Nice circle-jerk y’all have going here.
Thanks. You, too, could be a member of the Righteous Whores. Too bad you won’t join. Your loss.
YOU are accusing someone else of drinking the Kool-aid. Now that’s some funny shit!
And of all people, John Mace? :rolleyes:
Why yes, yes I am. I’m so glad I could amuse you. Don’t forget to tip your waiter.
Well, it seems to me that those arguments should be arranged in such a way that they don’t give the impression that their authors would find the military action acceptable if only some detail of the political context were different. I find that dishonest, even when I might agree with some of the specific points.
The specific points are not helped by being argued by people who would be taking precisely the same position even if those arguments didn’t apply.
Oh, John’s just having a dignity spasm, he’ll get over it.
Depends on how you define it, right? Is this an actual war between groups with basic, major, unreconciled differences of ethnicity or religion grounded deeply in history? Or is this just a revolt of a people against a dictator, by a populace with none of the aforesaid differences that can be expected to outlast said dictator, and which can be helped to establish and strengthen a nationwide democracy afterward?
I picture him looking and sounding just like George Will.
My necktie hasn’t seen the light of day in… well, I’m not sure it’s ever seen the light of day. But I wish I had as much hair as George Will does!
You just have a wide part, John; don’t worry about it.
More tea, anyone?
Goes rather well with the BS-biscuits in this thread.
People against the government. There are plenty of people siding with Gadaffy and his soldiers are fighting for him too. If it were Gadaffy against all the rest of Libya, it would have been over a long time ago. There have been pro Gadaffy demonstrations with people defending him to anybody who talked to them.
This is a country cobbled together out of tribal fiefdoms. Who knows if they will accept the rule of a new national government. Who knows if there will be a fight to fill the power vacuum.
Well, to my knowledge there have been a handful of relatively modest events apparently staged by the regime. Few journalists have had much opportunity to talk to civilians in regime-controlled areas without security forces watching.
It’s not a civil war, your majesty, it’s a revolution
(Freely adapted from the duke of Liancourt on July 14, 1789)
It is true his soldiers are fighting, but it is not known how many people support him. The uprisings of the West, like the martyred city Zaouia and the suppressions in Tripoli all say he has much opposition.
No it is not, it is a country that has excepting the deep desert been one country since before your country existed. It was one autonomous Vilayet of the Ottomans from 1551.
There is no sign that other in Qaddafi propaganda there is great divisions in tribes. They exist, but they are not nations.
That is true, it is a big risk.
Getting back to this idea that Congress would have resisted this and turned into a partisan battle, the Senate had already passed a resolution calling for a No Fly Zone on March 1-- a few weeks before Obama took action. Non-binding, but still it gives you a sense of where Congress was on this. Guess how many Republicans voted against that?
None. It passed unanimously.
How long did it take, John? No snark there, I don’t know. As it happened, the air strikes were just in the very nick of time, any further delay would have resulted in massacre. (That was the thrust of my sarcasm, slow motion action rather than resistance. Rather surprised you missed that.)
And was this before or after he didn’t consult Congress?
He could have done this concurrently with getting the UNSC and Arab League to agree. I don’t see any reason to think that Congress couldn’t act as quickly. Just send the Senate bill over to the House for a vote. The Senate is the slow, deliberative body with arcane byzantine rules to allow legislation to move at a glacial pace. That hurdle was already passed.
For the record, short of a declaration of war, I would still disapprove of this action even if Congress approved it.
For that matter, I’d not be happy about a declaration of war either. However, at that point, I’d have no choice but to get on board.