Now this sounds familiar. The United States has again launched a military campaign in an Arab nation to help the inhabitants and has unleashed growing criticism from other Arab countries. In the meantime, the United States and its allies have been denounced as crusaders and Nazis by those fighting with Gaddafi.
The Arab League issued a statement this weekend saying that they called for a no-fly zone over Libya but never called for actual attacks on the Capitol and other locations in Libya. Secretary-General Amr Moussa stated that “[w]hat is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians.”
This conflict has the look of a civil war and we are now taking out targets with both missiles and aircraft. In the meantime, the Administration is offering no explanation of why we are not bombing some of our authoritarian allies as protesters are repressed in Bahrain and other Arab countries aligned with the U.S.
China has now criticized the attacks so that we are again spending hundreds of millions of dollars while alienating regional countries and allowing China to play to these tensions. Putin has added his criticism — denouncing the attacks as crusader-like in a clear bid to win over the Arab street.
In the meantime, President Obama continue to literally burn money abroad as our leaders cut school budgets and other programs in the United States. I wonder how many elementary school teachers we could hire for 100 or so cruise missiles?
Source: Sky News found on Reddit.
Buddha,
You must be feeling better!
Pardon.
“Spending money, placating our interested allies and creating a situation – based upon past Libyan acts of state sponsored terrorism – likely to trigger a terrorist attack just bad enough to declare martial law and for the fascists to have a color of authority when they do so.”
“Were we pushed into this conflict hastily by France & England?”
Yes. And probably Italy too.
“Are we engaging the military (yet again) without a clear objective?”
Yep.
“What is the objective of this war?”
Spending money, placating our interested allies and creating a situation – based upon past Libyan acts of state sponsored terrorism – likely to trigger a terrorist attack just bad enough for the fascists to have a color of authority when they do so.
“WHO are we supporting?”
Arm manufacturers and our allies that are too much the candy asses to go it alone.
“If Europe gets 85% of Libya’s oil exports and Asia gets the rest, just what is our interest there?”
Other than allied payback for Operation Iraqi Clusterfuck, there is no valid interest in American involvement in Libya.
“Shouldn’t we get fully compensated for our time and materials?
E.g. Tomahawk Cruise Missile:
Unit cost approximately $756,000 in 2011 dollars.
110 missiles @ $756,000 = $83,160,000”
Yes. Will we? No.
“Are we made of money and can we keep stretching ourselves without any consequence whatsoever?”
No. And see above for potential consequences.
“Do you think Obama will have it all figured out in the less than sixty days remaining per the War Powers Resolution Act?”
Not a chance.
“Or is the constitution and the separation of powers doctrine only applicable to [whatever the “other party” is]?”
Apparently it’s not applicable to anyone given Bush and Cheney aren’t in prison orange by now.
“Now I hear we’re straying from the UN Resolution, alienating ourselves from Russia, and God knows who else.
I don’t see this action as worth the risk and I don’t see any reward whatsoever.”
Zero sum at best. A hard -1 at worst. This is easily as bad an idea as invading Iraq when we were attacked by Saudi Arabia.
Bob,
I agree with you and Buddha. We have no winning hand in this card game.
Forgot to subscribe.
Buddha: “Obama acted without Congressional authorization.”
War Powers Resolution Act gives him sixty days.
Anyway, Here’s a few question I had regarding Libya that I posted this on another thread:
Were we pushed into this conflict hastily by France & England?
Are we engaging the military (yet again) without a clear objective?
What is the objective of this war?
WHO are we supporting?
If Europe gets 85% of Libya’s oil exports and Asia gets the rest, just what is our interest there?
Shouldn’t we get fully compensated for our time and materials?
E.g. Tomahawk Cruise Missile:
Unit cost approximately $756,000 in 2011 dollars.
110 missiles @ $756,000 = $83,160,000
Are we made of money and can we keep stretching ourselves without any consequence whatsoever?
Do you think Obama will have it all figured out in the less than sixty days remaining per the War Powers Resolution Act?
Or is the constitution and the separation of powers doctrine only applicable to [whatever the “other party” is]?
Now I hear we’re straying from the UN Resolution, alienating ourselves from Russia, and God knows who else.
I don’t see this action as worth the risk and I don’t see any reward whatsoever.
Wasn’t referring to you whatsoever, Buddha. Don’t know what your political affiliation is other than you are not a democrat.
Buddha here’s your boy
Kahuna you’d be right about that.
It gets worse, over 4000 pictures
The U.S. Army has been forced to apologise over what they have deemed as ‘repugnant’ photographs of grinning American soldiers standing over bloodied and partially-naked Afghan bodies they had allegedly killed.
The pictures were published by German news organisation Der Spiegel and were among 4,000 they have obtained.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368314/German-newspaper-publishes-suppressed-photos-U-S-soldiers-posing-partially-naked-Afghan-corpse.html#ixzz1HHIYjwN3
“Maybe, the average person’s opinion does not matter to the left. Past elections indicate that. They pick up on the elitism and vote for people like Bush.”
Really. I didn’t know I spoke for the whole left. I do know that I speak for me.
Maybe the average person has been fed such a steady load of bullshit that they can’t divorce reality from media fed perception. People’s opinions matter but when those opinions are based on misinformation and misplaced jingoism they should be rightly colored as such. If you choose to color me elitist simply because I’m smart and actually pay attention to international politics, then that would be your choice. Wrong, but your choice nonetheless.
Gaddafi is at best a minor irritant and has been such since the last time we bombed him in 1986. You’ll note he got of his “Death to America” horse real quick after that and was content to simply terrorize his own citizens. Right now? As a matter of state sovereignty what is going on there is simply none of our business. He hasn’t attacked Americans or American interests. Obama acted without Congressional authorization. It’s Gaddafi’s own people rebelling. Our overt involvement is not only improper, it’s counter-productive to regional stability and simply bad statesmanship. Part of winning battles is knowing which ones to pick and not just jump at every challenge. There is no upside to overt American involvement in Libya. Even if “we win”, there is no upside. At best, it’s a zero sum game.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/21/libya-rebels-advance_n_838688.html
Bdaman:
didn’t that happen on Obama’s watch? Isn’t this a far greater abuse than Abu Ghraib if true? Isn’t Obama commander in chief? What do you think should happen to him if this turns out to be true?
Just repeating what I hear, Buddha. Maybe, the average person’s opinion does not matter to the left. Past elections indicate that. They pick up on the elitism and vote for people like Bush.
“I have informally polled random people, and they seem to support it because of Gaddafi’s extreme cruelty both in the past and currently.”
If that’s the threshold for attack, they should be attacking targets in Washington, Wyoming and Texas.
Gaddafi is an insane evil clown, without a doubt, but we literally have not bought oil from them in decades so not even that weak “business case” rationale will float. This is an internal Libyan problem and should be left for them to sort out. If we wanted to do something productive? We should have shut up, sat on the sidelines and quietly funneled weapons to the factions favoring a secular democracy. That’s the way intel ops would have handled the situation in the days before American fascism. But now, since corporations call the shots, we’ve got to take as high risk/high cost/high profitability tactic as possible in any situation that benefits arms manufacturers.
Swarthmore,
If the threshold for committing American military forces is if leaders have been cruel, we will have 50 wars at once. I still think someone wants to make money with the oil in Libya and beat the Europeans to it. No evidence, just my gut feeling.
rafflw I have informally polled random people, and they seem to support it because of Gaddafi’s extreme cruelty both in the past and currently.
Swarthmore mom,
that is depressing that 70% of Americans want us involved in another “police action”!
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/21/cnn-poll-most-support-no-fly-zone-in-libya-but-not-ground-troops/ About 70 percent support this as long as there are no troops on the ground.
Bob,
That is quite a few teachers. Of course, the Tea Party governors wouldn’t allow the teachers to be hired or re-hired because than government and schools might succeed. Those figures represent just the cost of the weapons and not any additional sorties that our pilots might have had since, don’t they? I just hope we get out asap and no pilots get hurt.