@Fuzz:
No, you answered it straight. Good for you. I didn’t know the answer.
I hate the question. I think it’s dishonest. If you want to know “why here?” just ask “why here?”
Using the comparison as a basis for the question presupposes a certain set of answers to “why here?”
I don’t think it’s a good or logical way to get to an answer, which makes me think it isn’t about the answer, but is instead about asking the question.
I wouldn’t accept that question in my work. I wouldn’t let anyone answer it. It’s not a real question.
AAA Bonds
@General Stuck:
I don’t see a lot of witch-hunting or line-toeing going on in this blog at any time, or I’d have been banned.
As to the separation of wanting Gaddafi to get overthrown, and taking responsibility for seeing him overthrown, I’m for the former and against the latter. We have now entered into the latter, like it or not – we’ve picked sides in a civil war.
In my experience, Americans feel uneasy admitting that they have a preference in a situation, but that it’s not their top priority. We like to go all in, on everything, and we celebrate people who appear to do so.
I doubt this is culturally universal. It’s also subject to the wear of time, and that length of time is getting shorter and shorter. I’m pretty sure most Americans would be fine with a partitioned Libya after a month or so, as we’re used to imposing that sort of thing. The Libyans, probably not.
elmo
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta):
Implicitly? Let me make it explicit for you, then. I want the United States to stand by and let Kadafi slaughter his own people. Or for the United States to stand by and let Kadafi’s people slaughter him. Or for the United States to stand by and let Kadafi and his people settle things with a combination chess tournament and kung-fu match, with Jackie Chan as referee.
Are you seeing the one constant in my position on the matter?
Rob
@Pococurante:
How is the intervention in Libya supposed to “head off” the Saudis crushing the Shia population in Bahrain? On the contrary, it seems to have been part of the deal in order to let the US bomb Ghaddafi. Read the article I linked above.
The Saudis are the oldest US ally in the region, they cooperate tightly with Washington (even though with Obama, they might feel that they have a little room to maneuver because he is so weak). Clinton could probably not care less if the Saudi and Bahraini thugs are whacking the protesters and preventing people from receiving medical aid, that seems to be part of the plan.
“Dreaded” for whom?
joe from Lowell
@Dennis SGMM:
In this case, there is a structural force built in that will work against western ground forces being put into the country: the very coalition pressures that Chunky Bobo complained about would hamstring us and cause us to go slow. We have a whole lot of NATO, UN, and especially Arab League partners – countries like France, Canada, Russia, and the Arab countries – who very loudly stayed out of the Iraq War. These are the people who got the “no occupation troops” language put into the resolution. If there is talk about violating that principle, the coalition would fracture.
During the Kosovo War, Clinton, Cohen, Clark, and Albright were constantly hand-holding and altering plans in order to avoid offending allies, and it really did change the way we fought that war. What Douthat was complaining about – waaah, we’re not acting unilaterally, we have to keep a coalition happy and that limits our actions – is actually a good thing, in that it will work against the escalation you fear.
Blue Carolinian
Sullivan and Cole are overcompensating for their Iraq War idiocy, that’s all there is to it. Keyboaed Kommandos sometimes fight the last war, too.
Joseph Nobles
Well, now that I see the target of the snark, John, snark away. Now I’ve got it.
Just Some Fuckhead
@boomshanka: Ain’t
warwar by any other name grand? (and easy, too!) ‘Nother round for my friends!Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)
@Dennis SGMM:
Remind me of how long we’ve had troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Too long. IMO we should have left Iraq to their own devices the day they formally asked us to leave, and the drawdown in Afghanistan is proceeding much too slowly.
But WTF does this have to do with Libya?
As I said the other day, all the arguments against intervention seem to amount to “Iraq bad!”. One has very little to do with the other. And I just don’t understand while the oft-maligned Slippery Slope style of argument –which is never accepted here– is suddenly all the rage.
Pun intended.
I can’t help but wonder if there be so much opposition had Iraq never happened. Since there’s no way to peek into that alternate universe, I can’t say.
Obama may well mean what he says, just as meant what he said about getting our troops out of Afghanistan. Shit happens and the military seems to be becoming more and more the tail that wags the dog.
Since Obama has no record of starting wars of choice on a whim and then sending ground troops in under false pretense, I have no logical reason to not take him at his word (for now at least).
But SecDef Gates is really the one to watch here. Gates was initially (mid last week) openly wary of the idea, and was honest in openly stating that a no-fly zone would require actual airstrikes by the US and others, not just American AWACs puttering over the Mediterranean.
Gates isn’t Rumsfeld, and his wariness is a good sign. Barring some horrible Black Swan event (which, by definition, you can’t plan for), I will be shocked and disappointed if the US goes all-in on a ground war in Libya.
Ija
@John Cole:
Well, calling your commenters’ comments “spin” is pretty hysterical. They might be wrong, you might disagree with them, but unless you have proof that this person is a paid shill of the State Department, it’s pretty disrespectful calling other people’s opinion spin, isn’t it? I know this is an everything-goes kinda place, and it’s fine, but straw-manning the opinions of commenters who disagree with you in front page posts after front page posts is pretty hysterical to me. It’s one thing to argue with them in the comments, it’s different when you pick fights on the blog itself. It’s an unfair fight.
By my count, there are probably less than 10 commenters on this blog who can be said to be “pro” this intervention. Even then, most of us have so many caveats and qualifications in our support it’s not really clear what we really think. But you and the rest of the commentariat seem absolutely convinced that the anti-intervention side is the minority, that you are being silenced and bullied, just like Iraq! News flash: you guys are the majority this time, try to be less of a dick than the guys who were the majority the last time, okay?
joe from Lowell
@cleek: Do you get this huffy when someone describes anti-welfare state libertarians and conservatives as wanting to let the poor die?
Did you get this huffy when Alan Grayson described the Republicans’ position on health care reform as “die faster?”
Dennis SGMM
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta):
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I’m heartened by Sec. Gates’ caution. I’m just not very sanguine about our ability to get out of a place once we get ourselves into it. The fact that we know little or nothing about the goals or the ideology of the rebels is also very concerning.
joe from Lowell
@Ija:
John is one of the dicks who acted, well, exactly like this last time.
Person of Choler
Herewith the opinions of Candidate Obama on war and the going thereto:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/CandidateQA/ObamaQA/
The anti-war suckers seem not to have gotten an even break after all.
Flugelhorn
So humorous.
Iraq = Evil dictator + WMDs + Wholesale Slaughter of citizens who were placed in unmarked mass graves. What? No WMDs? “BUSH Lied and people died!”
Libya = Evil dictator + Wholesale slaughter of REBELLING citizens. “Obama is the man! Take out those evil right-wing religious nuts! There is no chance it is for oil THIS time because there is a Dem in the house, not some greasy Republican.”
Remember kids. Republicans are evil.
Pococurante
@Rob:
I did, and it is certainly provocative. It’s also rumor.
As all countries negotiation for some level of gain in such situations let’s accept it as face value – would such a deal also have involved constraints on just how much violent repression the UN / Europe / USA would tolerate?
I would think so. And I bet explicit expectations were made.
Pretty clearly every industrialized country that for decades if not centuries has been willing to prop up dictators in exchange for economic certainty.
Speaking for myself, I’m delighted. Just not necessarily eager to see us put boots on the ground. That is an issue for the AL and AU. And I fully expect the USA will get touchy if the EU decides their boots belong there.
Judas Escargot (aka "your liberal-interventionist pal, who's fun to be with")
@cleek:
i believe the phrase is “objectively pro-KGQaddafy”.
OMG, what a crushing counter-argument. I’ve totally changed my position. Impeach Obama!
(If you ever have a substantive point, feel free to bring it.)
Rob
@mclaren:
LOL Ha Ha
AAA Bonds
@joe from Lowell:
Can you tell the difference between those two examples and backing one side of a civil war in Libya? Hint: it has something to do with Canada, Mexico, and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
cleek
@joe from Lowell:
actually, i sometimes do. i’m usually met with disdain. not sure what that has to do with anything, though.
got a point?
malraux
@soonergrunt: @elmo:
I’ll agree with a lot of this. If my choices are military intervention in libya or adding a billion in funding to the ACA or to infrastructure spending or any other domestic benefit I’d be all in favor. Or heck, it doesn’t have to be domestic; spend it to develop a malaria or hiv vaccine, small grants for USAID, or any number of non-military goals. It’s not that I think that the US can’t improve the lives of others, it’s that I think that trying to do so militarily is the least cost effective and most likely to blow back.
joe from Lowell
@AAA Bonds:
Yes. One involves a government action that people like you and cleek support on its own merits, and the other involves a government action that people like you and cleek oppose on its own merits.
Which is fine – argue against the use of force on its merits.
Don’t hide behind this bogus, hypocritical argument that you consider it unfair to attribute the blame for the consequences of inaction to the people calling for inaction, when you do it yourself all the time.
Judas Escargot (aka "your liberal-interventionist pal, who's fun to be with")
@Dennis SGMM:
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I’m heartened by Sec. Gates’ caution. I’m just not very sanguine about our ability to get out of a place once we get ourselves into it.
And thanks for yours, in turn.
I assure you, if this all turns out to be a ruse and the US commits ground troops for no real reason, no one will howl louder than I will.
debbie
It’s been a god damned mess for many decades and maybe, for better or worse, this will cause enough of a shift to force everyone to come to some sort of consensus. The Middle East cannot go on like this forever.
On the bright side, I’ve enjoyed the silence from Israel and AIPAC. Sunshine behind every cloud.
joe from Lowell
@cleek:
Yup. And you understand exactly what that point is.
I’ve never understood why people think that playing dumb – making a big show of pretending not to understand something plain and obvious, that everyone reading your comment not only understands, but knows perfectly well that you understand, too – is a good debating technique.
BTW, were you going to answer the question about Alan Grayson?
Canadian Observer
BREAKING NEWS!
MORE evidence of torture and murder from the American Empire.
Where’s the no-fly zone over Afghanistan?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/21/958561/-More-Damaging-Than-Abu-Ghraib
America embarrassed once again.
HyperIon
@Dennis SGMM wrote:
Except this eventually turns into a “timetable” and we all know how awful those are.
Bad choices all around.
Can't Be Bothered
@Flugelhorn:
WMD, WMD, mushroom clouds, 9/11 + 250k ground forces + unilateral action = Iraq. I’m trying to think hard here if we have any closer examples in our recent past of a coalition using airstrikes w/o ground troops. I guess the Clinton presidency didn’t happen. Intellectual honesty would require more than Dictator + civilians + military action = Iraq, but I kind of doubt you’re really concerned about that. I guess moving forward everything is Iraq.. see they’re brown people with an evil dictator this is ZOMG! EXACLTY like Iraq. See how consistent and righteous I am for pointing that out!11!!. The hypocrisy! :clutch pearls:
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Flugelhorn: But Republicans ARE evil!
I know All About Evil.
Would you like to read my tutorial?
A Tutorial on Defense Against the Dark Arts of Conservatism; Lecture I– Dark Agents
Greetings, liberal wizards and wizardettes. I am Professor Hermione Granger-Weasely, currently one of Hogwarts tenured faculty in the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts Instructor. It has come to our attention at Hogwarts that the Muggle World in America has come under seige by a particularily vile franchise of Death Eaters called “conservatives”. I would like to share some of the Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum in the hope that these spells, disspells and counter-spells may be of use to you.
It is important to be able to recognize the different classes of Dark Agents, in order to use the most efficacious defense.
I will address each of the main classes in sequence, starting with Invertors.
Invertors are a highly specialized subspecies of the fearful Dementors, the Wardens of Ashkeban and the Servants of Darkness. While Dementors suck the happiness and joy out of the target, Invertors suck the logic out of their targets, and invert the very fabric of reason. In this way fetuses become slaves, NAACP officers become racists, and any referrence to social justice instantly becomes the dreaded “socialism”….or soshulism…depending on the socio-economic class and geo-location of the invertor. Andrew Brietbart is a good example of an Invertor. As with dementors, a patronus charm is a fine defense. Some of the most powerful patronuses used to successfully ward off invertor attacks are ones representing Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Jefferson, Ta-Nahesi Coates or Halle Berry. Although ingesting quantities of high quality chocolate is an effective way of curing dementor poisoning, invertor poisoning has no known remedy. The application of remedial facts and truths seems to only increase the agony and irrationality of the sufferer. The best course of action in severe cases of invertor poisoning is to isolate the patient in a darkened room with a continous intra-ocular and intra-auditory supply of FOXnews until the patient eventually expires.
cleek
@joe from Lowell:
your mind reading sucks. and since mine isn’t much better, i still don’t actually know what you’re getting at.
but, i’ll guess and assume are you saying something like: i need to STFU because i don’t condemn every hyperbolic statement i’ve ever heard. ? . if so, i’ll point out one big difference between your examples and the one above: the one above refers (at least indirectly) to me, in a currently-active discussion thread. that provides far more motivation than boring old Rhetoric Police duty.
i wasn’t. because i didn’t remember that episode. and upon looking it up, i don’t remember what my response was.
Judas Escargot (aka "your liberal-interventionist pal, who's fun to be with")
@elmo:
Are you seeing the one constant in my position on the matter?
Yes. Crystal clear.
It’s sad to live in a country where smug nihilism is considered a serious political posture.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Flugelhorn: But Republicans ARE evil!
I know All About Evil.
Would you like to read my tutorial?
A Tutorial on Defense Against the Dark Arts of Conservatism; Lecture I—Dark Agents
Greetings, liberal wizards and wizardettes. I am Professor Hermione Granger-Weasely, currently one of Hogwarts tenured faculty in the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts Instructor. It has come to our attention at Hogwarts that the Muggle World in America has come under seige by a particularily vile franchise of Death Eaters called “conservatives”. I would like to share some of the Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum in the hope that these spells, disspells and counter-spells may be of use to you.
It is important to be able to recognize the different classes of Dark Agents, in order to use the most efficacious defense.
I will address each of the main classes in sequence, starting with Invertors.
Invertors are a highly specialized subspecies of the fearful Dementors, the Wardens of Ashkeban and the Servants of Darkness. While Dementors suck the happiness and joy out of the target, Invertors suck the logic out of their targets, and invert the very fabric of reason. In this way fetuses become slaves, NAACP officers become racists, and any referrence to social justice instantly becomes the dreaded “social” “ism”….or so shulism…depending on the socio-economic class and geo-location of the invertor. Andrew Brietbart is a good example of an Invertor. As with dementors, a patronus charm is a fine defense. Some of the most powerful patronuses used to successfully ward off invertor attacks are ones representing Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Jefferson, Ta-Nahesi Coates or Halle Berry. Although ingesting quantities of high quality chocolate is an effective way of curing dementor poisoning, invertor poisoning has no known remedy. The application of remedial facts and truths seems to only increase the agony and irrationality of the sufferer. The best course of action in severe cases of invertor poisoning is to isolate the patient in a darkened room with a continous intra-ocular and intra-auditory supply of FOXnews until the patient eventually expires.
WyldPirate
Same bunch of Obot hypocrites defending an illegal military action. The same stupid SOBs that likely yelled at the top of their lungs at Bush.
I suppose in the Obot’s tortured little fucked-up peabrains that the Bahrain government snipers shooting civilians=good.
Fuck Obama..fucking hypocrite warpig. Can’t wait to cast my vote for anyone but Obama and a Republican…
elmo
@soonergrunt:
Thanks.
joe from Lowell
@cleek:
I’m sorry I overestimated you. Won’t happen again. I guess you weren’t playing.
Nope.
Read the comment from me immediately before the one you replied to, #169. I spell it out there.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Flugelhorn: But Republicans ARE evil!
I know All About Evil.
Would you like to read my tutorial?
A Tutorial on Defense Against the Dark Arts of Conservatism; Lecture I—Dark Agents
Greetings, liberal wizards and wizardettes. I am Professor Hermione Granger-Weasely, currently one of Hogwarts tenured faculty in the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts Instructor. It has come to our attention at Hogwarts that the Muggle World in America has come under seige by a particularily vile franchise of Death Eaters called “conservatives”. I would like to share some of the Hogwarts Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum in the hope that these spells, disspells and counter-spells may be of use to you.
It is important to be able to recognize the different classes of Dark Agents, in order to use the most efficacious defense.
I will address each of the main classes in sequence, starting with Invertors.
Invertors are a highly specialized subspecies of the fearful Dementors, the Wardens of Ashkeban and the Servants of Darkness. While Dementors suck the happiness and joy out of the target, Invertors suck the logic out of their targets, and invert the very fabric of reason. In this way fetuses become slaves, NAACP officers become racists, and neocon chickenhawks become isolationists. Andrew Brietbart is a good example of an Invertor. As with dementors, a patronus charm is a fine defense. Some of the most powerful patronuses used to successfully ward off invertor attacks are ones representing Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Jefferson, Ta-Nahesi Coates or Halle Berry. Although ingesting quantities of high quality chocolate is an effective way of curing dementor poisoning, invertor poisoning has no known remedy. The application of remedial facts and truths seems to only increase the agony and irrationality of the sufferer. The best course of action in severe cases of invertor poisoning is to isolate the patient in a darkened room with a continous intra-ocular and intra-auditory supply of FOXnews until the patient eventually expires.
salacious crumb
Amy Davidson of New Yorker sums up my feelings
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2011/03/libya-what-is-the-plan.html
HyperIon
@cleek wrote:
Indeed. you bring me up short with that.
For all those pointing out that this is not Iraq II, i’m not arguing that it is. But it seems that the talk around it is a sped up version of that around Iraq II.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@WyldPirate: but we are not hypocrites. Obama is a machiavellian pragmatist. He does what he can, where he can.
We cannot do anything about Bahrain, the Sauds already rolled tanks. Destabilizing KSA would cause lightsweetcrude to go to 200$ a barrel overnight.
and im an obamotaku, not an obot.
;)
Can't Be Bothered
@WyldPirate:
If you would rather conflate Libya with Iraq and Obama with Bush, than make the very simple non-intervention arguments that stand on their own merit, then you are a self righteous asshole addicted to outrage. Fact. And if you’re looking for foreign policy from any country that isn’t hypocritical and self serving then you might want to book a ticket out of the solar system. One would think that the whole Obot criticism would die at some point from a lethal dose of irony, but I guess some people are impervious to it.
salacious crumb
@Canadian Observer: Oh and btw we Americans so totally have nothing against Muslims/Arabs. I mean we are bombing Libyans to save them! cant those wretched souls understand this?
Fuzz
@Cat:
Yes, it has. Unfortunately I don’t see things ever changing, it has always been this way and always will be. I just don’t think you’re ever going to see the day when western/1st world nations treat every other country in the world equally, and it has nothing to do with race/ethnicity/religion and everything to do with economics and security.
Antonius
Decades? Qaddafi’s immortal now? That’s going to change the strategic outlook I bet.
liberal
@BGinCHI:
For the umpteemth time, Iraq isn’t the only example of why we shouldn’t get involved in this kind of bullshit.
FlipYrWhig
@Antonius: That’s why we have to be particularly careful. We can’t let Qaddafi get close enough to bite somebody.
D-Chance.
@Can’t Be Bothered: I’ve never seen John tilt at windmills so hard. You’ve now gone on a three day rant about one person’s comment.
You must be a newbie. Cole can go (and has gone) on for weeks like this.
And, if you ever see one of his posts begin with the phrase “one more thing about…” or “this is my final thoughts on…”, expect at least another 4-5 missives before the day’s end. That’s one of the more endearing things about the site.
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: Iraq is the example everyone keeps referring to, either facetiously or fully seriously. Let’s talk about others!
debbie
@Antonius:
Yes, it’s been decades; the Middle East involves a whole lot more than just Qaddafi.
liberal
@Dave:
I’m pretty sure the UN went into East Timor long after the real genocide there had occurred.
HyperIon
@joe from Lowell wrote:
And I’ve never understood why people think accusing someone of playing dumb is anything but arguing in bad faith. It is an assertion of your opinion that stops honest discussion. Make an argument. Don’t just accuse someone of pretending not to understand.
When I read you over at Reason, I thought you were a better commenter.
Can't Be Bothered
@D-Chance.:
Oh I’ve seen the rants. And frankly I think they usually get rather tedious, b/c it basically just means the entire site devolves in to the same twenty assholes arguing past each other for days. BUT I’ve never seen him build a three day rant and complete narrative around ONE comment.
Felonious Wench
@Ija:
FTW
And God, Gaddafi is one ugly bastard. Seeing his face all over the news has left bile in my throat every time. Surely that’s something we can all agree on?
liberal
@FlipYrWhig:
Vietnam. Afghanistan (at least the part that went beyond driving the Taliban out).
cleek
@joe from Lowell:
ah. a reply that wasn’t to me spells out an argument that i didn’t know i was having ? also, which war do i “support on its own merit” ?
could you, please, just make your point ?
Corner Stone
@salacious crumb:
WTF? Building infrastructure is one part of our non-negotiable demands?
Stillwater
@cleek: could you, please, just make your point ?
You gave him a lot of undeserved credit there Cleek.
Cat
@cleek:
His point is, “I’m right, your wrong”.
Church Lady
Count me as consistent. I was against going into Iraq and I’m against entering into the fray into Libya. If France and England were determined to go in, I say good luck to them, but don’t see a reason for us to involve our military.
The contortions some are going through to justify this, when if it had been Bush, or any other Republican President, would have been screaming “war monger” from the outset, are mind-boggling.
Cat
@Fuzz:
So you haz a sadz, but publicly say its ‘ok’ because its always been that way?
The number of atrocious things human beings did to each other that were socially acceptable in the middle ages, but aren’t acceptable now has gone down by a LOT.
salacious crumb
@Corner Stone: the goal posts keep changing..look I think it was Josh Marshall or John Cole who said that basically we didnt care for Libya until Gaddhafi started winning and we (ie USA, Britain, France) got worried that that could mean Gaddhafi would stop selling oil to the West. And so it isnt surprising that we keep upping the ante to the point where Gaddhafi has been completely neutered, and if he refuses, then we throw our hands up in the air and go in for the kill.
Cat
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
I see m_c is unbanned or wiggled around it…
Bob Loblaw
@Corner Stone:
Well, um, yeah. Laying siege to entire cities often involves cutting their water/power.
Restoring the cities’ water, sanitation, and electricity is a necessary part of ending the siege itself.
Out of curiosity, does anybody actually know what’s going on in Libya? Or are you just all flying blind right now?
salacious crumb
@Church Lady: Agreed! they are mostly O-bots who are guarding the fence against criticism of the Dear Leader. Leader Obama can do no wrong and it is us who are the dirty left wing hippies.
salacious crumb
@Bob Loblaw: I thought the original goal of the campaign was just limited to ensuring Libyan aircraft jets didnt fly to bomb cities. when did demanding Gaddhafi restore power become part of the goal?
joe from Lowell
@HyperIon:
I did. And then, I explained it again. And then, I told her where I explained it again.
What do you want from me?
Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig: Let’s talk about others!
But this effort is sui generis, Flip, a bold and innovative use of rockets and bombs to do good in the world with no ulterior motives from those engaging in that action. And no downside risk. Stuck just told us that ‘others’ will shape the new regime. (Because this is really about regime change, isn’t it?) That means no US involvement in divying up the loot, or in shaping the new government, or quieting lingering tensions, or in rebuilding the decimated electric and water plants.
Other examples, by definition, don’t matter.
eemom
@Cat:
I noticed that too. Batshit crazy blog about to go batshit crazier.
Just Some Fuckhead
@salacious crumb: IOIODI
Alex S.
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
I was actually wondering what you had to say (no irony).
Corner Stone
@Bob Loblaw: That’s a fine request but two things:
1. If reports are accurate we are blowing the shit out of these places.
2. How do we enforce this? Give Halliburton a no bid contract then send the bill to Libya c/o Col Gaddafi?
These “non-negotiable” demands on the list seem to beg for mission creep.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Cat: who is this MC of whom you speak? MC 900 foot Jesus? MC PeePants from Aquateen Hungerforce? MC Hammer?
please be more specific.
Bob Loblaw
@salacious crumb:
Yeah, not bombing the cities is an acceptable humanitarian endpoint…
The civilian people slowly starving in the dark while all health services are shuttered due to lack of power and water can take great comfort in the fact they aren’t being actively bombed. They have that going for them.
Corner Stone
@Bob Loblaw:
Oh, and dude, get off your horse. Come on down here with the rest of us failed mortals.
OzoneR
@salacious crumb:
That doesn’t even make sense. If we didn’t care about Libya before, why would Qaddafi stop selling oil to the West? There’s no logic in that.
joe from Lowell
@cleek:
You didn’t know you were having an argument about attributing the consequences of inaction to those who call for inaction?
That’s odd, because you responded directly to someone making exactly that point, and did so with a phrase related directly to that point.
Whoosh. I didn’t write anything about supporting a war on its own merits. I wrote that you should make your argument against this war on its own merits, instead of making some other argument. See, the part where I made that point was here:
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: I guess we don’t know yet whether this is going to be one of those “fire a bunch of missiles to send a message” conflicts or one of those “save the world for a higher principle” and/or “spread the slimy tentacles of empire further” ones. And I think it’s premature to decry it in quite the notes we’ve been hearing to this point. Is it “drone attacks in Pakistan” bad, “rockets into the Sudan” bad, “invasion of Grenada” bad? There are a lot of options.
Stillwater
@Corner Stone: These “non-negotiable” demands on the list seem to beg for mission creep.
The wurlitzer keeps spinning while the gears keep grinding.
joe from Lowell
@Can’t Be Bothered:
I think it was the Horowitz slam – that he still displays the same intellectual and argumentative techniques that defined him before his ideological journey – struck a little too close to home.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Alex S.: well, in my Defense Against the Dark Arts Class at Hogwarts, I emphasize how important it is to use the correct charm, disspell, or counterspell against the particular Dark Creature you are engaging. Since Qaddafi is a classic Tyrant Mountain Troll, the spell you should use is Defangularium!
ie, blow up all his mecha and coms.
That should be sufficient.
joe from Lowell
@Cat: Stillwater – March 21, 2011 | 2:44 pm · Link
@cleek: could you, please, just make your point ?
You gave him a lot of undeserved credit there Cleek.
Reply
Cat – March 21, 2011 | 2:47 pm · Link
@cleek:
could you, please, just make your point ?
His point is, “I’m right, your wrong”.
You people are hilarious. I explained the point twice already.
But you are so determined, aren’t you?
PanAmerican
Looks like somebody has a case of the Mondays!
joe from Lowell
@Church Lady:
You mean like Bush’s war in Afghanistan? Oh, wait, just about everyone supporting this action supported that, too.
Look, you may think that all wars are the same, the specifics don’t matter, so there must be something hypocritical in supporting one and opposing another. That doesn’t mean everyone else thinks that one must either support all wars or oppose all wars.
Alex S.
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Hehe, very wise, please keep it up.
joe from Lowell
@Bob Loblaw: Perhaps he believes Benghazi is a tent city in the trackless desert, and the quote is a demand that Khaddaffy dig its very first well.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@joe from Lowell: well…Cole was correct about the Arab League. They are not going to do squat.
Arab League support was PR kabuki for the Arab street and the Euros.
But Obama is a Greater Wizard of Haut Ecole Magicks.
He exploited the AL’s desire for good PR to do what he thinks is best.
Corner Stone
@joe from Lowell: Well, the direct quote from Obama says “establish” and not re-establish, or return service or allow service or provide service.
So, knowing what an asspuckering stickler you are at parsing out what words really mean, I figured you of all people could help me.
Corner Stone
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Slow down now, don’t blow it!
joe from Lowell
@OzoneR: I think he means, we didn’t issue a demand that power and water be restored in Benghazi until Khaddaffy cut off power and water in Bengazi.
joe from Lowell
@Corner Stone:
So, you do think that Benghazi is a tent city in the trackless desert, without any power or water infrastructure.
Congratulations!
HyperIon
@joe from Lowell wrote: And then, I told her where I explained it again.
Cleek is female?
I did not know that.
In fact I thought I knew the opposite of that.
Corner Stone
@joe from Lowell: If you can’t read, that’s not my problem.
kay
Okay, I was wrong. Most support the establishment of a no-fly zone:70%
Most opposed it last week, 62%, if I remember right.
I don’t know why they changed their minds.
Because they’re fickle and can’t be taken seriously AND/OR they have no earthly idea what’s going on.
cleek
@joe from Lowell:
ok, i asked three times for you to make your point, and now you’ve said something that might be it, but you’re being so sarcastic and passive that it’s possible that this is yet another rhetorical pirouette. maybe your point is something else entirely. who the fuck knows.
suggestion for the future: if you’ve got something to say, say it.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay: A UN sanction can have an effect.
Alex S.
@kay:
Last week, it was 56%-40% in favor. There are some issues with the wording though.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/cnn-poll-support-for-no-fly-zone-increases—-but-no-ground-troops.php?ref=fpi
John W.
Thanks Cole for holding interventionalists responsible for the least informed among us.
Just because Doug Feith was in control for Iraq doesn’t mean the idiots are in control here.
Sam Power’s 2001 article in the Atlantic explains this entire thing. Read it.
cleek
@HyperIon:
me either.
Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig: And I think it’s premature to decry it in quite the notes we’ve been hearing to this point.
When exactly is it appropriate to decry it? Only after the fact?
joe from Lowell
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Mostly. They are starting to send some forces. But, regardless, why do you think this is unimportant? The political consequences of this action among the Arab World is an important consideration.
I think, given the weeks-long wooing of Obama by the French and British, that talking about Obama as the driving force of this action is mistaken.
joe from Lowell
@HyperIon:
If so, apologies. For some reason, I thought otherwise.
No offense intended, cleek.
You know me; I’m much more straightforward when I wish to be offensive.
kay
@Alex S.:
I’m surprised. Maybe I read it wrong because I was looking for a certain result. IMO the general feeling out there is “isolationist”, so perhaps I was looking for validation of that. I still believe it, despite the poll.
joe from Lowell
@cleek: I don’t care, cleek.
AAA Bonds was able to understand, consider, and formulate a response to my argument.
I’ve pointed you to where that was.
And I’m tired of repeating myself.
Last response to you on this point.
Alex S.
@kay:
Honestly, I am surprised as well. Considering that the criticism is coming from two sides, the support is astounding.
FlipYrWhig
@Stillwater: How about after something bad happens? There’s decrying it in the spirit of vigilance — “I don’t like this, and they’d better not fuck it up, and there’s a lot of ways they _could_ fuck it up.” That’s cool.
Then there’s stuff that’s more like, “I don’t like this and it is obviously totally fucked up already, because what might happen might as well already have happened, here we go again, I told you it was a bad idea only an Obot would love, but nobody wanted to listen to me.” There’s been too much of that already.
Bob Loblaw
@Alex S.:
No it isn’t. Americans have never met a war they couldn’t fall in love with at first sight.
Love is fleeting and fickle though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Stillwater: Decry now if you want to. I certainly don’t begrudge anyone that right. You may be correct. At this point, I am tentatively in favor of what is being done right now. If it goes beyond this, I am likely to rethink that support.
Cat
@joe from Lowell:
Honestly I’m just a snarky ahole and its around 50/50 when I’m actually engaging in honest debate.
FlipYrWhig
@Alex S.: I don’t think it’s that astounding. Qaddafi is a well-established Bad Guy and Americans always like smashing one of those. If you polled something like “How long do you expect to continue your support?” you’d probably get something like “one month,” tops.
If you think of it as “US shoots the gun out of the hand of the hostage-taker,” that sounds pretty appealing. If you think of it as “US tries to ‘improve’ the internal politics of yet another nation,” it ceases to have the same appeal.
kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Do you think so? That seems a stretch, but okay. I “believe” in aspirational international law and norms and the UN, but I don’t know anyone personally who has ever mentioned it unbidden as justification or validation for anything. I have to go to a state party event in about an hour.
I’ll ask the old-men county chairs! It will give me something to do, rather than doing what I’m supposed to be doing :)
I’ll poll them.
FlipYrWhig
Also, I think that the biggest skeptics here are underestimating the excitement of the popular uprisings in the area. People got very excited about Iran for a while, and then that fell apart. Then Tunisia worked, and then Egypt worked! That’s the context for this. That never happened in Iraq (except for the abortive Kurdish uprising at the end of the first Iraq war). That’s earning a lot of the benefit of the doubt with me, and probably with a lot of other people as well.
joe from Lowell
@Alex S.: There is always an uptick in support for a military action once it actually begins.
Only about 45% of the country supported invading Iraq the week before we did. After, it jumped into the 60s IIRC.
Alex S.
@Bob Loblaw:
That might be a part of it, but it’s not everything. After all, there is a huge majority against ground troops as well
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@joe from Lowell: lol.
do you know the tale of Brer Rabbit and the Tarbaby?
Oh, please massah, doan trow ussun in dat mean ole briar patch.
O does what he can, when he can. Obama grudgingly (heh) gave in to popular opinion, french, brit and italian blandishments, invitation from the AL, the pleas of National Transitional Coalition in Benghazi, and thoughtfully, reluctently, committed air support.
To do what he wanted to do from the beginning.
Turn Qaddafis massed T-72s and BMPs and arty into a smoking scrapyard before they could embed in a civilian population center.
;)
joe from Lowell
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Um, yeah. The whole “forced laughter” thing when someone makes a point? It just comes across as trying too hard. It doesn’t look like you are breezily confident in how right you are; it just looks like you’re make an effect to look breezily confident in how right you are. Just a tip.
Lovely. The guy talking like that is Obama, right?
Good bye.
joe from Lowell
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Um, yeah. The whole “forced laughter” thing when someone makes a point? It just comes across as trying too hard. It doesn’t look like you are breezily confident in how right you are; it just looks like you’re make an effect to look breezily confident in how right you are. Just a tip.
Lovely. The guy talking like that is Obama, right?
Good bye.
Alex S.
@joe from Lowell:
Ah well, there were several months of run-up to the war and the republican message machine was in high gear. And half of the elected democrats were in favor of the war as well.
joe from Lowell
I think it really is matako-chan.
Who else wouldn’t see the problem with putting that quote in Barack Obama’s mouth?
Corner Stone
@eemom: Just out of curiosity, has it never occurred to you that even if you’re right about all these alleged M_C handles, your obsession with tracking them is even creepier than her having them?
OzoneR
@Flugelhorn:
Did I miss the part where Qaffadi became a right wing religious nut?
Cat
@joe from Lowell:
She has such very distinct grammatical style that I was sure she’d started on medication when her style became less frenetic.
She still drops out some pretty big bombs so I’m on the fence about if she is medicated or just has an editor.
Stillwater
@FlipYrWhig: How about after something bad happens?
In your view, what would constitute something bad happening?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
lolz
Just Some Fuckhead
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Welcome to Balloon Juice. Please be aware that we have a new troll named Allan that likes to derail threads, insult commenters and bait the frontpagers.
Just Some Fuckhead
@OzoneR:
What are your conservative Facebook friends saying about him?
Stillwater
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Please be aware that we have a new troll named Allan that likes to derail threads, insult commenters and bait the frontpagers, and who will actively try to get you banned for derailing threads, insulting commenters or baiting the frontpagers.
Wolfdaughter
I don’t have a real strong opinion about this. Yes, there are differences between this intervention and Iraq II. But we don’t have a real good record with interventions in the Middle East, or North Africa, if you prefer. We don’t really understand the peoples and civilizations in any of those countries.
If we can support the rebels with a minimum of civilian carnage, and depose Ghaddafi, well, that’s good. Sort of. But other interventions haven’t turned out so good. And when you get lots of civilian deaths, you get blowback.
OTOH…wait and see.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay: It made a difference for me.
soonergrunt
@Flugelhorn: The fact that some Dems are inconsistent does not alter the fact that, as you correctly noted, Republicans are evil.
FlipYrWhig
@Stillwater: Good point. I don’t have a good answer to that. I just don’t think it’s yet time to panic about a decade of military involvement when the clock is still showing days elapsed.
FlipYrWhig
@Wolfdaughter:
All true. What’s screwy about this “debate” over the past few days is that what you’ve just said is, basically, the “pro” position. That’s as eager as any of us have been. But people with the “con” position seem to think that even that is too much support.
Davis X. Machina
>@salacious crumb:
We buy oil from murderous thugs all the time. We’re doing it today. We’d have done it from Gadaffi after a decent interval, and an appropriate amount of handwringing, if it were the only issue in play.
soonergrunt
@salacious crumb: don’t feed the morons.
Keith G
@cleek:
If you assert that you are going to jump off a cliff, my only role is to assess the wisdom of such an act. It is a judgement call without much substance to prove or disprove.
eemom
@Corner Stone:
yes, a single observation in a single comment is so very equivalent to your lifelong jihad against imaginary Nicks.
What a loser you are.
HyperIon
@Corner Stone said to eemom:
so…do you think she emailed cole?
i’m still hoping he’ll out the weenies who emailed him.
Fuzz
@Cat:
I know this is likely a dead thread, but what do you suggest doing to change it? Are you really naive enough to think that the day will come when every nation will treat every other nation as an equal? There will literally be no differences between anyone, we’ll give the same amount of time and effort to relations with Burundi as we will with Saudi Arabia? I agree it would be nice if we all held hands and sang like an 80s commercial, but that world does not exist now and never will in my lifetime, if ever. I honestly don’t even know what you’re talking about re: the middle ages, they started a thousand years ago. Will people in 3011 look back and see the society of 2011 and think we acted foolishly because we acted according to our own economic and security interests? Is that really what you’re getting at?
PS- I do have the sadz, but not because of the United States’ foreign policy history.
Cat
@Fuzz: I’ve got a few hours before I can respond, but I will.
Corner Stone
@HyperIon: Outing the weenie is what got me chatting with my parole officer on the regular.
But no, I hope Cole never publishes those e-mails. I’m a strict privacy advocate and from the e-mails back and forth I know Cole is as well…oh, wait.
As for eemom, I doubt she has the time to e-mail Cole seeing as advocating for the murder of Palestinians seems to take up most of her days and nights. Plus, she has a chronic masturbation compulsion. Every time she writes about Hamsher or FDL she has one hand on the keyboard and the other…
Wile E. Quixote
@Dave:
This isn’t a war? Oh, OK. How silly of me. I mean here I was thinking that the act of having your military launch missile strikes on another country to kill members of their military was somehow warlike. Let me guess, you’re also one of those people who believes that what goes on in Gitmo isn’t torture and that it’s not gay if you’re both Republicans.
This isn’t a war? Well shit, I guess that means that if the President wants to nuke Tripoli we should all just sit back and let him do it, because you know, what the fuck, this isn’t a “war” or anything.
soonergrunt
@Wile E. Quixote: I’ll bet the guys who survived the Tomahawk strikes think it’s a war.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@joe from Lowell: pardon, but I am right. And the person talking is Brer Rabbit, not Obama.
Forgive me for thinking you had read the story.
;)
Consider Yemen. Yemen is a sort of client state to America, like Egypt…was. Since the ruler of Yemen recently gave the USA TOPSECRET permission to swarm suspected al-Qaeda camps with reapers and predators (as magically revealed by High Wizard Julian Assange and his Wikileaks franchise), I think Wizard-in-Chief Obama has little leverage to persuade him to stop killing college students.
But lo! Since resolution 1973 went into effect, Yemeni generals are defecting to the protestors.
That is powerful magick, to be sure.
Subtle and subversive, like all the best magicks.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Wile E. Quixote:
Hah.
It’s not, right?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Just Some Fuckhead: Thank you for the warning. I have many excellent spells in my magickal inventory.
In fact, I have one that would probably benefit your new troll greatly.
The expelliarimo charm would get rid of the broomstick up his butt in short measure.
;)
eemom
@Corner Stone:
[yawn]
You’re a looooooser…..and an unimaginative, tedious one at that.
Cat
@Fuzz:
I think most of the meaningful social change that can happened in my lifetime has happened. There are a few big things that could happen that would speed along social change.
First would be getting everyone to agree man made climate change is happening and will have cataclysmic effects if allowed to continue.
Second would be to find a long term energy source, many thousands of years, and clean.
The idea is when you remove these resource pressures people will be more apt to create a fair world. The majority of people will treat each other fairly if they understand they will be treated fairly in return. The Prisoner Dilemma showcases this tit-for-tat nature in humans.
The only real fly in the ointment are the people who take advantage of it to take advantage of the basic fairness of people for their own ends. When you get to many of them even the fair minded people will stop acting fairly.
To counter act their influence, which is so corrupting, requires a long term effort by everyone to call out unfair behavior over and over again and say its not right and doesn’t have to be this way. Saying its human nature is to treat each other unfairly is wrong.
So yes, if we still have a modern society in 3011, the will look back on just as we look back on people from 1011. I’m not convinced we’ll pull it off though, I expect 2511 will more resemble 511 then 2011.
eemom
@Cat:
“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Albert Einstein
Fuzz
@Cat:
I agree, I’m a little more pessimistic about human nature though. Resources are what humans have been fighting over since we figured out how to farm. WW2 was largely about resources too, the Germans needed Poland and the Ukraine’s farmland and Russian oil and the Japanese needed the farms and mineral wealth in the territories they conquered. I don’t know about climate change and resources because they’ve become partisan issues (much like everything else in this country). Just out of curiosity what was the social change you think happened in your lifetime? I was born in 84 so as far as I’m concerned its social media/inter connected-ness, if that’s a word.
Corner Stone
@eemom:
Says the Cape Buffalo of Stupid ™ as she calls me a “loser”. Nice zinger you got there. Really a finely tuned instrument of retort.