That’s true, but I’m not talking about good faith disagreements over policy.
What I’m talking about is not wanting to hand yet one more political football to a party who has decided it is in their best interest to make sure the federal government accomplishes nothing, and who has no qualms about holding important priorities hostage to petty agendas. If the modern GOP will play chicken with the debt limit to ensure tax cuts for millionaires and kill Medicare as we know it, you can be sure as the Pope is white that they’d turn Libya into an opportunity to cut food stamps, or some such nonsense.
However, as I said in my post, them’s the breaks. Preserving Congressional oversight requires that you sometimes let self-interested assholes do the oversight. I think that might be a direct quote from Federalist 51, in fact..
Have we destroyed their infrastructure, killed tens of thousands of innocent people, occupied the country, sent in Christian missionaries, or tried to erase their culture so we could reshape them into a Free Market Libertopia? Have we started with the torture yet? Has Obama used Libya as an excuse to funnel billions of dollars into the pockets of his cronies? Have we systematically killed boys using the excuse that boy = terrorist, the way we did in Fallujah? Have we been shooting people for stepping out of their houses?
So the skeptics of the action, will they now retract? It is proof it is better to take this method than the madness the Americans have done in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You are assuming the skeptics are not simply trying to spin anything and everything as “OMG it is Obama’s fault!”
As was said earlier in this thread, it is apparent that this is Libya’s revolution, led by Libyans, and they will rejoice in their victory. They will also likely acknowledge that the NATO air cover was a primary reason why they were able to be successful. There was no occupying foreign force, so there will hopefully be a peaceful transition.
But I’m sure some way can be found to spin things against Obama. I await with bated breath.
When was the last time we did anything like this? NATO supporting a popular uprising isn’t the same as America invading a country, devastating it, slaughtering tens of thousands while making self righteous speeches about how we are doing it for their own good, then installing a puppet government and exploiting it. Amazingly enough, that tends to make people angry at America and not regard the imposed government as legitimate.
This would be in addition to the role they’ve played for the last few months of course.
My opinion is that it would be pretty hard for the anti-Gadaffhi forces to have done much if Gadaffhi had control of the skys, so I think the NATO strikes had an important role to play. Air strikes alone though? Gadaffhi would still be there.
Of course, you’re likely to hear other opinions as well. My advice is to critically examine each opinion for any signs of exaggeration or bias.