So, no. Libya is not Iraq, or Afghanistan, or any other country. Libya is Libya, and while I hope Gaddafi is gone and everything works out, I still do not think we should have been involved. I don’t care if you disagree, but I think I have some good reasons why we should have stayed out of this. Reasons that go beyond “You just hate Obama” or “You are just an idiot and Obama is smarter than you” or “You can’t tell the difference between Iraq and Libya.” Hell, I’m not even getting in the way of the pom pom waving and USA foam fingers- “OBAMA GOT BIN LADEN AND NOW GADDAFI,” mainly because I can’t grok the dissonance between the following statements:
“We’re really not involved in the Libyan hostilities” and “OBAMA JUST PWNED GADDAFI USA! USA! USA!”
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then:
President Obama was deeply wary of another military venture in a Muslim country. Most of his senior advisers were telling him to stay out. Still, he dispatched Mrs. Clinton to sound out Mr. Jibril, a leader of the Libyan opposition. Their late-night meeting on March 14, 2011, would be the first chance for a top American official to get a sense of whom, exactly, the United States was being asked to support.
***Libya’s descent into chaos began with a rushed decision to go to war, made in what one top official called a “shadow of uncertainty” as to Colonel Qaddafi’s intentions. The mission inexorably evolved even as Mrs. Clinton foresaw some of the hazards of toppling another Middle Eastern strongman. She pressed for a secret American program that supplied arms to rebel militias, an effort never before confirmed.
Only after Colonel Qaddafi fell and what one American diplomat called “the endorphins of revolution” faded did it become clear that Libya’s new leaders were unequal to the task of unifying the country, and that the elections Mrs. Clinton and President Obama pointed to as proof of success only deepened Libya’s divisions.
Now Libya, with a population smaller than that of Tennessee, poses an outsize security threat to the region and beyond, calling into question whether the intervention prevented a humanitarian catastrophe or merely helped create one of a different kind.
The looting of Colonel Qaddafi’s vast weapons arsenals during the intervention has fed the Syrian civil war, empowered terrorist and criminal groups from Nigeria to Sinai, and destabilized Mali, where Islamist militants stormed a Radisson hotel in November and killed 20 people.
It was a bad idea then, it’s been proven to have been a disaster, and we are poised to nominate two people who possibly support aggressive intervention always as our policy of choice (Hillary maybe, whatever Republican definitely). That is something that should be talked about.
Also amazing is how much of the commentary here that was pro-invasion was basically ad hominem “You’re a fucking idiot who learned the wrong lessons from the Iraq war” and “Obama isn’t Bush this will go better. Ahh, partisanship. Read the archives- it’s all there for you to enjoy, just like all the ragingly stupid shit I said from 2000-2005.
Baud
Every word in that article may be 100% accurate, but the NYT has lost credibility with me with respect to anything to do with Hillary. YMMV.
JPL
A friend was distressed about the article, and I said it was fair. You are right to mention that only hawks are running for President. Maybe Hillary learned her lesson. Last night, I read the article, but I think it was mentioned that it was going to be in terrible shape, whether or not we intervened.
Calouste
And the results of the other option would have been…?
Ponies I guess? Or unicorns?
Or maybe a civil war along the lines of what has been happening in Syria over the last few years?
gene108
Weren’t Britain and France, and maybe Italy, already involved with toppling Qadaffi?
I always thought we got pressured into the position by our NATO allies, who wanted to make sure their supply of Libyan oil did not get reduced.
El Cid
I didn’t think it was an easy choice, but the long history of North African civil and proxy wars prompted my suggestion at the time that it would very likely lead to chaotic instability.
JPL
@gene108: Yes and the article does mention that.
Emma
You could have said all of the above without the personal attacks. The truth of the matter is that the whole Middle East is one great example of how Americans and other Europeans shove their oar in, then hit the panic button and leave at a dead run leaving the disaster they created for their victims to solve. Until we get broken of that habit we’ll owe those people something for the shit we rain down on them periodically.
Bobby Thomson
@gene108: yes and yes.
Hawes
There’s a difference between “pro-invasion” and “pro-intervention.” As you yourself note, we went from a potential humanitarian catastrophe to a different humanitarian catastrophe. If Qaddafi had reached Benghazi, it would have been Rwanda scale slaughter. Instead, we have Somalia scale chaos.
Which is worse? Hell if I know. But no one in the administration was committing to “invasion” and they still aren’t – just as we have intervened in Syria but have not invaded. I’m not sure why that’s a hard distinction to grasp.
Cacti
Bernie says he can handle Putin because he dealt with a lot of people as Mayor of Burlington.
Can he also see Russia from his house?
JPL
@Baud: The coverage of Hillary’s emails has been pretty poor.
Hawes
@gene108: Yes, allies led the way, but it was more about a refugee crisis that would overwhelm Italy and destabilize Egypt, which still held a fragile hope of democratic reform.
It also would have sent refugees streaming into Tunisia, which has been the one bright light in all this.
So, as a result of the intervention, Libya is a failed state, Egypt is stable but dictatorial and Tunisia is promising.
I’m not sure not intervening alters that math much.
Mnemosyne
@Calouste:
My question as well. Gaddafi was gearing up to use mercenaries to wipe out the rebels, because his own army was in rebellion against him. Anyone who thinks that would have been a better outcome is an idiot.
And, yeah, taking the NYT’s word on anything regarding a Clinton is never a good idea.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The idea that the US caused the Libyan civl war by intervening strikes me as the flip-side of the McCain Graham notion that we caused the Syrian civil war by not intervening.
Keith G
I like HRC and it seems totally accurate that in the presidency she will do more good than harm, but she does have some hard-wired thought processes that are, at the least, troubling.
I just want this cadre of Democratic leadership do as little harm as possible as they finish their commitments and then make way for a younger and more liberal set of leaders.
beltane
@gene108: I was under the impression that Italy, at least, was against toppling Qaddafi due to fears that any resulting instability would increase the influx of refugees. These fears have come to pass in a big way.
The UK and France, not being as close to the action, were in favor of intervention. Berlusconi was rightly criticized for his close ties to Qaddafi, but he was definitely in the category of “blind squirrel finds nut” when it came to Libya.
Davebo
Still raging, after all these years! Isn’t that a Paul Simon song?
Still utterly counter productive.
Keith G
@Hawes:
It is very likely that the most felicitous-seeming short term choice (disrupt Qaddafi leading to his fall – but do little else) ends up being more deadly and more politically unmanageable than what seemed at the time the more horrifying choice of nonintervention.
Rommie
Once in a while, our host shows why he was on the other side of the political spectrum. Patting yourself on the back for Being Right, yeah, that’s your old self peeking out. Never mind that you have no way of knowing if the current timeline is the Least Shitty result – it’s stinky, so HA HA you dimwits!
But, you know what, it’s OK with me. You can’t expect anyone to just flip 100 percent and never do or act as before. It’s a small price to pay to get the flip to happen, so rock out. Cat Herding is nothing new on this side of the fence.
beltane
@Keith G: If the United States had to deal with the number of refugees Europe is absorbing now, this country would be in full concentration camp mode by now.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
There’s a reason Samantha Powers called her book The Problem From Hell. Do you stand by and let people be slaughtered when action might save them, or do you intervene knowing that your actions might make things worse down the line? Is either one of those choices truly morally superior to the other?
Calouste
@Cacti: Burlington Vermont. Population in 1990, when Sanders left for the greener pastures of Congress, 39,127. The only good thing that can be said about Sanders argument is that those are indeed more people than in Wasilla, Alaska.
Benw
So the only ‘important’ person who is allowed even after all this time to definitively state that the Iraq war was a disaster started with lies is Trump?
But Obama heads off a humanitarian disaster and everything after is an unmitigated disaster that brings discredit to everyone involved, particularly – oh, I don’t know – Hillary?
So then we can at least conclude based on the NYT’s own logic that dropping bombs on other countries is almost always wrong?
Except that we all know when the next Republican president is all in on another stupid war you’ll be right there leading the armchair brigade.
Fuck you, NYT.
Just Some Fuckhead
Amazing how a blogger who was always wrong about everything produced a likewise blog community. Why not a Rahm thread while the gang that couldn’t shoot straight is excusing the Libya catastrophe?
Tractarian
But Libya did go better than Iraq.
Do you disagree with that?
kc
@JPL:
Hell, no, Hillary hasn’t learned shit. She didn’t learn from Iraq, why would she learn from Libya?
Keith G
@beltane: Many people on this side of the pond had the “Sully View” of the various Arabic uprisings – vanquish the old regimes and let the people have their will.
Hell, even our founding leadership was against that and our population, was much more unified than any of the Arab states.
The political ramifications in Europe of American-abetted instability seems like it going to end up being monumental. But you are right. We get to hang back and escape the most costly blow back.
piratedan
1) Libya is Libya, what have we done there that is radically different from Iraq and Afghanistan?
ummmm, boots on the ground. The claim that what we did there somehow made it worse of a shit show that it was already deteriorating to.. is proven how? Based on Qaddafi’s threats to turn his army (and their modern arms or whoever he could get to use ’em) onto civilians was supposed to be a more noble way for those folks to die rather than competing extremists groups fighting over the remains is somehow a desired outcome?
They rolled the dice and hoped that the people that they were “helping” would lead to a more peaceful transition rather than watching Qaddafi give us Hussein v2.0 (which is being played out real time in Syria instead).
2) so… supposing you’re right that we shouldn’t have intervened means that you’ll somehow sleep better watching the dictator kill people to stay in power because at least, thank god, America wouldn’t have it’s hands dirty THIS time, while peacefully ignoring the decades we helped keep him propped up in our less enlightened days because at LEAST he wasn’t a fucking Commie dictator.
3) as for being an outsized regional threat… there was already a civil war going on in Libya, when we “helpfully” intervened. So you’re suggesting that Libya would have been a safer place if the pseudo pro-western factions attempting to oust Qaddafi being defeated would have made it a better place, regionally speaking. I think that based on the examples in Syria, Egypt, Iraq and the proxy fight that is ongoing between Iran and Saudi Arabia throughout the region would have guaranteed (and continues to show) that despite who’s proxies are in play, people are going to die until they reach their own reconciliation or until the rest of the world (or even the rank and file in those countries) get sick of this shit and try to “fix” this. Which to be honest, no one seems inclined to do.
As a citizen of the world, I would like to do more (other than the money I throw at relief efforts) but I also happen to live in a country that has a significant proportion of religious extremists in and of themselves who are inclined to fuck things up for anyone else who doesn’t happen to agree with them. So, as much as I would like to have serious doubts about Hillary’s choices regarding foreign policy, that shit has to be tabled until we can be sure that our own national conversation isn’t being run by our own brand of religious idiocy and venal policy of “fuck it! bomb them all and take their oil dammit!”
also too, if Hilary Clinton found a way to cure the common cold, the NYT would pitch it as a government attack on Big Pharma and how many people it would put out of work. As they have shown over a track record that stretches back a couple of decades, they have their own agenda when it comes to the Clintons.
Roger Moore
@Hawes:
Yes. And ISTR that a lot of the panic before we got involved was not about what the post-war situation would look like but that we’d be inevitably sucked into a ground invasion and an Iraq-style occupation. There was going to be chaos and lots of killing in Libya whether we were involved or not, so it seems like a really false argument to claim that the chaos there now is proof that original complaints about the intervention turning into an invasion were well grounded.
WarMunchkin
Liberal interventionism is just a fancy motive. It’s amazing how the actual actions it advocates are indistinguishable from neoconservative dominion. Apparently repeated episodes of bombing brown people are okay as long as the intent is pure, no matter what damage is caused to people’s families and lives.
kc
@Tractarian:
Better for whom?
BBA
FWIW, Libya is what drove me over the line to complete pacifism. (Still supporting Hillary – I may be a pacifist but I’m no fool.)
Tractarian
@Keith G:
Really. Is that based on anything concrete or just your hunch? My hunch is that without US intervention, things would largely be just as shitty as they are today – except our European allies would be pissed at us for failing to back them up. Plus, there’s that whole impending civilian massacre thing.
HRA
At the beginning of the 1st Gulf War, I thought about Pandora’s Box being opened. That ended quite quickly. During the start of the Iraqi War, I read blogs of Iraqi people and one Kurdish one there. It was sad and horrific to learn the daily terror they all faced. At the same time one close family member came home after the battle in Fallujah in which he had fought and there for all of us to see was PTSD. It did not end well.
I expected a relief when President Obama took office from Bush. Iraq will never be the same and the fault does lie with Bush and whoever voted for it to happen.
Never believed we would be marching across the Mid East to Libya after we had Iraq as a model not to do it.
Now along with the Russians we are bombing Syria to the point of where it begins to look like Berlin did in WWII and wonder why the refugees are fleeing as well.
All those people I mentioned above have one very particular characteristic -pride. It has less to do with religion.
I feel better to have gotten that off of my mind after so many years. . .
Pragmatic Idealist
The critics always seem to forget that Libya was already embroiled in a civil war when Obama staged a limited intervention of several weeks. He then said it’s up to the Libyans to determine their own destiny. He does not own the chaos which was already under way. Saying that we can’t do anything unless we take complete control is ludicrous.
Ruckus
I’ll go with are there any easy/good answers in the entire area? And I think the answer to that is no, there are not. Do something or don’t but what if neither is correct?
Someone pointed out the we need to have a discussion of what is our role and goals in the world should be. Conservatives seem to believe that it is scorched earth with only us left standing, which seems just a couple billion miles over the top. Or some want isolation, to have nothing to do with other countries – a wall. Which also seems to be about as workable as burning down the rest of the world. Is the answer some where in the middle? I’d think it’s obvious that over the last 65 yrs war hasn’t really worked, so is there a better answer and if so how do we find it and make/hope it works?
Tractarian
@kc:
Uh, 4,425 American servicemembers?
beltane
@Tractarian: Libya has a much smaller population than Iraq and far fewer ethnicities to contend with each other ( 6 million vs. 33 million in Iraq). Just because both countries are majority Muslim does not mean they are truly comparable in any way. Right now, Libya is a lawless playground for ISIS and other similar groups.
Simply put, Libya had far fewer civilians to be killed than Iraq.
BillinGlendaleCA
@WarMunchkin: Non intervention also carries costs; see Clinton, WJ re Rwanda & Bosnia.
debbie
Watching all the various screw-ups that have taken place in the region, I think the only thing that should ever be done is to work to get all the parties in the same room and talking.
beltane
@debbie: John Kerry has had some success doing this in Syria.
debbie
@beltane:
Not as flashy or as fun as obliteration, but it’s really the only answer.
WaterGirl
@Rommie:
Are you kidding me? Have you never read any other lefty bloggers? You need to get out more! :-)
(virtually speaking blog-wise)
eemom
Ah, a peaceful pleasant post for a Sunday afternoon….
WarMunchkin
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yes. All actions and inactions have a cost – but the track record here is clear: foreign policy elites are unable to confidently predict the results of US military actions, and every time we have tried to do something, it has hurt innocent lives and families and further destabilized the region.
And it’s also no accident that each time, this is a bunch of white people arguing about how to best bring peace via military response to the tumultuous browns.
PsiFighter37
That was a mess of a situation, but what would have been the reaction if we simply watched Qaddafi massacre everyone in Benghazi?
It was a shit situation. Was it handled well? Probably not. I do lay a lot of blame on Cameron and Sarkozy, though, who were super gung-ho about bombing the crap out of Qaddafi’s forces and kind of forced the U.S. to ‘lead from behind’. It was almost 5 years ago, though, so will have to refresh my memory…
Keith G
@Tractarian: Don’t whinge about expressing hunches. If they get outlawed, this blog goes POOF!
? Martin
@Ruckus:
Nope. The opportunity cost for Libya was Syria. Not exactly a better outcome.
I also recall Cole basing his argument that this was a power grab by the US, that we’d have bases and oil companies in there, and that was the real US motivation. That hasn’t exactly proven correct.
Marc
This is a good pair of articles, actually, and has pretty much nothing to do with the primaries. Clinton is a hawk, and denying it doesn’t do any particular good. It’s not the first time that a Democratic nominee has some views that liberals tend not to agree with. But it does have something to do with the unease that quite a few of us feel about her candidacy; that we’ll spend the autumn arguing about who’s more warlike and that we’ll end up with a string of interventions either way.
We really did dodge the metaphorical bullet with Obama and we’re not going to be so luck in the next term.
John Cole
@? Martin:
I would very fucking much like to see where I said that.
HinTN
@Cacti: Which truly underscores the dearth of dem talent on the national stage.
Woodrowfan
@gene108:
Keeping Qadaffi in place was the best way to guarantee their access to oil, not toppling him. And yes, they took the lead. Given the situation, Qadaffi was about to start slaughtering civilians in rebel cities, I thought intervention was the least bad of the choices. The outcome, chaos, was not inevitable. Possible, even likely, but not inevitable.
Marc
@Tractarian: Well, the places where the Arab spring was put down violently (e.g. Bahrain) are now stable, and the places where it wasn’t are chaotic war zones (Libya, Syria) or reverted to the status quo ante (Egypt). Tunisia is the sole possible success story, and it’s quite fragile. Algeria is another place where the Islamists were crushed by a coup after winning an election. That’s a lot of data against the argument that western-style elections are a cure-all.
MazeDancer
@Baud:
Getting the same mileage. Am I happy with Hawky Hillary? No. Or what happened Libya? Not at all. But the Times scheduling this piece to be the banner – over the primary results – on the morning after South Carolina primary is typical of their feelings about her. Went to the site to see the final SC tally, greeted with another moment of the Times Kill Hill game.
Marc
@MazeDancer: The Times coverage of Sanders has been relentlessly negative when they’ve covered him at all. They have a longstanding animus against Clinton, but they also clearly prefer her in this election season to any of the alternatives.
More to the point, this article is what the Times does best: deep investigative reporting. Dismissing it because it harms the cause is a bit too Republican for my tastes. From what source is correct critical information about Clinton permissible under these rules?
Davis X. Machina
@PsiFighter37:
Our standing in the world would actually have risen. It would be the beginning of undoing the harm from Iraq and Iran. Because America could have done something, and instead did nothing, thereby demonstrating US restraint, and self-control, and turning away from militarism.
This would have garnered us far more kudos in the world at large, than any purely notional damage to our image that any so-called ‘massacre’ Qaddafi may or may not have been planning could theoretically have caused.
Or so I’ve been told.
Even more progressive than doing nothing would have been supporting Qadaffi against the rebels, in recognition of his decades of support of indigenous peoples, national-liberation movements, anti-imperalism generally, and anti-US imperialism in particular.
BillinGlendaleCA
@WarMunchkin:
So the solution is to wash our hands and let them fight it out? My point it that is that we tried that in Rwanda, President Clinton counts that as one of his biggest mistakes. It probably plays into HRC’s calculus.
wmd
Interesting that Tulsi Gabbard left the DNC to endorse Bernie, because in her judgement as a Congresswoman and reserve Major in the US Army Bernie would do a better job in reviewing consequences of military action. I don’t remember if John Cole saw her speech when he and ABL went to the Democratic National Convention in 2012. Anybody remember?
sharl
At the time I took very seriously the warnings posted by Soonergrunt – someone who knows about foreign military interventions in an up-close-and-personal way – and it looks like events have proven him correct. See comment #32 of the 2011 post linked by Cole, as well as Sooner’s comments (e.g., #158 and #187) here. My concern about the need to stop the potential impending genocide – IMO it was a genuine concern – was also addressed by Sooner (#211, in answer to a point raised by the much-missed General Stuck):
~
And um, no, the Europeans can’t “force” us to do anything if we don’t want to do it. European elites wanted us to go in, and our elites agreed to it. I would love to delve into THAT dynamic a bit more, especially before it gets us into yet another fun situation.
Bill E Pilgrim
@MazeDancer: Yes God forbid that anyone run reports scrutinizing candidates’ policy history at a time when they’re running for office and it might actually be important for people considering voting for them to read about.
Better to just focus on the horse race reporting during an election, and run screaming “Hillary won!” headlines over an article about her “rout” and so on.
I’m not saying the latter should be avoided or verboten but neither should the former. And complaining about people reporting on the political history of candidates while those candidates are putting themselves up for consideration as if that’s suspicious timing or something, is just bizarre.
BBA
@Marc: If the people in these countries want Islamism, who are we to say they shouldn’t have it? Even as truly horrific as the treatment of women and religious minorities under Islamist states can be.
Marc
@BBA: The people in those countries who would be murdered by the Islamists, by and large, are the people preventing them from taking power. Nobody outside supported the Algerian military, and the Egyptian military would have done what they did regardless of outsiders. It’s when people outside shatter the opposition to the Islamists that they take over.
It’s also true that the Islamists have a tendency to export their violence in ways that the old guard don’t.
Anthony
@Davis X. Machina: I can’t even tell what’s sarcasm anymore.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Bill E Pilgrim: I’d agree with you, except the NYT recent track record WRT HRC. I’m getting the same mileage as Baud.
Chyron HR
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Yes, it’s a totally noble endeavor! Please ignore that we only got around to scrutinizing Clinton’s “policy history” after scrutinizing her browser history and her part-time job failed to pay off at the polls.
Texas Dem
@wmd: It’s nothing more than a shrewd political calculation. Tulsi is looking at Bernie’s voters, who are mostly young millennials, and is realizing they represent the future of the Democratic party, and probably the county. She’s a young politician and plans to be around for a while; she wants to try to get ahead of that trend. She’s also calculating that Hillary will never be president; this is also a good bet. Hillary has no chance unless the GOP commits suicide by nominating Trump, and that will never happen (anyone want to take odds on how quickly Teflon Don’s poll numbers crater after this morning’s KKK fiasco??). Tulsi wants to be able to tell those Bernie voters in 2018, when she’s running for Senate, that she was with them. All in all, very shrewd politics.
John Cole
Yes- the NYT has churned out some bullshit about HRC, especially over emails. But outright ignoring everything in the Times is the epistemic closure you all mocked the fuck out of when the Republicans did it.
Jesus, how long before we’re denying basic shit cuz it was in the NYT? Or are we already fucking there.
JPL
@John Cole: Not me, blog boss! I thought the article was fair, but it’s important to read the entire thing.
Corner Stone
@Texas Dem:
Please take the “Texas” out of your nym. Your ridiculously wrong political hot take is fucking embarrassing.
Sherparick1
@Calouste: Probably, sometimes there are no good options, only the least worst. I think Obama’s experience in Libya is one reason he has wanted to minimize US involvement in Syria.
Yutsano
@Texas Dem:
I’m sorry but…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Have you been paying attention at all? If anything Trump’s numbers will go UP because of this. Every single prediction about what will kill teh Donald has yet to happen. Anywhere. The only chance Republicans have is to screw him over at the convention. And if they pull that they’re doomed. And they know it.
Corner Stone
MSNBC’s Ron Mott keeps interviewing white people in Birmingham, AL. As he opens every one of the interviews I feel freshly again like Ben Stiller in The Thing About Mary when he gets his ball caught in the zipper.
After Ted Cruz, white people are the fucking worst.
Anya
I was never in favor of the Libya intervention but I was hoping Obama admin would’ve had more success with Libya than the bumbling Bush adminstration. Libya is not Iraq. They share two things: 1) run by two crazy dictators for a long time; 2) majority muslim-Arab country. Everything else is very different. I think the assassination of Ambassador Christopher Stevens complicated our mission in Libya.
BillinGlendaleCA
@John Cole: I ignore what’s in the Washington Times. I ignore anything about HRC in the NYT for the same reason.
JPL
Trump is going to hold a rally and has a surprise announcement. I think Rudy will be the next to support him.
WarMunchkin
Apparently the NYT endorsing HRC in both 2008 and 2016 doesn’t mean a damn thing. News/Editorial separation blah blah.
Mnemosyne
@John Cole:
The NYT has been churning out bullshit about both Clintons for 25 years. Travelgate, Whitewater, Wen Ho Lee … do I need to go on?
Our choices in Libya were basically to participate in the European action or let it turn into another Rwanda. There were no other options.
Davebo
@Texas Dem:
This is it! This is the stupid Donald remark that will sink him!
I’ll take any odds you offer on that pipe dream.
Corner Stone
“Make America White Again!”
Corner Stone
Entering to “Sweet Home Alabama”. Wowsers.
Corner Stone
I think The Donald is drunk. Honestly.
A Ghost To Most
@Corner Stone:
This is a load of bullshit. HRC has no shot,and the yam will be troubled by this morning’s kerfuffle?
You clearly need what I am smoking.
eta should be addressed to Texas Dem (it’s good stuff)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Corner Stone: LO’D has been saying the tRump campaign is like the George Wallace campaign(s).
Anya
@Texas Dem:
Doug R
@John Cole: BENGHAAAAAAAAAAAZI!
JPL
@JPL: Trump is angry cuz the former President of Mexico used a bad word.
He’s suggesting another endorsement is coming and it is Sen Sessions… I was hoping for Rudy.
Ruviana
I’ve always thought that at least a little of Hillary’s hawkishness was driven in part to overcome her gender. Women are consistently viewed as more “pacifist” than men (they aren’t necessarily but this is a fairly common unconscious stereotype) and that by positioning herself as hawkish–which she may in fact deeply believe–makes her seem more acceptable as a President and CiC.
pamelabrown53
@Hawes:
The reason I loved your comment is that you mentioned both Qadaffi and Rwanda.
We were horrified that we didn’t use or military might to stop the genocide in Rwanda; Qadaffi was threatening the same; this time we intervened.
To intervene or not intervene that is the question. No matter what we do there will be unintended consequences.
Mnemosyne
@Anya:
Co-sign. By most accounts, Stevens had a deep understanding of the various factions and was doing a pretty good job of reconciling them, which is why he was murdered by extremists. Also, fuck those “heroic” 13 Hours idiots who couldn’t even keep track of the guy they were supposed to be rescuing.
Steve in the ATL
@Anya: Didn’t she also vote with the Republicans to cut welfare benefits? That can’t go over well with the socialists.
Texas Dem
@Anya: Proves my point. She’s a Dem with a distinct rightward lean on foreign policy. The only reason she would join Sanders now is she’s making some long term strategic calculation. One doesn’t get on a ship when it’s starting to sink.
Corner Stone
I think Jeff Sessions was also drunk.
Steve in the ATL
I am no Middle East expert and Allah willing never will be, but can’t a lot of the historical problems there be attributed to European intervention and division, and a lot of the current problems traced to continuing European, Russian, and US meddling and the aggressive spreading of Wahabism by our good friends the House of Saud?
Corner Stone
@Texas Dem: AEI and the sockulist youth movement really go well together.
Anya
For the first time I am listening to a Donald Trump rally because I wanted to see how he’ll respond to Rubio after he mocked him and called him a fraud and a con artist. And lolz at those who claimed the KKK thing was going to make officeholder come out against Trump.
jl
This post shows why poor benighted Cole will never rate being considered a Village pundit.
Cole should delete all the 2000-2005 political posts and then whine that anything dug up from the Wayback Machine is taken out of context.
But, Cole never takes my pro-tips for success.
Scamp Dog
@WarMunchkin: There is one exception: invading Kuwait to force the Iraqis out. The big difference is that we didn’t have to install a new government, just restore the old one.
So I figure we have no business changing governments in that part of the world (or anywhere else, really), but reversing military aggression does make sense. Libya and Syria thus go on the “no” list, and the only place that qualifies is Crimea. And we really don’t want to be messing around that close to Russia, so right now there isn’t any place we want to intervening.
alan
Some off-the-record GOP was quoted a while back, ‘ we bombed and occupied Iraq and it went to shit, we bombed Libya and it went to shit, and we stayed out of Syria and it went to shit’. So Hillary is pretty much in the middle. Same result regardless. The middle East is in a 30-Year War, 10 to 20 to go.
Anya
@Mnemosyne: IKR? How many books did they publish about the so-called heroes. It makes me so mad whenever I read how the righwingers used Ambassador Stevens death.
schrodinger's cat
Hillary Derangement Syndrome strikes again.
A Ghost To Most
@jl:
Uncalled for; John has been far too honest to ever become a villager.
superpredators4hillary
@Ruviana:
I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters. – Grasshopper
JPL
@Corner Stone: It’s not even 5:00 in Bama yet.. I turned it off when he said Sessions.
I really wanted Mr. 911 builds a wall with Trump
Anya
@Texas Dem: I don’t know about this for sure, but I have a hunch this has more to do with a pissing match with DWS than about any principles. The new crush of the AEI has nothing in common with the Bernie supporters I know. They will never support her.
Texas Dem
@Anya: Maybe not now, but give them a few years under a President Marco Rubio backed by a vicious, reactionary GOP Congress. That has a way of changing minds.
BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: When CS said they were playing “Sweet Home Alabama”, I figured it was Sessions. I was actually more surprised the Sessions hadn’t already endorsed tRump.
Anya
Vote for Trump! He will never allow BLM activists to take no mic from him!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Texas Dem:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA(cough, cough)HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
jl
@Texas Dem: So, this Trump ‘KKK fiasco’ should be any different from the last Trump ‘KKK fiasco’? Trump finessed the issue the same way he always has, and it has worked before.
I am like BC in being reluctant to boil all reactionary nonsense down to racism. But bigotry and racism is obviously a very important independent causal factor. Trump can be blatant about flaunting some important GOP dogmas (like explicitly saying he won’t go after current social security system). But when the white supremacy supporters show up, he feels he has to finesse it. Gotta disassociate himself, but very gently and indirectly, or casually. Can’t denounce them strongly, can he? And he won’t as long as he can get away with it. And in the GOP primary, looks like he can get away with it all he wants.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Anya: He’ll just have some of his Brownshirts beat the crap out of em.
Anya
@Texas Dem: So, you want the country to burn in order to achieve your utopian socialism? Mkay!
Anya
Trump is so incoherent. What’s the appeal? If I stood in line for hours and this is what I heard, I would be disappointed.
A Ghost To Most
@Anya:
Yea, tRump dogwhistled that”All Lives Matter”, didn’t he?
Goblue72
The stupidity of Libya was apparent to some of us. Those of us with actual progressive values and not warmed over DNC style centrism that infects a fair number of the regulars here. But the hippies must always be punched, because we don’t understand grown-up stuff and need to be “realistic”.
Everything in Cole’s post is spot on. I’m not surprised so many are butthurt over it. Criticism tends to hurt when it finds its mark.
Texas Dem
@Anya: Not a question of what I want to happen. It’s what I think will happen. I will vote Dem in the fall regardless of who they nominate; either Bernie or Hillary are light years ahead of any GOP nominee. But I don’t expect either of them to win.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Anya: Heighten the Contradictions! It’s worked so well over the past half century(1968, 2000…).
JPL
@Anya: He speaks in a language that only his base understands.
Corner Stone
@Texas Dem: Newsletter? How would one subscribe?
Marc
@Goblue72: It’s not much to do with hippie-punching. It’s the idea that your candidate / team has to be defended against all criticism. Us or them.
Chyron HR
@Goblue72:
Why, you guys have gone several hours without anyone breaking out in shrieks of “WHY ARE DARKIES ALLOWED TO VOTE IF THEY WON’T SUPPORT SANDERS?” So progressive!
Bob In Portland
Saw a report that Brit special forces are already on the ground in Libya. We probably are there too.
I actually don’t think that the Republicans this cycle are particularly warlike, but Republicans who get elected to the White House give the keys to the military back to the military. Clinton’s foreign policy suggests more wars. Maybe heating up something in Ukraine (which also will not end well), maybe Armenia or Dagestan, or one of the other stans that has oil. Expect increased covert aid to the Uighurs. And occasional regime change in Latin America.
My great hope is that Cole becomes as bitter an old man as I am. There’s still time, John.
Marc
@Chyron HR: Jesus Christ. That’s a deranged characterization of people who support a different candidate.
Mandalay
@Goblue72:
It’s one thing to condescendingly say with hindsight that it was obvious that things would turn out badly. But it’s another matter to state what should have been done instead, and why that would have been a better option.
IOW, what was YOUR plan for Libya that was so obviously superior?
Aleta
Here’s two links about Woody Guthrie’s writing about Fred Trump around 1950. Guthrie was Trump’s tenant at a development for low-cost housing that Trump built. ( I put some quotes in the open thread above; the 1st link is partially paywalled NYT.)
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/25/woody-guthrie-sang-of-his-contempt-for-his-landlord-donald-trumps-father/
https://theconversation.com/woody-guthrie-old-man-trump-and-a-real-estate-empires-racist-foundations-53026
Tripod
Poor doe-eyed Obama got railroaded by Clinton.
Mandalay
@Bob In Portland:
The price of crude oil is about one third of what it was two years ago.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I’m not seeing why the stans with oil would hold any great attraction.
Davis X. Machina
@Mandalay:
The usual answer is “Do nothing. They’re not Americans — there’s nothing America can do. Libya’s a sovereign nation state.”
The last place you’ll find a full-throated defense of the Wesphalian nation-state is on liberal/progressive blogs. It’s as if San Francisco 1945 never happened.
Raven Onthill
“we are poised to nominate two people who possibly support aggressive intervention always as our policy of choice (Hillary maybe, whatever Republican definitely).”
I think it is more that Clinton has a warrior mind-set: she sees a problem and seeks a direct strategy to solve it. At its best, this can lead to effective persuasion but at its worst, coercion and “When one has a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” The USA has the largest and most powerful military ever. The temptation to use it, especially to someone of Clinton’s thinking, is strong.
I wrote at the time: “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. … This is not badly begun, but I do not, personally, have much hope that it will end well.” So it has been.
Josie
@Anya: This. I just don’t get his appeal. I can’t stand to listen to him or look at him. It’s even worse than I felt about Richard Nixon, and that was pretty bad.
Redshift
@Goblue72:
Weird how you can simultaneously believe that and still, as the most butthurt person around here, never think that “Criticism tends to hurt when it finds its mark” ever applies to you.
Orwell would be impressed.
jl
@A Ghost To Most: I was joking.
And anyway, if Cole were a Villager, it would disappear due to some obscure and unfortunate ‘accident’.
I know we can’t make fun of Cole like we use to because he is so polite and gentle now, but sometimes I can’t help myself.
A Ghost To Most
@jl: my apologies
Hard to tell the snarky from the earnest these days
Marc
@Davis X. Machina: There are successes. And, by the same token, there is a very long list of counterproductive interventions. What’s galling is that the people most enthusiastic about interventions don’t seem to recognize that, statistically, the odds are very much against an intervention into a chaotic civil war being a success – and yet they’re routinely portrayed as the realists. It’s maddening.
Joel
Generally speaking, the precautionary principle applies. Certainly, hawkishness is my primary concern with Clinton. But she pales by comparison to the other guys. And that matters.
Elie
We are learning more and more and over and over that military intervention for anything is less and less of a tool that can achieve success. Actually, we have learned that other interventions are also at best difficult to implement, may take a long time and also have down sides (like negotiating cease fires, compromises around won/lost ground, humanitarian assistance). These conflicts then become “intractable”. This of course is very frustrating for the neo-cons and all the people with ideas that the world should be rational and ordered, humane. They are consumed with angst that the US looks powerless to impose solutions. Alas, in this day and age, that is mostly true. Not only the ME but many foreign policy issues are not easily solved with overwhelming force. Hence having a powerful military has its uses, but now frequently seems like trying to put a square peg in a round hole… it doesn’t fit. Our future “wars” for the higher stakes will probably be cyber and or market wars.
ruemara
@Marc: If you’ve read some comments in other parts of the internets, it is frighteningly accurate. It’s not everyone who supports Bernie, but it is surprising how something way too close to what is coming out of purportedly liberal mouths.
John, no offense, but fuck off. Staying out was a shit show, jumping in was a shit show. If you think Sanders would abstain from military conflicts, you’re huffing glue. He’d use drones, bumble into conflicts and generally be marginally less warlike than Hillary. No one thought it was a cakewalk or that we should jump into it.
eemom
The Sessions endorsement is f*****g hilarious after his dear leader Mitchie promised yesterday to dump Trump “like a hot rock” if he’s the nominee.
wrt Ghouliani, I thought Trump already appointed him AG.
gene108
@Anya:
Bush, Jr. was also incoherent and appealed to the base in 2000.
Edit: They do no like people making complex arguments and using big words.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Tripod:
I know, right? Just sittin’ there, dozin’ off at the conference table while the others are hand signaling behind his back when the decisions were gettin’ made.
John Cole
@ruemara:
Priceless.
Weaselone
I’m sort of interested in what evidence there is that things would have been better if we hadn’t intervened. Things were screwed up royally in Libya prior to our intervention. Assuming, that Britain and France wouldn’t have intervened anyway, what better alternate outcome do you envision and how would it have been reached?
lawguy
A couple of thoughts.
First “A blood bath of epic proportions?” why does one think that? Because the politicians and media outlets who wanted another war said so? We’ve been wanting to get rid of Ghaddifi for decades do you think this wasn’t an opportunity that our rulers weren’t about to let go?
Second, why couldn’t we have pressured England and France to stay the hell out? Thereby, perhaps, keeping all foreign intervention out.
Third, have you bothered to read in the article the people we thought would be good to put in place there? They were all most all people who had been out of the country for some time. How like those we supported in Iraq.
Essentially, the excuses for the intervention boil down to well it was our guy who did it. And finally does anyone think that those heroic fighters weren’t being supplied by someone, like maybe us or our friends?
Bob in Portland
@Mandalay: What has been consistent in our foreign policy over the last several decades? Oil.
Now it is true that oil took a very big hit last year and I would be the first to cheer if the US stopped fighting for control of the world energy market. The best thing for the US would be a switch to solar. That’s not going to happen as long as the same consensus drives our foreign policy. (Think: Kagan, who just endorsed Clinton.)
And the world is tottering now, about to sink into depression any day, which would further drive down the price of oil.
But controlling world energy has been a solid plank in US foreign policy for a long time. The solid plank. The fact that the energy industry has been building LNG terminals along the East Coast suggests that natural gas is in the plans for exporting, which suggests that the US wants to turn the spigot from Russia off. Where else would our natural gas go than Europe?
Not sure if you ever read Pepe Escobar and his theory of the “pipelineistans”. Back in the 90s I read about the Chevron plan, fronted by Brezinski (sic) about running a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India, where it would help the industrialization of India. Competing with that vision was an Iranian pipeline to India. That didn’t happen either. Their isolation didn’t help, so maybe, just maybe all the fear over Iran had more to do with oil than atom bombs.
There were two pipelines proposed to cross Syria to the Mediterranean to supply gas to Southern Europe. One started in Qatar, over Syria either to Turkey or the Mediterranean. The other, which Assad agreed to in 2011, ran from Iran, through Iraq and across Syria to the Mediterranean, known by some as the Shia Pipeline. That was right before the “civil war” started.
Qatar is one of the countries identified as supplying weapons and supplies to ISIS. Because ISIS and Qatar are Sunni? I’m sure it helps. Turkey has been allowing weapons shipments into Syria in exchange for oil. The US’ bizarre tapdance in Syria is to get rid of Assad and control the oil transiting it.
So, yeah, people are still fighting for control of energy. Expect parts of Europe to be without natural gas in a couple of years as Russia is eliminated as a supplier (through NATO machinations).
Why does the US have a hostile foreign policy towards Russia? They’re an energy competitor. Just mark oil and gas reserves and follow the pipelines across the globe to plot where future wars will be fought.
We know that Iraq wasn’t about WMDs. We know Libya and Syria weren’t about “bad men” running other countries. We know that fifteen years in Afghanistan isn’t about bringing bin Laden to justice. Those are all the lies told to us to justify invasions and regime changes. So if they are the lies, then what are the real reasons? I’m guessing oil. That’s what the War in the Pacific was about. The Japanese wanted those oilfields in Indonesia. It again figured prominently in American foreign policy with throwing out Sukarno in 1965 in favor of a more obliging military dictatorship. Hitler was eyeing the Russian oilfields too. He wasn’t just killing Slavs and Jews on his push east.
Not only would our climate be a whole lot better with less burnt petrol, it would probably prevent most American wars. In hope and theory.
Mandalay
@ruemara:
This is exactly the kind of self-important, pompous prognostication that makes BJ so entertaining.
Bob in Portland
@lawguy: Destroying the Libyan infrastructure helps to prop up the cost of oil and natural gas. It’s another country offline. Also, there were stories floating around that Ghadaffi had proposed an African currency to compete with the US dollar in petroleum business. There are a couple of reasons why the powers that be would like to see Ghadaffi and his infrastructure gone, although I don’t know how much that alternative to the dollar played in this. And with oil, when it sits in the ground it doesn’t go anywhere. Maybe Libya will be back to supplying Italy oil and gas in a decade or so, with the proper corporate fingers on the spigot.
Bob in Portland
@Mandalay: The President doesn’t really control foreign policy or the military. Hasn’t since Vietnam. Sanders understands. He understood in 1974. I think he wants to reverse things domestically, with the Faustian bargain that he lives with the MIC.
I remember a quote back in 1976 from Hamilton Jordan right after Carter won. He said, “If we have Brzezinski as our Secretary of State we’ve lost.” Every President has lost since Kennedy.
Steve in the ATL
@Bob in Portland: Normally I mentally append “I am not a crackpot!” to your posts, but you are actually making sense here. Or have I become a crackpot?
I would not be worried about a Pan-African oil currency, though. That is one fucked up continent that has never been able to get it together (Europeans take a lot of the blame for this I know) and I doubt that they could (1) get all the dictators, kleptocrats, and religious nuts to agree on something, or (2) get enough credibility with financiers and traders to make their currency viable.
Mandalay
@Bob in Portland:
It’s not just the US; this may help explain why Putin is so interested in protecting Assad:
Applejinx
Huh. I didn’t turn up in that LIBYALIBYALIBYA thread, so I went looking for my first Balloon Juice post.
https://balloon-juice.com/2010/08/27/early-morning-open-thread-foxy/#comment-1992373
Talking about the rich looting everything, even in 2010 :D
Lot of familiar names, too…
Mandalay
@Steve in the ATL:
A recent story that deserved more exposure was that Iran is now demanding payment for oil sales in Euros rather than good old USD. I’m amazed Trump isn’t all over that story.
Donut
Yeah. I know I’m late to this party-time fun thread, but back to Cole’s original post: a bunch of y’all motherfuckers said those of us who saw a lot of bad coming out of an intervention in Libya were just butt-hurt Obama haterz and couldn’t we see that with him in charge shit was gonna come roses, somehow, because Obama is awesome. And reasons.
Well. I still think Obama is one of the greatest presidents ever. I still think he’ll probably be the best one I’ll see in my lifetime. I’d gladly keep him in office longer, if such a thing were legal. And I still think I was 1000% right that we were not getting in to something we could control and the outcome of which was shaky and uncertain at best, and likely just fucking horrible.
I do not like being right about this.
Fuck it.
Donut
@Texas Dem:
You’re insane. Trump’s voters are the kind of people who are cool with Mexicans being called rapists and murderers and who are cool with deporting 11 millions human beings and, oh yeah, also good with mocking people who have disabilities. They don’t give two fucks about David Duke. They may not wanna join the Klan but they aren’t totally opposed to what the Klan stands for. No, they won’t go to rallies or wear a robe and a hood, but the average Trump voter is a straight up bigot and a racist. The David Duke thing is a nothing burger for Trump. He’s going to be the nominee unless someone kills him.
John Revolta
@Mandalay: The Russian Navy’s only Mediterranean port is in Syria. This is not a secret.
Bess
Outside of Hawaii the US uses very little oil to generate electricity. And Hawaii is switching to wind and solar very rapidly. Importing oil is expensive.
The best way for the US to free itself from the oil industry is to move to plug-in hybrids (PHEVs like the GM Volt) and pure electrics (EVs like the Tesla S and Nissan Leaf). Then install solar and wind to charge their batteries.
sharl
@Mandalay:
~
I always kinda-sorta knew that the manner by which oil prices were pegged was important, but a January article – No one asks why Saudi Arabia is a US ally – helped me understand it so much better (at least I hope it did), as well as why the Saudis are such dear friends of ours – despite all the beheadings, lashes, false imprisonments and whatnot – while the Iranians get castigated harshly in the media for doing basically the same shit:
…
~
There are some other reasons of course: KSA buys a lot of expensive weaponry from our military equipment manufacturers, and there is the availability of oil from a ‘friend”, should we need it (BiP ain’t wrong on that score, but may be placing undue emphasis there). But that primary explanation based on monetary policy is yuuuuge, and is a potential electrified third rail for any politician of any stripe who would even hint at messing with it.
I’ll defer to any actual experts on this – I certainly ain’t one – but the above explanation makes sense, and I wonder if it was one of the core topics at the secret energy policy meetings held before the Iraq invasion that Cheney convened; meetings whose proceedings the recently deceased Justice Vaffanculo and a few of his colleagues said could be kept secret, neener-neener.
Mandalay
@John Revolta: Whooosh!
Tractarian
@Texas Dem:
Prediction markets have Dems as a 60%+ favorite to win this November.
Do you know something the markets don’t?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
I love the whole Girl Scouts fundraiser thing. Empowering black girls and women is another revolutionary act, following on Formation. Chris Rock is killing the #Oscars.
Irony Abounds
Every European/American intervention in the Middle East is a royal clusterfuck, starting with the Crusades, through divvying up territory after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, to meddling in Iran, and so on. And each one gets worse than the next. That is the reason to stop intervening. Yes, the West bears a huge responsibility for what it has wrought in the Middle East, but the “you break it you buy it” school of thought is just stupid. It’s like working on a plastic surgery addict, yes, you made things bad the first time, and each time you try and fixed what you fucked up it just gets worse. Saving some civilian lives in Libya by intervening just resulted in more chaos, more ruined lives and a situation that is far worse. Just say no to intervening and get the hell out of the Middle East. Let them fight their own civil wars. Yes, it’s sad that bad things will happen, but we can’t productively help.
agorabum
@Calouste: I never hear anyone try to explain the alternative, when the US just sits there and everyone who rises up gets murdered by Gadaffi.
The US action was the best of bad options.
Where things fell off was lack of effort in the aftermath, and it was the Europeans who claimed they would take care of that.
giantslor
At least we were smart enough not to occupy the damn thing. It collapsed into chaos just fine without us wasting trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives.
glasnost
@John Cole I’m out of my free articles, so I can’t read the NYT link. But the Libyan intervention is not a disaster, and your linked paragraphs don’t make it a disaster. The article is long on flat factoidal assertions that are statements of opinion in disguise.
First, we didn’t create the civil war, period. It started without us.
Second, Mali and Nigeria were absolutely going to hell on their own regardless of any possible thing happening or not in Libya and the NYT’s pipe organ does not exactly scientific proof that our stopping Gaddafi changed the course of those shitshows.
Third – “Libya is in chaos”. Okay. Also in chaos: Egypt, where we did nothing and let the dictator crush the Islamists, as I presume you’d have preferred. Oh, but ISIS is in Libya, tremble, tremble, quiver? Bad news, ISIS is also in Egypt, where we took the other route. While we’re at it, the idea that foreign policy outcome evaluations should be driven by ISIS headcount is stupid. They’re just one security threat among many, folks, not the boogeyman.
What the hell does “Chaos” mean, anyway? Does it mean, perhaps, that Libya has split into smaller communities who- gasp, often fight amongst themselves?? Shall we all clutch pearls about this? Or should we consider that maybe a decentralized libya with small-scale fighting is… better.. than Libya with Gaddafi in it?
I’m a Bernie supporter and a dove, so I should be the last person defending Hilary Clinton on this. I don’t like Hilary Clinton’s instincts. But Libya is in a better place than most other countries in the ME today. It’s almost certainly better off for having overthrown Gaddafi. You and the NYT have a problem differentiating between “Hmm, it’s didn’t become Denmark” and “it’s actually worse off”.
A few thousand people have died in fighting in Libya since the revolution. In Syria, that many people die every month. Egypt’s death rate looks like Libya’s, but its chance of having any hope whatsoever, any positive political, social, or economic development over the next two or three decades now, is much, much lower. Although the best case odds is that they all continue to fail.