How does being fucked follow from enabling regime change?
When you use such words, WE shrug. Or laugh. Or just shake our heads ruefully. But we know there’s no reason to pay any attention to what follows.
I believe our strategy, apart from whatever complications the EU and Arab league may engender, is to just rotate the Tomahaxk inventory and give the new Africom something to do - you know, realistic training, and all.
I am still finding it hard to believe that Obama is that dumb.
He kind of learned on the fly with the surge in Afghanistan, but will he do so now? Inquiring minds want to know what the hell he has planned, if anything.
Regards,
Shodan
Don’t kid yourself. If he had an Anglo name and an ® after it, you’d be yeehawing so loud they could hear you all the way over in Tripoli.
Can’t recall ever agreeing w/you over well, practically anything. But I’m starting to get a bad vibe over this whole shebang: Libya: US bid to hand control to Nato halted by infighting.
As I wrote before, it would appear that this whole operation was not only hastily put together, but rather poorly coordinated by the very parties involved. And Obama’s appearing particularly doe-eyed in all of this…
Admittedly I sometimes scan through these threads pretty quickly and might have missed it, but… Did someone seriously suggest he, from a POTUS standpoint, had any strategy, intent, or even a whatsoever militarily scented bone in his body?
I thought it was just an argument about if he was technically permitted by law or the Constitution to do what the generals, cabinet and other world leaders recommended or asked for?
You are not agreeing with me; you are agreeing with John Mace. He said way back when that the Arabs wanted the US to do their dirty work for them, and remain distant so they can condemn us when convenient.
We are not going to buy ourselves any international good will over this. That’s why we need to identify our interests, and stick to that.
Regards,
Shodan
I have no idea what gives you the impression that Obama’s appearing particularly doe-eyed in this, especially based on that article.
Look, Obama committed to specific terms, which included limited and short-term involvement. If the fuckers who wanted this in the first place can’t put their egos in check long enough to decide who’s going to take the lead when we leave? Not. Our. Problem.
We went in as promised. We’re clearing the way as promised. We should damn well leave as promised and let them fight as much as they want among themselves.
That’s why Obama didn’t make this “our” war in the first place. “Hey, we’ve got your backs, but these are our terms, take it or leave it.” They took it. I say we stand our ground and do only what we said we’d do. After that, they’ll have to figure it out, won’t they?
Well, must say that’s a relief – the not agreeing part. However I do agree that the US will get “no international good will over this.” Which segues right into Shayna’s comment: Yes, it is very much “your problem.” See that’s the thing about wars, they are easy to get into but quite difficult to get out of. And for all Obama’s said about “limited commitment” there’s no way, no how, the US is going to cut and run on France and especially the UK when things don’t go your way – which is why I maintain this decision wasn’t particularity well thought-out.
A schism between the US and Europe at this particular time vis-a-vis the ME is simply a prelude to catastrophic events.
I’m really ambivalent about this one. I think those of you coming down hard on Obama are not giving him enough credit for the difficult position he was in. It’s really a no-win situation in a lot of ways. If the U.S. stays out of the fray and large massacres happen, it will be used as evidence that the U.S. doesn’t care about Arabs when its interests are not directly affected. The memory of Rwanda still haunts a lot of people in the current administration - particularly Hillary Clinton. No one wants to see a repeat of that.
On the other hand, No-Fly zones are a tricky thing, as we found out in Iraq. What happens if a stalemate is reached - which is only stable so long as the no-fly zones exist? Now you’ve committed your country to acting as the eternal ‘protector’ of half the population and enemy of the other half. How do you extricate yourself from that?
One of the reasons I supported the Iraq war was because the No-Fly zones were becoming unstable. Bin Laden was using them and the presence of Americans in Saudi Arabia as a recruiting tool for al-Qaida. Paramilitary attacks on U.S. forces by al-Qaida were increasing. 9/11 happened, in part because of Bin Laden’s opposition to the presence of Americans maintaining the no-fly zones.
When the No-Fly zones failed to lead to an uprising to unseat Saddam, the U.S. and coalition partners imposed sanctions which ultimately had the effect of hurting Iraqis. Saddam was bribing and corrupting his way out of the sanction regime as well. It seemed to me that the U.S. was in an untenable position - it couldn’t maintain the No-Fly zones forever, and it couldn’t just pack up and go home without potentially causing a resumption of genocide against the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs.
This operation runs the same risk. Worst-case scenario is that the U.S. winds up entangled in Libyan internal fighting for months or years to come, while Khadaffi uses the time to organize terror attacks against the west or the use of his mustard gas against his opponents.
On the other hand, being engaged in the conflict gives you a seat at the bargaining table, which the U.S. could hopefully use to influence the direction of Libyan politics and keep out the radical Islamists. Or at least to help create a ‘soft landing’ for the post-Khadaffi Libya and not have it break apart and devolve into civil war. So there are good reasons for doing what he’s doing.
Most of all, I have to say the same thing I said about the Bush administration - in these situations, the decision point is often determined by facts we are not privy to. There are a lot of backroom negotiations going on between the U.S. and countries throughout the Middle East and Europe. There is intelligence we don’t get to see, and military evaluations that are not public.
If you believe Obama is smart and competent, then you have to at some point give him some benefit of the doubt. He’s made a really hard choice in a region where there are often no good choices - only various degrees of bad-to-worse choices. It’s easy to armchair quarterback on the SDMB, but we’re all operating in an informational vacuum. At some point, you have to put some faith in your POTUS and hope he knows what he’s doing.
However, I also think it’s a valid criticism to say that Obama shirked his legal responsibility to take the issue to Congress for a vote. It’s not the first time a president has done that, but it never sits well to see an American president acting like an autocrat.
Why couldn’t we just tell the European nations involved “Hey, we’ve done our part, fulfilled our commitment, sorry, we are currently engaged elsewhere, you all take over”?
How would that lead to a “schism”? We defined our involvement in terms of time (days, weeks) at the outset. We are fulfilling that.
I read somewhere that countries like France are particularly vested in oil corporations in Libya and that we are not. If that is true, wouldn’t that make it more of “their problem” than ours? And wouldn’t they be more inclined to help a resolution of the conflict one way or another to get that oil pumping again?
Hah. Hah. Hah. What do we do then? Bail? Even if our allies ask us pretty please with a cherry on top? If they can do it without us now, they could have done it without us then, and they should have. Never entering this quagmire would relieve us of the question of how do we get out of it.
One of the myriad of problems with sticking our foot into this tarpit was the lack of a fucking plan. At least George fucking Bush had a fucking plan. It was a bad plan, created by daydreamers and incompetents, but at least there was something to work towards. This thing in Libya was not thought about for one fucking moment. There is no plan; there is no goal.
Most importantly of all: it was always Not. Our. Problem.
But Stability. In. That. Region. Is.
There is absolutely no reason we should have maintained the no-fly zones for a decade after the war was over. The goal of that war was very simple: to kick Iraq out of Kuwait. We accomplished that goal.
I shan’t bother to comment on the remainder of your disingenous explications of the same old worn out chestnuts that were used to justify the invasion after the “weapons of mass destruction” one turned out to be complete and utter bullshit.
So when do we interfere in Saudi Arabia? In Yemen? In Iran? In Iraq? (Oops, forget that one.) In Bahrain? And so on and so forth. When do we interfere in Venezuela, for that matter?
If stability was our purpose, we’d have supported Qaddaffi.
Not necessarily. We walk a fine line. We need the oil, we have gigantic corporations locked into contracts with ME nations all over the place to ensure that the black goop lifeblood of our nation keeps pumping. Its a game we have backed ourselves into a corner in playing. It is what it is. Without the WalMart discount on gasoline our country will suffer economic hardship in a time it cannot afford it.
Libya is a small player in the oil business, but will be a big demonstration for the region writ large if the rebels succeed in installing a government that is in ANY way better that Khadaffi’s. That’s a gamble we’re taking, and its worth taking. Khadaffi is a moron and a maniac. The chances of the rebels installing someone worse are small. Our involvement is proportionally small.
There’s no clear-cut answer, but I think we are doing the right thing here. A supporting role that’s defined by short-term goals.
What, precisely, are our short-term goals?
Exactly wrong, and quite the point. No, they couldn’t have, at least not as well. We are the guys who know this shit and have the hardware specially for it: knocking out air defenses. Remember when Rummy rattled on about how Iraq had fired on our airplanes 700 plus times? And we wondered, how is it they never hit anything? Because if they so much as turned their fire control radar on, we zorched it with a radar-seeking missile.
Yeah, they could have gone ahead without us, and they likely would have lost pilots in the doing. And having asked our help, and been rebuffed, they might very well blame us. They might very well be right to do so.
Don’t forget that part, its important: they were going to do it, they asked us to help. Not the other way round.
He stated the plan: to stop a massacre in Bengazi. That was the plan. No further plan was stated, because no further goal was contemplated.
Because they are human, because they cry out to us for help, and because no man is an island. OK, I’m Donne here…
There is a link to the UN resolution upthread. Why not give it a read?
Seriously? European air forces do not have the technology to defend their planes? And, frankly, if they would have lost planes, so what? Not. Our. Problem. If it’s not important enough to them to lose their own planes rather than ours, who cares?
Mission accomplished. Why are we still bombing Tripoli?
You support our intervention in the Congo, in Zaire, in Yemen, in Syria, in Kazahkstan, in Iraq (do not! forget that one), etc., etc., etc.?