Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

He really is that stupid.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

“But what about the lurkers?”

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War / The NATO Angle

Reader Interactions

51Comments

  1. 1.

    fasteddie9318

    I don’t know why they would have taken over operations, but they’re not doing so because Turkey vetoed it.

  2. 2.

    Keith

    I think the argument for NATO taking over is that they already have the command structure and the logistical means to do this sort of thing.

  3. 3.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    1) Geographic proximity to the Area of Ops, ie. shitload of NATO people already in the neighborhood.

    2) C3. NATO haz itz.

    3) Sustainability.

    From my USMC Command and Staff college days, purely from an operational perspective, sure, NATO has the chops and would be the logical command unit to lead such an operation.

    Obviously that ignores the politics and strategic implications of such a NATO op. My thoughts are we lift a page from our Cold War opponents. Instead of being so obvious about our military role, instead we fund and arm the rebels. Lots. And for as long as it takes.

  4. 4.

    General Stuck

    BS/AP) WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama categorically ruled out on Wednesday a land invasion to oust Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi as coalition forces launched a fifth day of air strikes against government military targets in the North African nation.

    Obama said the United States will be pulling back this week from its dominant role in the international campaign aimed at preventing Qaddafi from attacking civilians.

    Obama was asked in an interview with the Spanish-language network Univision if a land invasion would be out of the question in the event air strikes fail to dislodge Qaddafi from power. Obama replied that it was “absolutely” out of the question.

    We could turn it over to Pee Wee Herman and The Muppets, so long as the above comes true.

  5. 5.

    Omnes Omnibus

    The only reasons NATO would take over is that it has a competent command and control structure located reasonably near the AO and several NATO members are taking part in the action.

  7. 7.

    Linnaeus

    From what I’ve been able to tell, it looks like Italy has been the primary advocate of putting this operation under NATO command. Italy’s main justification is that NATO is best equipped materially and organizationally to lead; I think they’re worried that there will be too much confusion over who does what and who’s “in charge”, especially since Italian bases are playing a big role.

    France and Turkey have been opposed; in France’s case, it’s because they think NATO’s image in the Arab world is too negative (mainly because of the US) and Turkey thinks the bombings have already gone beyond the UN mandate.

  8. 8.

    brentblah

    Where are you seeing that they aren’t taking over? Everything I’m looking at still says that they are.

    Edit: And by are, I mean are supposed to.

  9. 9.

    cleek

    i think NATO was the backup plan, if the UN didn’t agree to involve itself in Libya’s civil war.

    there’s also a bit about an arms embargo:

    At a press conference after the meeting, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said ministers had agreed to continue planning for all military options. Gates is opposed to the US, already involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, engaging in another war. The White House has shown some interest in a no-fly zone but this is not shared by Gates. He also stressed that monitoring the arms embargo did not extend to enforcing it militarily, which might risk Nato being drawn into conflict.
    …
    Asked if Nato looked powerless, Gates said: “I think the key factor here is… the limitations of the UN security council resolution 1970, which, even when it comes to the embargo, does not provide the authority for enforcement. So if there were to be a need for enforcement, there would need to be a new United Nations security council resolution even for that purpose.”

  11. 11.

    Calouste

    NATO taking over the no-fly zone would have made life a bit simpler because there would be an existing command structure that the non-members could have tacked into. I’m not sure it will make a massive difference in the end result, just more logistical hassle. I’m surprised Germany hasn’t made more noise about it considering they pretty much pulled all their personnel from the Medditerrenean.

    Keep in mind that NATO is running the arms embargo at sea, with Italy providing a large proportion of the ships, probably also as some kind of forward defense against any kind of funnies that Gaddafi tries to pull.

  12. 12.

    The Dangerman

    How about no integrated command? US reports to US, France to France, etc.; at this point, it’s not like we need integration except to prevent running a plane into a plane (which isn’t going to happen).

    Added benefit, when the bomb hits Kaddafi’s tent, all different countries can point to another one and say “not me”.

  16. 16.

    Martin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Right. The only standing military coalition out there is NATO. The UN doesn’t have one, other than trying to shoehorn it under the peacekeeping banner.

    More than anything else, it’s a shortcoming of the UN. If the UN has adopted a resolution that they should intervene in nations in which the government has turned against the citizens, they need to have some kind of mechanism by which to do this. They don’t. NATO is about as close as the planet has, and clearly that’s not always appropriate (I agree that this shouldn’t officially be a western action).

    I think they should form some new ad-hoc structure lead by the UNSC nations. It’ll look pretty much just like NATO, but it won’t be NATO.

  18. 18.

    Calouste

    So we’ll have Qatari, UAE, Canadian, Norwegian and a few other countries jets sharing Italian and Greek airbases without integrated command. Nothing can go wrong there…

  22. 22.

    General Stuck

    If the French take over, Libya’s precious bodily fluids will be shot to hell.

  23. 23.

    Martin

    @The Dangerman:

    How about no integrated command? US reports to US, France to France, etc.; at this point, it’s not like we need integration except to prevent running a plane into a plane (which isn’t going to happen).

    The problem is that the US and UK seem to be on the same page, possibly with Italy as well as some others. France wants to do much more, and the other nations don’t trust them enough to turn over command to them. Then another group of nations like Turkey don’t want to turn their back on the situation, but think that even the US and UK are going too far.

    Whoever takes command takes command – they’re going to call the shots, and if it’s France and they say to carpet bomb Gaddafi’s house, then that’s the order. If it’s Turkey and they say to stop all air-to-ground activities, then that’s the order. But there needs to be an integrated command.

    Ironically, it seems everyone trusts us the most to be in charge.

  24. 24.

    Stillwater

    @Dennis SGMM: Who cares who’s in charge as long as we can blow shit up?

    Willard: Hey soldier, do you know who’s in command here?

    Soldier: Ain’t you?

  25. 25.

    Martin

    @gex: No shit. But the UN has put forward a pretty strong position on this – and Libya is *exactly* the kind of situation that they had in mind. It was a unanimous general assembly vote, IIRC.

    It’s not even that the UN body would need to have much in the way of assets – they could draw that from the UN members. But they need to have the kind of coordinating and command talent and infrastructure that NATO has and that we have. And they already have a fair bit of that for the peacekeeping mission – they just need to duplicate it and expand on it, and hand more of it’s control over to UNSC.

  30. 30.

    Martin

    @Calouste: Not to mention everyone flying in and bombing the targets of their choice. And who are the rebels supposed to talk to about what targets to avoid – oh right, they’re supposed to talk to everyone at the same time.

  31. 31.

    4tehlulz

    >Whoever takes command takes command – they’re going to call the shots, and if it’s France and they say to carpet bomb Gaddafi’s house, then that’s the order.

    And now you know why the US is taking the lead initially, to keep the French from doing something incredibly stupid (i.e., ground troops).

  32. 32.

    General Stuck

    @Martin:

    I think it was the Arab League actually agreeing on something that shocked everyone into maybe doing something. Those folks hardly ever agree on anything, but they did this time.

  35. 35.

    General Stuck

    @Valdivia:

    When these things happen, and especially when rushed, there always is the usual quibbling of egos and working around possible domestic political problems. Every country is special,, and must make sure their citizens and the world knows they are important. But it really seems like a lot of people in the neighborhood wanted this, and when that is the case, things usually get worked out. Not necessarily for the better, but some kind of consensus to move forward.

  36. 36.

    stuckinred

    From the muck loved Al Jazerra

    “8:36pm

    Reuters: NATO envoys fail to agree on taking over command of Libya operations, says NATO diplomat.”

  37. 37.

    cat48

    Erdogan is a pain. He refuses to do anything where a civilian might be killed. He’s got Obama in a bad spot b/c he just helped negotiate the release of the NYT’s reporters that were captured. He owes him right now. He’s going to have to come up with something good b/c he’s the only thing holding this up.

  38. 38.

    cat48

    @General Stuck:

    The Arab League asking for help set off Kerry who kept saying we absolutely could not turn them down b/c they had never asked for anything like this.

    So thanks, Arab League who finally showed up with a couple planes after the nofly was in place…Qatar.

  39. 39.

    Valdivia

    @General Stuck:

    Yes I agree with this. Because I have been following most of it thorugh the experts instead of our media my view has been more of the growing pains of multilateral action than the us us us view that pervades other coverage. YMMV.

  40. 40.

    Calouste

    @Martin:

    As well. There’s a lot of pie-in-the-sky shit going on on this website both by commentors and frontpagers that really shouldn’t be there if people took half an hour or an hour to browse through wikipedia and just think about things for a few minutes. Like the snarky bullshit by Cole about the “Arab League” no-fly zone. Just look at the map and tell me how you can enforce a no fly zone from 1500 miles away with a jet that has a 350 mile operation radius, flying through the airspace of at least 2 other countries.

  41. 41.

    Tony J

    @Martin:

    I think they should form some new ad-hoc structure lead by the UNSC nations.

    This is one of those things covered under the Treaty of Naganapan signed in 1945 by the victors of WWII. It doesn’t appear in many history books, but it’s the one least likely to be violated by any of the UNSC’s veto-holding members.

  42. 42.

    Tim, Interrupted

    Anyone who does not support Operation Delta Don, Operation Enduring Seagull, Operation Iraqi Freebird, and all other necessary patriotic military endeavors ordered by our Galtian Overlords as represented in the person of Supreme Leader Barack Obama, is a traitor to America.

  44. 44.

    OzoneR

    Now I see why we end up being the the one to do everything, because no one else will step up.

  45. 45.

    GVG

    I don’t know if it’s relevant, but prior to this series of events I had read various European centered news stories that questioned if NATO still needed to exist what with the now long gone communist block thereat it was created to counter. Those few stories tended to go on to talk about maybe EXPANDING NATO’s role because it could be useful for this or that…Evidently it’s something serious people, or at least writers have been thinking about lately.

    2nd I’m not sure I remember after all this time but I think it was a mutual defense group and this Lybia emergency has apparently been driven by Europe and especially Italy’s fear they’ll be over run by Lybian refugee’s so if you stretch the meaning of defense a bit, maybe it does qualify as invoking self defense.

  46. 46.

    El Cid

    @Martin:

    The UN doesn’t have one, other than trying to shoehorn it under the peacekeeping banner.
    __
    More than anything else, it’s a shortcoming of the UN. If the UN has adopted a resolution that they should intervene in nations in which the government has turned against the citizens, they need to have some kind of mechanism by which to do this. They don’t. NATO is about as close as the planet has, and clearly that’s not always appropriate (I agree that this shouldn’t officially be a western action).

    The UN really is only its member states.

    It’s not actually an autonomous agency. The passage of a security council resolution is just an agreement among the 5 major nuclear powers. Typically when opposing, China and Russia abstain.

    I don’t think that the permanent members would want an independent UN force acting outside particular agreed-upon projects. It could basically be allowed to deputize NATO and the AU if those organizations agreed, I guess.

  47. 47.

    Mnemosyne

    @PurpleGirl:

    Isn’t that what we did in Afghanistan? How well did that turn out in the long run?

    Except that, in Afghanistan, we weren’t arming rebels because they were fighting their government. We were arming them because they were fighting the Soviets, and it was yet another idiotic attempt to keep a country from “going Commie.”

    Our foreign policy was distorted for years by our need to “fight Communism” and the kind of alliances that required. Everyone is only just now starting to figure out how to operate in a post-Soviet world, and they collapsed 20 years ago.

  48. 48.

    bourbaki

    @Mnemosyne:

    You do realize that the Soviets intervened in the first place to prop up an already existing (if unpopular) communist government in Afganistan, one that lasted (at least in Kabul) until the early 90s.

  49. 49.

    Mnemosyne

    @bourbaki:

    And that invalidates my comment that the US only sent weapons to the mujahideen to mess with the Soviets … how, exactly?

  50. 50.

    pakenman

    Can someone explain what is going on and why NATO would have taken over the operations, when the coalition includes non-NATO members? I’m curious.

    Look at Afghanistan- The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is a NATO command, but it includes countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, who are a loooooonnnnngggg way away from the North Atlantic!!!

    In the end, a way will be found to include non- NATO countries, because I can’t see NATO asking countries outside the North Atlantic who want to participate to “please stay away”.

  51. 51.

    DPirate

    Can someone explain

    Money

    EDIT: Er, that’s my explanation. I’m not asking for an expl. of money.

Comments are closed.