Having some supporters hardly means that he’s popular. The Apartheid government of South Africa had supporters but was obviously hated by the overwhelming majority of its people as was Gorbachev’s Soviet government of that same time period.
Beyond that, when a country’s “leader” is forced to rely on foreign mercenaries to stay in power, he clearly doesn’t have too many local supporters.
He’s candidate for the Egyptian presidency. IMHO, he wants all his bases covered. He the operation is a success, he supported it. If it’s a bloodbath, he has said early that western countries were acting beyond their mandate.
In fact, it’s only the second time China deploys anything outside its waters (first time was off the Somalia coast to fight pirates). I’m not sure it’s this one, but the Chinese recently began to parade around a modern heavy frigate, apparently to show that they also intend to develop a blue water navy. So, I suspect it’s only a show-off and probably also a training for the crew and testing for the ship (since there are plenty of subs, planes, missiles, etc… in the area).
Yemen is about to come apart.
Tiny nitpick; there are reports of mounted anti-aircraft weapons being used by Gaddafi’s forces in their assaults. Which is very common in any military. You have them there to protect your forward forces from air assault, but they often get used to support actions by ground troops.
Things are getting interesting in Syria, too.
That “report” was clearly in error:
Arab League’s Amr Moussa defends its support for UN no-fly zone resolution
You have claimed that there has been “carpet bombing” and that there has been a lot of “civilian” blood shed by the UN forces. Where is your citation that this is anything more than either Qadhafi propaganda or your own imagination?
Who thinks that?
His soldiers are still standing. How many is too many? He has successfully taken back almost all the land the rebels took. He apparently has enough loyal soldiers to take back the country.
AFAIK, The whole US Economy is based on bloodshed. Why should that change? It’ll fix everything if Congress just declares war. We had such huge war spoils from WW2, that we had a budget surplus. We may be able to fix the deficit with the spoils from a war with Qaddafi.
I imagine the surpluses of 1947-1949 can be attributed to the fact that revenues shot up enormously during the war along with spending, and didn’t drop off as quickly when the fighting was over.
What “war spoils” exactly are you thinking of?
Well, now that you mention it, I guess quite a lot of the economy is indeed tied up in the slaughtering of animals for meat. Surely not the whole economy, though.
The US has mostly shown a degree of reluctance to get involved in Libya, and the relevant UN resolution specifically excludes the possibility of an invasion by ground troops, so I have to confess I have no clue what you are going on about.
You’re just making stuff up here. I didn’t want a fight wirth anybody, I wanted an explanation of a double standard directly related to the subject of this thread, and I’d given up trying to get an explanation when you butted in. I have no idea what ATMB is.
Can you describe what you’re talking about? The Marshall Plan was the opposite of what you’re talking about, a massive outflow of American money to rebuild much of Europe. The Americans took home some technology and some scientists (as did the Soviets) but it’s not like Werner von Braun produced an agricultural surplus.
(bolding mine)
Does it exclude ground troops, though. Specifically, it allows taking all necessary measures to protect civilians “while excluding a foreign* occupation* force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.” (I italicized that). To me, that allows ground forces, just as long as they don’t occupy any territory after the civilians have been protected. Or, immediately turning over control of the territory to the Libyans.
Obama of course has stated US troops wouldn’t be used, though.
That’s an exceedingly broad reading of the resolution. By this logic, anything and anyone remotely related to the conflict and not explicitly protected by the resolution is fair game. Thus, the aggressors can target the air defenses, the people manning the air defenses, the ones giving commands to the air defenses, etc.
Unfortunately, your argument is undermined by the fact that the aggressors have themselves admitted that the resolution does not authorize a direct attack on Gaddafi: Gaddafi 'not targeted' by strikes - BBC News
'On Sunday UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox said targeting Col Gaddafi could “potentially be a possibility”.
However, on Monday Britain’s Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Sir David Richards, said targeting Col Gaddafi was “not allowed under the UN resolution”.
And Prime Minister David Cameron told MPs that while he still wanted Col Gaddafi to go, the UN resolution was “limited in scope” and “explicitly does not provide legal authority for action to bring about Gaddafi’s removal from power by military means”.’
Your position logically leads to the conclusion that the commanders are acceptable targets. There is no higher up commander than Gaddafi. Western leaders admit that they have no legal grounds to target Gaddafi. This indicates to me that your broad reading of the resolution is off the mark.
I noticed it. But unfortunately, I don’t believe a real rebellion will take place there, let alone succeed. However, I’ve been proven wrong again and over again about these revolutions.
You are misreading Cameron’s point —that the purpose of the military involvement is “limited in scope”. As for Sir David Richards, a) he’s not a legal authority, b) trying to kill the head of the regime starts to look bad in regard to purpose, so there’s a fuzzy line there, c) it’s clearly an issue over which people can disagree, since Britain’s defence minister has said the exact opposite, and d) this has nothing to do with having your own personnel operate in safety.
I don’t think I’m reading it broadly, I think it’s broadly written. Below is paragraph 4 of the resolution. It’s an authorization paragraph, meaning it’s one of the paragraph’s that authorizes the use of military force by member states and in what capacity:
Basically, take all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack, but you can’t use a foreign occupation force to accomplish that goal. This is the meat of the resolution. It’s broadly written. Civilians don’t even have to be under attack, just “threat” of attack, for military force to be used.
So yes, if Gadhafi was attacking, or threatening to attack civilians, he would be a legitimate target under the resolution to protect civilians. And no, if Gadhafi was not attacking or threatening to attack civilians, he would not be a legitimate target under the resolution.
I’m not sure what’s going on, but the resolution, while broad, is fluid. Gadhafi could be a target one day, and not the next. It’s written to put the UN as defenders, unless Gadhafi forces their hand.
If airstrikes aren’t enough to destroy Gaddafi’s power on the ground but are (as appears to be the case) enough to keep him from taking Benghazi, then we can expect a Korean-War-like situation with a fluctuating front, east to west, for some time – weeks or months or even years. But, unlike Korea, only one side can expect any material outside help. That also distinguishes this war from the Spanish Civil War, to which I recently heard an Arab prof on CNN compare it. Hitler and Mussolini supported Franco, Stalin supported the Republic, but nobody is going to support Gaddafi. (Hugo Chavez might put in a word for him, but he won’t be sending troops or arms or even money. Couldn’t if he wanted to.) For that reason, a Korean-like resolution where an armistice leaves Gaddafi indefinitely in uncontested control of the west is unlikely.