I’m probably less opposed to intervention in Libya than John or mistermix (I’m honestly ambivalent bordering-on-opposing), but it creeps me out how Orwellian/Rumsfeldian/nonsensical wartime press conferences can be. Today, Jake Tapper pressed Jay Carney on what the White House plans are for Libya and was told:
“I think that in some ways, your questions are answers, in that we carefully consider all those issues.”
Libya is not Iraq. It’s not. The scale is nowhere the near the same, it’s an international effort, toppling the government is not an explicit goal…I could go on and on. But don’t be surprised if we start hearing about “known unknowns” and the area around Tripoli and Benghazi and east, west, south and north somewhat.
arguingwithsignposts
While I prefer the more accurate Jake Tapeworm, his name is Tapper with two p’s. /pedant
Cacti
No blood for oil…
Unless the CIC is a Dem.
soonergrunt
Inter arma enim silent leges
Incoherent Dennis SGMM
We already own the revolution and the revolutionaries. We’ll also own the reconstruction owing to our unique capability to shit out money to no purpose other than enriching the Haliburtons of the world.
Comrade DougJ
@arguingwithsignposts:
Thanks, I fixed it.
Lolis
The one thing everyone in my family agreed upon about Obama was that he wouldn’t get us into another unneccesary war. Egg on face.
Stillwater
beltane
Carthago delenda est.
Yes, I know Carthage was technically in modern day Tunisia but it is still very close.
hhex65
As soon as the words “known unknowns” appear, individually or together, than this will be exactly like Iraq. Oh, and the failure to suppress the CIA story is Obama’s Katrina.
john b
i’ve never understood the criticism of the “known unknown” schpiel of rumsfield. it was a fairly smart and honest thing to say. there are things we know that we don’t know (like say the exact position of osama bin laden) and then there are things we don’t know that we don’t know (like the specifics of a terrorist plan we don’t know even exists). it’s a pretty simple concept.
Comrade DougJ
@john b:
If you read his whole little soliloquy about it, though, it sounds kind of nuts. I admit that the concept of “known unknowns” is itself a fine concept.
cleek
@john b:
i think it was just too self-consciously clever. a press conference discussing matters of life and death and the rationale for spending a fortune and killing tens of thousands is no place to start playing meta-physical word games.
jo6pac
Not yet and I hope is doesn’t. Then again why can the govt. of Amerika save the people of another nation and just take blind eye to citizens of this nation? It’s about the bottom line $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
sfinny
@john b: I think part of the problem with the whole “known unknown” concept was the contrast of the, paraphrased, we know where the WMD are. Where were the known unknowns then?
Comrade DougJ
@cleek:
That sums it up perfectly.
Bob Loblaw
Wasn’t Jay Carney essentially a journalist of some sort at some point in his career? How exactly can people like him agree to take that Press Secretary job and give “answers” like that on a daily basis?
AhabTRuler
The problem with Rumsfeld is that he is a sanctimonious asshole, that’s what.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
The journos luff war porn.
Fuckin’ vamphyres.
Comrade DougJ
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Tapper wasn’t loving here, he was being a pain in the ass, like journos are supposed to be.
danimal
The known unknowns stuff isn’t nearly as grating as the WMD are “somewhere north, south, east or west of Baghdad.” Any war supporters paying attention should have figured out the Bushies were full of crap after that one.
Col. Q.
Hey, man, I’ll be happy to give you plenty of both. Just don’t make any trouble for me, and I’ll hook you up.
Aw, fuck, man, they’ve been here for years! Like I said, just don’t make any trouble, and we can keep this thing of ours running smooth.
C’mon, baby, why’d you have to go and ruin a beautiful thing?
joe from Lowell
I understood what Rumsfeld meant just fine.
I haven’t the foggiest idea what Carney’s word salad is support to mean.
PaulW
Hate to break it to you, but toppling the government is a specific goal. “We want Qaddafi gone.” It’s pretty clear that Quack-boy will not leave on his own two feet, he’s gonna need to get dragged out either alive with his sons or dead in a bodybag. So this is gonna be a war to get rid of a mad dictator. The real difference between Libya and Iraq is that, outside of Qaddafi’s army backers (prolly like 10 percent of the small population plus mercs hired from outside nations) in the country, a majority of Libyans seriously want that idiot gone (with the remaining population wanting to not get killed). I’d like to think a post-Qaddafi Libya will be more peaceful than the post-Iraq where too many factions between Kurd Shia and Ba’ath Sunni (and internal ineptitude of the likes of Bremer) affected the rebuilding efforts.
What’s upsetting me is, for what I knew of Egypt/Libyan relations, that Egypt would be lining up tanks on the border and charging in with a brigade or three to give the Libyan rebels some professional help. I thought Egypt hated Qaddafi (that Qaddafi had aided the pre-Al Qaeda radicals that were involved in Sadat’s assassination, for example). They don’t need the army on the streets in Cairo right now, the civilians are relatively content with how the reforms are going, right…?
General Stuck
No it is not, and cleek, Dougj did mention Iraq. It is amazing to me the time warp, or something, that the blogosphere is stuck in 2003. You all, or most of you helped elect a new president, one that has drawn a line in the sand with a backhoe on NO GROUND COMBAT TROOPS for Libya, and has used the explicit term “ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY” for an exclamation point. I know we can’t always just take a presidents word for everything, but really, how many times has Obama bullshitted us, and don’t fucking give the PO thing, or some other compromise needed to pass laws.
If you don’t trust him when he tells you “absolutely” there will be no ground troops, then what is the point, really, of trusting any president you help get elected. Or, if you have visions of how this could turn out like Iraq without ground troop involvement, , then describe it please.
It matters who is the CiC, and what their ultimate intentions are. Iraq and Vietnam escalated because the presidents during those wars WANTED it to escalate to a ground war and quagmire. Gulf War 1, the president then, DID NOT WANT IT TO TURN INTO A QUAGMIRE, and it didn’t. So unless one of you wizards has some evidence Obama is just bullshitting us, and he really likes to get this Libya war on like LBJ, or Bush, then spare us the vapors from future telling disaster.
Obama wants and needs this like the fucking plague, and it would be pol suicide to let us go all in. he just doesn’t seem the type for that, imo. But I am an Obot, so what do I know.
piratedan
well I guess its a matter of how you sell it, as if advertising matters. Could Bush have led the US to war based solely on the information (which I believe was accurate) that Saddam was purging the Kurds and Shi’ites and as such needed to be brought down? It would have been a change of pace for the US to be seen as bringing down a dictator who was suppressing religious freedom and native minorities.
Instead, GWB floated the WMD and Al Queida flags in front of the nation and away we go.
Here, Obama is mandating that the Arab league lend a hand to no longer allow them to have their cake and eat it too, i.e. use the US as an ally and a whipping boy simultaneously. Making other nations as accountable to change the likely outcome of mass civilian massacres as they expect the US to be. In a way, I wish Libya didn’t have any oil reserves at stake, which would make my own buy in to this intervention a bit more palatable. They are making the noises to try and take a back seat to this and let someone else handle the road trip details, while taking the position of paying our way but not having to make all of the calls.
GregB
When I heard President Obama say:
“The British government has learned that Muammar Ghadaffi has sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
I must say it sounded familiar.
joe from Lowell
@Cacti:
I was against averting our eyes while Gadaffi committed a massacre, too! We’ve done that far too many times while oil-selling dictators made their streets run with blood, just to maintain our access.
No blood for oil!
Cacti
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
-Candidate Barack Obama
I miss that guy.
junebug
Not gonna happen.
Please Doug, try to remember back before you were a front pager. It was not easy here.
There is a libertarian strain to John Cole’s “change”, just as there is a libertarian strain to GG’s constant insults.
Neither of them are going to be in the camp that you are in. Not gonna happen.
There is nothing new under the sun for them. Everything that happens must reckon back to something that they may or may not have supported before.
Remember, the Iraqis didn’t ask us to invade them. I remember an Iraqi student I had who hated Bush and blamed him for all of the deaths. I also remember that Jeff Goldstein exposed my work information during that same time because he didn’t believe me and that John Cole supported Jeff Goldstein during that same time. Jeff and his friends tried to intimidate me then and they still do to this day — they are all just hot air — none ever contacted my work — but at the time, I didn’t know they wouldn’t.
Just remember Doug. Remember that this is not like Iraq — mostly because it wasn’t started because of some threat to Poppy and it has not been handled by a man named Rumsfeld.
J. Michael Neal
@Lolis:
In this case, I think we can thank the French and Italians for getting us into an unnecessary war. They were the ones really gung ho for it. Obama’s options were basically to do what we’ve done, veto their UN resolution, or hang them out to dry by not supporting their intervention. Neither of the last two are particularly appealing options, either.
This is yet another case where I think the French and the Americans have a lot more in common than either group cares to admit.
joe from Lowell
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
God, I’m glad we elected that guy.
Go UN!
hhex65
@joe from Lowell: oh, someone missed a word there. But hey at least the Repub congress will end all these wars when they shut the govt down.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@john b: I agree. I liked how he laid out “known unknowns” etc. because that’s part of any assessment.
Rumsfeld’s stupidity came with “east and west and north and south somewhat”. ORLY???
It’s the geographic equivalent of “Discounts of up to 30% or more!!!” Sounds rational and quantitative, but when you parse it, it’s meaningless.
Mark S.
Tapper was being kind of a dick. Like Carney is going to divulge what’s going on behind closed doors. Actually, it’s doubtful Carney even knows what’s going on behind the closed doors.
I don’t know why anyone takes that job. You are going to end up looking like a lying asshole.
Comrade DougJ
@junebug:
I agree it’s not Iraq, but the nonsense answers worry me. They do.
joe from Lowell
@hhex65:
Well, in his defense, it’s not like the concept of unilateralism was important to anyone who denounced the Iraq War over the past few years.
junebug
@piratedan:
christ Rove et al even said they were selling the Iraq war. Now you think that is a good idea and Obama should do it?
christ.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@General Stuck:
Thank you, Lyndon Baines Johnson for your legacy as a war president you sonofabitch. And you, Richard Milhouse Nixon, who figured, WTF, why not do the same thing.
Why the hell should we trust anything any president says after these two shit in the punchbowl?
Cacti
@joe from Lowell:
War Powers Resolution Act, Section 3
But don’t let that rain on your wargasm.
junebug
@GregB: @GregB: You heard that quote where?
J. Michael Neal
@Cacti: Notice that the quote you produced says absolutely nothing about having a vote in Congress. Contrary to your implication, the War Powers Act was an abject rejection of Congress’ responsibilities. It was a desperate cry for someone else to take the responsibility for anything that happens.
junebug
@Comrade DougJ: Does that mean you remember the dark days of 2005-2006? It was the worst. Remember how people argued over the number of people who had died in Iraq? Do you remember how bad it actually got? Do you remember the days of people claiming not so many people died?
joe from Lowell
@Cacti:
And in the next section, it puts that principle into action, with timetables and specific conditions:
But don’t let the actual requirements of the law you didn’t bother to read interrupt your self-adulation.
joe from Lowell
@Cacti: I do have to give you points for the implication that disagreeing with you about stopping a massacre is not only an indication of immoral character, but of sexual deviancy.
pattonbt
@General Stuck: I love Obama and will happily vote for him again. That said, he is an American politician and holds many “pragmatic” American politician beliefs regarding the use of military force. Beliefs I fundamentally disagree with. I believe he means it when he says “no ground troops”. But I don’t hesitate for one second in believing that if facts change he won’t authorize the use of ground troops.
Obama is no dove and believes that military intervention “can be done right”. I trust him a hell of a lot more than any other American politician and I’m glad he’s running this show, but, for me, the system controls too much of the war narrative and he will, if necessary, put ground troops in. Once engaged it will be too easy to ratchet up the force if needed or pressure is applied.
Cacti
@J. Michael Neal:
I’m also wondering what was the national emergency created by an attack on the United States, its territories, possessions or armed forces.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Cacti: Apparently you also aren’t familiar with the terms of UN and NATO membership.
Cacti
@joe from Lowell:
“Stopping a massacre”
Got those talking points down good.
You need to work “madman” into it though.
Cacti
@joe from Lowell:
“The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”
Hmmm…
Declaration of war? strike 1
Specific statutory authorization? strike 2
National emergency? strike 3
What happens after strike 3? I forgot.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Cacti:
Like ‘no blood for oil’, dismissing Gaddafi’s plans for Benghzai, and citing the Globe interview and the War Powers Act, right?
Cacti
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
I heard Saddam’s men were throwing babies out of incubators too.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Cacti:
Gaddafi shells the fuck out of Benghazi and sends the troops in. Go ahead, tell us what happens next.
Cacti
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
This all has a familiar ring to it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: It isn’t 2003; Libya isn’t Iraq; Obama isn’t Bush. It may all go to hell but not in the same way. If you want to make cheap rhetorical points, go right ahead but don’t expect anyone to take you seriously.
PeakVT
@AhabTRuler: Rumsfeld is condescending prick. Loserman, OTOH, is sanctimonious prick.
Morbo
@Comrade DougJ: Again, Samuel L does a damn good Rumsefeld.
Linnaeus
This is pretty much my take right now; I realize that this is a different situation than Iraq, that Obama is not Bush, and that threats of slaughter should be taken seriously. But I still have a lot of nagging doubts, which obviously won’t be resolved until we see what happens. And that’s frustrating.
Mnemosyne
@Cacti:
What part of “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land” did you not understand?
CJ
@Mnemosyne:
But Dennis Kucinich! Separation of Powers! Bush!
Mike M
I think that this has all been covered before, but the UN Participation Act of 1945, authorizes the president to take military action without further authorization of congress pursuant to a resolution of the UN Security Council under article 43 of the charter. The UN charter is a multilateral treaty, which the US has ratified.
You can agree or disagree with the US action in Libya, but it certainly wasn’t done in secret and deliberations played out over multiple weeks. That was plenty of time for congress to voice its view, and in fact, the Senate did. They passed a resolution supporting the UN sanctions on Libya and calling on the Security Council to impose a no-fly zone. Of course, congress could always end things tomorrow if they had the will.
Of course, everyone wants the US to get rid of Qadaffi, prevent genocide, free Syria, liberate Bahrain, etc. without the use of military force, covert action of the CIA, or by negotiating with tyrants and other bad actors. And be consistent, tell everyone your endgame, and don’t spend any money.
Pity it’s such a complex world. What I haven’t read on this blog or elsewhere, are many viable alternatives or workable solutions that would help those people across the Middle East.
cat48
The Raven
(Now posted in several places)
I do not think it wise for the world to sit by while mass murder is done, but the why and how of military intervention troubles me. In theory, the United Nations exists partly to prevent exactly what the UN has so far prevented Qaddafi from doing. For this to end well though, military intervention has to be undertaken in the right way, and it is probably best it is undertaken for the right reasons. Right reasons we can fairly say we don’t have here: none of the leaders of this intervention have clean hands, though it is possible that Obama and Clinton are motivated by a genuine desire to see justice done. Obama does have his moments, and this may be one of them. Based on her history, I think Hilary Clinton is also motivated by humanitarian concerns. However, they can only get support for this because the US hawks are also interested in intervention, and their reasons are far less savory. As to the right way, the UN would have to provide disinterested support for freedom and democracy in Libya, and the support would have to be enough and last long enough for the rebels to win. Disinterested support for freedom and democracy isn’t in the picture, and enough support for enough time also may not be–wars are expensive.
This is not badly begun, but I do not, personally, have much hope that it will end well.
Croak!
cleek
@General Stuck:
i know. he beat you to it!
you must be so mad.
Joe Beese
“I oppose telecom immunity.”
“I will conduct health care negotiations on C-SPAN.”
“I will release prisoner abuse photos.”
And the fucking PO thing.
Joe Beese
And Comrade, Iraq was also an “international” effort. You forgot Poland!
And the only reason regime change isn’t an “explicit goal” is because Obama is lying about what the goal is. Just because you’re gullible enough to believe him in spite of all the evidence doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be.
El Cid
@john b: If Rumsfeld had been using such comments in the context of a person searching for needed empirical data, it would be one thing.
The context was that he was bullshitting about how they knew there really were WMD somewhere in Iraq, after none were cropping up post-invasion.
It is not an expression of honest curiosity; it was a clear attempt to bullshit his way out of a complete false-hood. The link between Saddam and WMDs present to threaten us was a lying, propaganda campaign for war, not an attempt to ferret out the notion of truth in a complex world.
cleek
this is exactly like Iraq!
General Stuck
@cleek:
Hard to be mad at a child being a child. Dontcha think?
El Cid
@Mike M:
One of the reasons you haven’t seen anyone offering any viable alternatives or workable solutions that would help those people across the Middle East is because no one at all has proposed anything whatsoever that would be a ‘workable solution to ‘help those people across the Middle East’.
No one, from no side, in favor or opposed to the Libyan military intervention, not the administration, not the UN, no one. If there’s some suggestion in there that there is some sort of viable plan for such a thing and some sets of other people are emptily criticizing it, then I’d urge the tossing of that suggestion real quicklike.
cleek
@Mike M:
have they tried lowering their taxes ?
it fixes everything in the US.
Joe Beese
If Obama wants to be honest with us, he should hereafter refer to the Libya fiasco as Operation Turd Sandwich.
someguy
@Joe Beese:
Geez Joe, I think it tastes kinda like fish. A little bit more earthy than fish, maybe like an old fish that’s gone off a little bit. But I think I can swallow it.
So when do we start bombing Lybia?
mclaren
Yet.
Come back in 5 years when we’ve got 100,000 troops bogged down in Libya and I’ll say “I told you so.”
Joe Beese
It will be more like 10,000 – assigned as “NATO peacekeepers” or some other bullshit. Along with the a million-dollar-a-day no-fly zone.
And the Obots will bleat, “How could anyone have known it would turn into a quagmire? You can’t blame us!”
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@El Cid:
False. What do you think the Obama Doctrine is?
Libya is a template for the form of our next “humanitarian” intervention.
Wanna see? Syria and Iran.
Dig Hillary. If the SMB takes down Bashar, then our next stop after Libya is Tehran.
Maude
@General Stuck:
Heard this morning on rightie radio that Obama is arming the rebels and there will US boots on the ground. It was local NYC.
I really want liars to pay the price for sitting on their fat rear ends and telling little false stories.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Joe Beese: that wont happen, don’t be retarded. Qaddafi is going down, its just a matter of time.
Libya shares a border with Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaradawi put a fatwah on Qaddafi. The MB is the majority political party right now and they have a 30 year stockpile of american armament. If Qaddafi doesn’t skip, it WILL be A-stan II…for Qadaffi. The MB will push arms and “insurgents” across the border until hes gone or someone collects on the fatwah hasanat. Right now egyptians are content to let the US and Co. do the heavy lifting and expense weaponry. But no way is Qaddafi a long term proposition.
Qaddafi is a pariah, has no friends left, is universally despised.
He cant get resupplied, and 80% of the oil reserves are in rebel hands.
His only chance was a quick decisive crush and to kill as many of the rebel leaders as possible.
tant pis for him, the French brought the rain to Benghazi before he could execute his plan.
El Cid
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I would like to see evidence that Obama or anyone else has proposed — not what they’d like to say it is — a ‘workable solution’ to ‘help those people in the Middle East’ in any sort of empirically supportable fashion.
Anyone who thinks that anyone *has* worked out such a thing is insane.
[I.e., I meant the part about someone offering a ‘workable solution’ to be taken seriously as a claim, not to note that some have done so rhetorically.]
Hermione Granger-Weasley
Obama thinks it is a plan.
And hes got the gun.