On the news today, they were talking about arming and training the rebels.
This sounds like a replay of Afghanistan-10 years from now, the people we trained will be shooting at us!
Ding ding ding. That’s it. We’re going to look bad if he stays in power. President Obama will look like a total joke. The U.S. won’t “force” Ghadafi out of power (we’ll just rip up his armed forces and supply the opposition…ehm) because it’s not popular with the public.
According to Obama, our “goal” is to provide a no-fly zone and “protect” the Libyan people so they can rebel.
Except…we’re involved in a regime change. We are at war with Libya. It doesn’t matter what you call it. Obama’s real problem will come after Ghadafi is removed. Who takes charge now?
I hate these tip-toe military interventions. My God, if you want to win, you go in and wipe shit out. That’s how it’s done. But noooooo, we have to be all humanitarian about overthrowing governments. sigh If the majority of the Libyan people were truly against Ghadafi, then we could have had it all done in a weekend and they would have supported us. But since that’s not popular with anyone, we have to act like we are “forced” to do something and then we’re “forced” to up the ante and we just “had no choice” because “that guy was bad”. :o
Ghadafi may be a jerk, but I wasn’t losing much sleep over him. Personally, I’m more focused on getting our asses out of Iraq and Afghanistan and saving resources for North Korea and Iran.
:thumbs: since we don’t have a thumbs up smiley.
Bush tried the sensationalist approach. Obama took the intellectual one. In the end, they were both very bad ideas about* spreading democracy* and fighting for peace.
The Bush-Obama doctrine: http://grasshopperherder.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/manbehind-1.jpg
We “can get away with” supporting an existing *indigenous *rebellion supported by the bulk of its populace, that requires some military assistance to put it over the top. We can’t get away with trying to completely demolish an existing state and all of its institutions, in opposition to its people, hoping for some neocon fantasyland that involves their gratitude for our continuing “oversight” of their government, to emerge somehow.
Your attempts at false equivalence have become desperately threadbare to the point of laughability, John. It is really time for some reconsideration, friend.
And didn’t the Kosovo case showed that the goal of preventing genocide was enough? AFAIK it was not guaranteed that Milošević would be taken down, The main objective was for him to back down and retreat.
That later he was removed from power was a good thing, but not the main objective.
I mention this because, while I see that many would want to see the non removal of Ka-Daffy as a failure, the reality is that a truce is very likely and expected taking into consideration the similar Kosovo case. A de facto division of Libya could come, but as the further partition of the Balkans showed, it may be that we are headed for that.
I was pointing out a difference, not an equivalence.
I don’t know why you keep injecting yourself into discussions I’m having with other people and throwing out comments completely out of context with that discussion.
Two things: 1) Isn’t our critique of Kosovo that we acted too slowly? 2) I’m not convinced Ghadafi’s actions amount to genocide.
Sure, he’s a bad guy, but it’s only going to be “enough” if he is removed from power. We said he’s going. If he doesn’t, it won’t be enough. Obama couldn’t make Libya look too much like it was “about the Libyan” people. If you make that argument, well, we have about ten other governments to start attacking right now.
But if we do “win” this thing, then we can be praised as heroes who killed all the bad guys and spread some peace and democracy in the Middle East. sigh This better not set up poor precedent.
Libya is not, and never was going to be genocide. Libyans are pretty much a homogeneous ethnic group. We leapt at the opportunity to “protect civilians” when the rebels claimed that Qaddaffi was going to massacre the entire population of Benghazi. That wasn’t in the cards either.
We’re not there to prevent genocide. We’re not there to protect civilians. We’re there because we don’t like Qaddaffi.
And they have oil. Gadaffy as pretty benign the last few years.
“Wiping shit out” gets the overthrowing part accomplished quickly, but makes a lot of people hate you for a long time in the aftermath.
I have seen many critics said that we acted too slow in Libya.
When a dictator says that the traitors would be hunted down house to house and already protesters in Tripoli and other locations have disappeared and:
I would think that waiting for Ka-daffy to behave was not a realistic option.
All three, actually.
Kinda how a message board works, amigo. If you’re fulla shit, you can expect many, many people to call you on it, not just the one you’re directly addressing. If you want a private conversation, this isn’t the place.
But he’s on rock-solid ground. No question but that we are going about it differently than Bush would. Hard to argue with that.
Killing civilians != Genocide.
"Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group."Unless you’re going to allege that Khadaffi is/was trying to wipe out all Lybians (and not just those opposed to him) it’s not genocide. Horrible, and something you can argue the United States should stop; but not Genocide.
Now were these fears to be realized, it would be Genocide:
But John is implicitly claiming that the goals are essentially the same, the differences lying only in implementation.
IOW it’s his trademark above-it-all, false-equivalence horseshit once again. :rolleyes:
If we acted too slow in Libya, then we clearly can’t wait for Ghadafi to behave, can we? But Ghadafi “misbehaving” still is not reason enough to go into Libya.
re: genocide: He’s not committing genocide. What started as a retaliation against dissent evolved into a game terrorizing citizens. He’ll take deflectors. This is about him staying in power.
sorry for the double post, but I just reread what I wrote. It’s not really a “game” about terrorizing citizens. It’s more like a panicked reaction.
The goals are the same. The President of the United States has explicitly stated, “it is US policy that Qaddafi must go.” In what way is that different from Bush’s goal of removing Hussein?
I was not really sure about the genocide bit and said so, however, the resolution doesn’t mention genocide either:
So it is because of the endangerment of the civilian population and for crimes against humanity.
In the past I made the point that this was not good also, and it does enter into the reasons why I do want this to end with a truce.
One has to add though that comparing what the rebels **could **had done with what the Libyan army was **doing **with planes and tanks against the population one could wonder why the possibility of the Africans getting killed would override the decision to intervene.
Are you really having that much trouble keeping up, or are you suffering from FES (false-equivalence syndrome) too? :dubious: