It’s nice (?) that President Obama is worried enough about the revolution in Libya to start an air war against Tripoli, we guess. But this might be the first time in Modern American History when nobody in America seems to support a military action.
Republicans are against it because a) It costs money to do wars and now the Republicans are suddenly against spending billions of dollars to bomb Muslims somewhere, and b) Obama is black. Sarah Palin was supposed to be dedicated to Supportin’ the Troops, but that was only when Bush sent the Troops somewhere to bomb Muslims and get killed. Russia is against it because Putin is a dickwad, the Arab League is against it because Washington was either too slow or too fast or too unilateral or too multilateral or too in love with Israel. U.S. liberals are either lukewarm or actually opposed, because why does this Obama guy have to do every rotten thing Bush Junior or Bush Senior or Reagan ever did, again and again, forever. And we can only assume Obama/Bush Junior’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, is against it — after all, didn’t Gates just say we’ve seen the end of the days when the U.S.A. would just launch incredibly expensive, bloody, terrible wars against whatever country momentarily caught the attention of the president?
And some people might wonder, especially those people who’ve been protesting so long in Wisconsin and those protesting still in Minnesota and Indiana and Tennessee and beyond, “Why is Barack Obama so helpful to Libyan revolutionaries fighting their government, when he doesn’t seem to give a damn about the firefighters and teachers and janitors and police fighting for their vanishing rights to make a fair wage for their work, right here in the United States?”
The Los Angeles Times says everybody hates Obama’s War:
“The president seems to have angered almost every major group: He’s either done too much or too little or he’s done it too slowly,” said James Lindsay, a former official in the Clinton White House who is now with the Council on Foreign Relations. “There’s a very real political risk for Barack Obama in all of this.”
Among the critics Monday was Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a widely respected voice on foreign policy who has often sided with the administration.
“There needs to be a plan about what happens after Kadafi,” Lugar said. “Who will be in charge then, and who pays for this all? President Obama, so far, has only expressed vague hopes.”
There’s that “hope” we were all looking for … thought it was lost, trampled by the crowd walking out of the stadium in Denver, back in August 2008. Hope! [LAT]
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Wouldn't it be funny if Obama just said "Fuck this shit" and decided not to run for a second term?
Ha! First!
You know what other "democratic" president paid lip service to domestic agendas and got mired in a foreign boondoggle?
"I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president,"
Followed by screaming and cheering in the UW Library (that's where I happened to be), and a mass exodus to the Kollege Klub (which, at the time, was located right next to the libe).
Wouldn't it be funny if we said "fuck this shit" and decided to find a Democrat to actually run?
I'm still convinced The Last Democrat was probably Wellstone. If so, we are fucked.
Sherrod Brown (too Jewy?) & Raul Grijalva (way, way, waaaaay too brown) are fairly progressive, but could never get elected president. (Granted, we said the same thing about Obama (too black), & Kennedy (too Catholic), & Taft (too fat), but have we had a Catholic or faaaaaat president since either the second or third? No. Obie's going to be the first & last brown for some time.)
Well, what do you expect? He's morally weak, after all.
Simple answer is that everyone a bunch of jackhole douchebags who have a yearning need to be as dicky as possible!
“There needs to be a plan about what happens after Kadafi,”
That's jumping the proverbial a bit, isn't it? Which is the main problem people seem to have with this: what the fuck is the endgame? Is there one?
I predict T-Paw will crack a 40 over something or other and that S-Pal will somehow blame liberals for everything, whilst Glenn "TV Rodeo Clown" Beck will use incoherent chalk board ramblings to imply progressives therefore Khadafi therefore Stalin QED.
Hmm… Libya=Oil. The Koch Bruddahs own an oil pipeline company. Say, you know who else thought waging a war in North Africa was a good idea… ?
Napoleon.
Winston Churchill?
General George S. Patton III?
Alexander the Great?
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry?
Scipio Africanus?
Cornelius Scipio Africanus?
Upfist for punic war echoes
Upfist for pubic wars.
upfist for pube-less whales
Indeed. I was even thinking of Cato the Elder but I went with the actual guy who invaded Africa.
Tripoli delenda est!
The Clash?
Cleopatra?
Pharaoh?
Erwin Rommel?
A European swallow?
A European spit?
Laden or unladen?
Red…no, blue – aaaaaaaaaaaye!
Mohamed via Mansa Musa?
The French in Algeria?
Benito Mussolini.
The Hittites?
The Deadites?
The Mennonites?
The Sea Peoples?
cant forget Lizard People
Jefferson "from the Shores of Tripoli."
I would like to nominate Donald Trumpz hair-piece as leader of Libyuz new Coalition Provisional Authoritay.
His current non-strategy seems well considered and prudent. History rarely holds people responsible for inaction. That's why the corporations always say "no comment". Surely a Harvard-trained lawyer understands this as well.
Well if a massive earthquake and radiation spewing nuclear meltdown can whoosh off the front pages so quickly, seems to me people will have forgotten about this little Libya misadventure by next week.
I've already forgotten the lyrics to "On, Wisconsin."
Ah, you still have the first line.
Repubtards never forget (they foreclose), no matter the outcome we will hear of this in '12.
They still cling bitterly to their "Hanoi Jane" patches, so the likelihood that they forget a perceived slight by our "urban" president is slim.
Libya and Japan will continue to swap positions back and forth on the top of the CNN web page for a few weeks. The reactors are smoking…top of the page. Qaddafi's seeeekrit compound leveled…top of the page. …and so forth, until the Koch brothers instruct all Repubican governors to reclassify all state employees are unpaid indentured servants, required to work for a period of 7 years in exchange for food (raised by inmates in the state prison system) and polyester jumpsuits with their names fancily embroidered over the left chest pocket.
At least we'll get Brawndo.
Can I get one in green, because I care about the enviroment?
There was a massive earthquake?
Yes, my dear. A massive earthquake, which caused a massive tsunami, which caused a nuclear disaster, which is causing a growing food contamination in the country that Jack built.
Stop complaining, I have Libya winning in my bracket and going on to take on Viet Nam in the sweet 16.
If he goes: one less evil fuck. That's gotta be a step in the right direction, huh?
Obama or Khadafi?
"All of them, Katie."
Gosh, I can't help thinking I've heard that somewhere before.
That's not nearly enough. We've already tried that with the most minimal success. It's like taking a mallet to kill a fly in a china shop.
Reminds me of the anti-nuke activist in the '80's who said "Its like using a cannon to ring a doorbell, it can be done, but you can also destroy the house."
It was amusing for awhile to hear the compassion suddenly pouring out of Fox News for Muslims:
Gadahfi is bombing his own people and Obama does nothing!!
And, at the same time it was "Why isn't Obama doing anything? Why is he so slow?" They can talk out of both sides of their mouth like nobody's business.
Slightly OT, but if you take a shitty frozen pizza and put actual cheese on top, you can really take your broke-ass world to another level.
If you put actual mushrooms and olives on there, too, it's a whole nebba lebbo, also.
If you're gonna go to all that trouble, invest in some flour, baking powder, tomato sauce and olive oil and you can make real pizza crust too. Cheaper than frozen.
Um, at this point, haven't we moved some distance away from "shitty frozen pizza"?
Wait, you're saying that flour, water, a bit of yeast, some tomato sauce and a few mushrooms, tomatoes and a bit of cheese are *cheaper* and probably healthier than shitty frozen pizzas in the long run?
I hear Hannity yelling "MICHELLE OBAMA!!!!!!!!" as a backing track.
Um, at this point, haven't we moved some distance away from "shitty frozen pizza"?
"This is my grandfather's shitty frozen pizza: my father fitted it with new toppings, and I have fitted it with a new crust."
(Ha, a Ship of Theseus reference. Now I can check that off on my "pretentious douchebag" bingo card.)
better, too, also
LOL yeah I was just thinking a quick hack because I had looked at these 2 for a dollar, cheeseless, grocery outlet pizzas with scorn until i realized there was some shredded mozzerella in the fridge…
and baby, you got a stew goin!
So true.
Am reminded that the best pizza crust, ever, was homemade with whole wheat flour.
If i ever fall in love again, it will be so on.
The best pizza available in my current middle-of-nowhere white trash settlement is my fresh-baked whole wheat boule topped with either homemade pesto (basil, pinolas, garlic, olive oil, sea salt dumped in the food processor and pulsed a few times) and mozzarella or roasted tomatoes and mozzarella. So, it's basically "pizza bread/toast," but so good.
I feel you my brotha! (stacks hands to create lebbels)
Keegan-Michael Key! Holla!
This is the modern equivalent to "Stone Soup."
Hah! It depends on the type of cheese. When I were a lad, we were on welfare for a while…and not this wimpy welfare where you can go to the store and buy what you want. No! We got boxes of food that no one wanted to eat…including this weird government cheese.
Nice! My mom was a social worker, so we got the cheese that was expired, or returned or something. We also got #10 tin cans of beef and peanut butter, and butter by the pound. The beef was actually pretty good (even though the chance it was actually beef and not nutria is pretty low).
wait. we had that weird government cheese too, and i'm only 24. was i eating DECADES-OLD government cheese???
suddenly i feel so close to lynne cheney…
I think there is an old salt mine somewhere filled with that cheese…
Everything that Obama would have done in Libyan crisis will be considered wrong….
whether he dropped bombs, dropped arugula or dropped chocolate candy to Libyans, someone somewhere will curse him for what he did, like what happened now
Were Obama's foreign policy following not eight years of Bush, with two unnecessary & very much NOT humanitarian wars in Afghanistan & Iraq, & instead Clinton's use of force in Serbia (& disgusting lack thereof in Rwanda), nobody would be saying peep about an action to quell a Madman Past His Expiration Date's last grasp at power. That's not where Obie is, though. In the current scenario, we have war fatigue. More than that, we distrust any use of force 'cause the most recent — as well Panama, Granada, & 'Nam, plus Chile in '73 — were self-serving.
The tweets were flying furiously about Khadafi killing people for more than a week before anybody did anything. I think we've done smoked the last of our Hopium.
Please be clear about what YOU wanted done. At the first tweet about Khadafi killing people, you wanted "Hopium" to begin bombing? If so, why?
Eh, me? Yay freedoms, uh, Revolucion! Bombs Bad.
Hopium doesn't bomb things, it merely imbues the partaker with supernatural myopia.
Hmmm…President Obama gets to put his money where his mouth is with respect to telling the Muslim world he stands with the people; he prodded the Europeans — who have more at stake there than we do — to do most of the combat flying; he's earned criticism from John McCain for not acting fast enough, which in McCain's case (ask his Bangladeshi daughter) is as high a level of praise as it gets; and it could result in a pro-Western democracy in a relatively educated Arab state bordering Egypt.
And hey, frankly I admire him for not letting our nation's destitution and military overstretchedness keep him from playing his hand the way he wants to. I mean, that's what the Republicans have been trying to do for the last twenty years is render the Federal government inoperable — and yet Obama passed the stimulus and has started bombing Libya. So good on him.
Wooks, you overly-analytical bastid you, I lurv your commentariliaism and can never find fault in your conclusionasionatarianismostics.
And it's okay to ignore the People in Bahrain and Yemen and Syria and Saudi Arabia and Tunisia and Egypt? Because those revolutions were ignored by the White House, and only Tunisia and Egypt have really succeeded so far in avoiding massacres by the U.S.-supported dictatorship.
On the upside, Dick Cheney's only one hard-on away from a fatal heart attack. This might push him over the edge.
A gii-gan-T-cul cluster fuck of compassion explodes over and on Libya.
I did enjoy the spirited debate in Congress before this action was taken. Oh damn, that's right, I dreamed that part. I'm sure the rebels are all nice guys and they love their dogs and pickup trucks but somehow I don't see putting up top cover and blasting the ground machines is going to make the rebels suddenly the winners.
So settle in, a nice elongated (un)civil war is about to get interesting…and when the rebels are getting beaten, in goes the 'allied' ground forces. Just a quick in and out (wham bamm thank you ma'am) as the UN mandate sez no occupation-but the idea is being flogged that it does NOT prevent a clean incursion or two.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The US should get out of this one ASAP and leave it to the French. No, really. The French hate Khaddafi over that whole Chad thing in the 80s. They're the chaps who destroyed the armour on the ground. They're sending in their (actually pretty nifty) aircraft carrier. The British aren't particularly pleased with the fucker after Lockerbie.
No, the best thing Hopey can do is pan the shit out of air defences then step back and say "hey, France and Britain, go for it. We've done our bit"
Actually the no-ground-troops airwar was first attempted by Bill Clinton against Milosevic's Yugoslavia, which actually saved Western Europe's ass at a time they weren't willing to save it themselves. George Tenet initiated a version of it in Afghanistan, using CIA forces to direct the Northern Alliance against the Taleban. This prompted Don Rumsfeld to try to save face by putting troops in and then not knowing what to do with them, a strategy he redoubled in Iraq.
So in context, Odyssey Dawn is a return to the minimal-involvement war in support of an existing ground force and a step away from the Dubya-era fuckups of big aimless quagmires. At least it's starting that way.
"saved Western Europe's ass at a time they weren't willing to save it themselves"
I take a little exception to that as a Brit.
Clinton did exactly the right thing and did save a lot of (Muslim) lives by doing it.
I could be wrong, but I remember Clinton dragging the majority of NATO allies kicking and screaming into taking a unified stand against Milosevic.
Ah, a unified stand and doing the right thing isn't the same as saving an ass.
NATO (well, Turkey) aren't playing nice with this one either.
ok snark mode back on
"Sarah Palin was supposed to be dedicated to Supportin’ the Troops,"
Sarah has more than one son named "Troop"?
the Troops are willow's as-yet-un-conceived twin fetuses (feti?). doncha know they're humans even before the sperms hit the egg?
“The president seems to have angered almost every major group: He’s either done too much or too little or he’s done it too slowly,”
At least Obama didn't continue reading "My Pet Goat" to a bunch of pre-schoolers.
No, but he did spend an awful lot of time on his bracket.
They left out too fast.
Congress wanted to be consulted.
Yah that would have helped, they can't even pass a fart.
Why is Barack Obama so helpful to Libyan revolutionaries fighting their government, when he doesn’t seem to give a damn about the firefighters and teachers and janitors and police fighting for their vanishing rights to make a fair wage for their work, right here in the United States?
Scott Walker only threatened his own people with military force. Khadaffi went whole hog.
Oh, this simply has to be added. How do you know you are wrong: When Billy is in your corner and likes your decision.
"And so, despite his doubts and dithering, President Obama is taking us to war in another Muslim country. Good for him" Bill Kristol
Hmm. That is a little disturbing, I must admit. Let's see what Kristol Meth says this time next week.
If the POTUS would drop a nuke or two on those browns, Billy would come buckets in his pants.
i wish Snagglepuss was in charge of our military. at the very least, he always had an exit strategy.
When we are done with this whole misadventure can we at least send Abdelbaset al-Megrahi back to prison in Scotland?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockerbie_bomber
David Cameron made his feelings very clear in addressing the House of Commons:
“We should not forget his support for the biggest terrorist atrocity on British soil. We simply can not have a situation where a failed pariah state festers on Europe’s southern border.”
So for the Brits it is all about revenge and regime change. Time to let them run with it.
Um, Ken, your sully link (which I reluctantly engaged to find out what the conflicted doofus is thinking these days) doesn't seem to track the sentence in which it appears.
And your LAT excerpt quotes somebody from the CFR (what?), and Dickie Lugar (may he rest in peace). I have trouble morphing this into "everybody".
Look, I'm not wildly enthusiastic about this latest evocation of Cop Americana. I know shit about Libya, and I'm pretty sure that is also the case for our political leaders. It's no trick to know that Q'Daffy is a bad guy; the trick is to figure out who the hell are the good guys. To be more precise, it's impossible to figure out who are the good guys because WE'RE NOT LIBYANS. And if we were, we still wouldn't agree.
Nevertheless, there is some merit in deposing, or at least defusing, Q'Daffy. There is always some value in dislodging long-term autocrats. You cannot predict whether the outcome will be better or worse, but at least it will be different. In instability, there is at least the chance of progress In autocratic stability, there is none.
With respect to your references to the union protests in WI/MI/IN/(OH), I believe that most of those involved do not want anything more than generalized Presidential support for collective bargaining. They've got specific beefs with local Republicans acting like assholes, and they've got a fair amount of local support. The only big-ticket thing the Prez could do would be to nationalize the Guard if some idiot Governor tried to deploy it against the protesters. Eventually, it has to come down to votes, or what's the point of all this?
I can't really complain about your focus on the guy's weaknesses, but you know he's still the best available (electable) option. What bums me out is that his adaptation to the Presidency seems to involve an increase in reaction. Even Bubba's triangulation was more forward-looking.
Yeah, "delayed reluctant participation" is starting to become the Obama administration's permanent mode. It's like healthcare scared them out of the policy making business forever. But just imagine the McCain parallel universe at this point…we'd have troops on the ground throughout North Africa, and our domestic agenda would be Scott Walkerish to say the least.
And his porridge is either too hot or too cool, and his chair is either too low or too high, and his bed is either too hard or too soft, and…
And Lugar's plan is…. what, exactly? Ground troops?A CIA plant? Yes, that always works so well.
Her Grifterness: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/in-india-sarah-p...
"Dithering", yes. None of this waiting for "international sanction" hogwash on President Snowbilly's watch. Unilateral action against an Arab state must be decisive, because "Freedoms". Again, can't imagine how this would ever go wrong.
Some people in the GOP seem to have all the accumulated memory of a sea slug.
Some people in the GOP seem to have all the accumulated memory of a sea slug.
My God, are you saying that they ground Reagan's body up and fed it to the current Republican party leadership?!
It's a question of time. If it takes years, billions of dollars, and any American lives at all, Obama will receive a torrent of condemnation from the right and an erosion of support on the left.
If it's over in two weeks and democracy blossoms like a sweet cactus flower in the desert, Obama will still receive a torrent of condemnation from the right, because that's just what they do, and a tepid "meh" from the left, because that seems to be one of our favorite words.
Good Luck, Barry!
And the best part is, in the latter case, get ready for our next Republican president to vocally condemn having taken action here while campaigning, only to turn around and shamelessly take credit for it once he's president.
I mean, I really don't expect the Albanians to know the difference between our major political parties for the most part, let alone that Bush would have abandoned the Kosovar Albanians to a genocidal dictator, but the fact that Clinton's '99 intervention was a huge part of why they love us was really only a small footnote in even that article, written for the usually-excellent-by-American-standards CS Monitor.
By any standards, Mister. I think another way of looking at this is that the Albanians knew that America saved them and were grateful. After the trillions of dollars we've poured into Muslim countries that hated us before, during, and after, it would be nice if one of them actually felt positive about the US. You know, like they asked for us ahead of time rather than looking around to see who's bombing this time and being all like, ' the fuck you come from?
Yeah, and in this particular event, the people didn't just ask for us ahead of time, they begged and beseeched us. And, for a minute, they thought there was a chance that we'd deny them.
Eh, I've seen some pretty lame CS Monitor reporting, but mainly in fluff pieces about things that didn't matter, like video games.
And, I really don't begrudge the Albanians' gratitude, really, I just got annoyed as all fuck that Bush was lapping it up as though he didn't inherit a legacy that he actively campaigned against, while the neocons took the opportunity to actively propagandize about gunpoint democracy as though the situations were remotely similar, and the overwhelming bulk of America's press conveniently elided the fairly critical context of "Clinton's War".
If democracy blossoms like a rare, sweet cactus flower in a landscape of barren failed states, the Republitards will yell, "Carrion flower." You know, that weird plant that blooms once a century or something and is the worst smelling . . .
Forget it. My sinuses are pounding and the joke wasn't worth it to start.
I Lurve the word Meh! Almost as much as I lurve the word lurve!
Obama says he doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks, and lets the three A.M. phone call go to voice mail.
America will have to introspect ultimately. military war is not justified against Libiya. http://miraclefootrepairsite.com
Bush kind of ruined intervention for everyone and everything for decades, no matter how legitimate the cause. But, whose problem is that, ultimately? Shit happens and shit's gotta' get done. The world doesn't stop, slow down, or turn off because we're tired or depressed or moody. It doesn't wait until we're feeling better or economically/fiscally recovered or even brought back to our right, sane minds. It doesn't wait for us to gain ultimate moral legitimacy, good standing, or the high ground. Strategically located popular movements and murderous plans and offenses against those things don't stop or start on American time.
With great power comes great responsibility, and too whom much is given much is expected. Gird your loins, hold onto your butts, and get ready for the ride.
To be sure, America is a broken nation as any with major credibility issues and inconsistent views which often lead to the inconsistent application of policy. But, ultimately, the world don't wait or run on perfection. Never has, never will.
To end, if the legitimacy of the mission lies within a contest of which of these two nations and the leaders has the moral and ethical high-ground and moral superiority, well, I'm betting on black every. single. time.
Sometimes, the world meets us. Sometimes, it even meets us head-on.
See, I actually do have mixed feelings here. America's had some badly misguided years behind it now, but sometimes even the best intentions end badly- this is less misguided than Iraq, for sure, but that really shouldn't have ever been our 'bad idea' standard to begin with.
The real question is whether we're looking at something that is more like Kosovo, where we actually did prevent a human rights nightmare, or Somalia, where our failed intervention meant we refused to intervene amid even worse atrocities a few years later. I think that right now, the answer to that involves more than a bit of tea-leaf -reading, truth be told.
But you’re forgetting about the defense contractors. They’re for it and they donate to campaigns.
One more thing: when defense contractors like something, then some brown people get blown up. It’s all very logical and very predictable.
Defense contractors like war. In other news, the fucking sky is blue. I don't get how the defense contractors abiding by their nature precludes us from involving ourselves in legitimate interventions.
Really, I'm so tired of this thin gruel. I'm not hardly a war mongerer, but the weak tea being brewed up against this opposition is embarrassing. Ideas and policies rise or fall on their merits, not because of who doesn't and does support them.
I think there are probably legitimate arguments to be made against any kind of intervention. I'm sure there is a scenario you can play out where you can justify G'Daffy getting to Benghazi and leveling the place and exterminating its citizens. But, that "the defense contractors love war" ain't one of 'em.
well, there is the military industrial big oil complex……Libya has always been one of their favorite wet dreams!
Except that it hasn't been.
There is something to be said for a tier of democratic states across Northern Africa – Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. The more autocratic and conservative Arab states to the east have traditionally looked to this part of the world for guidance.
It just could be the start of something good and Libya can't get much worse…roll the dice.
Air war on Libya – The NIT of military action!!
Barry could rescue a cancer stricken 3 year old holding a kitten with cancer, and the usual players would condemn him for intervention/socialism. We're a stupid, angry country. That being said, this is a complex issue and t'would be nice if everyone could just shut up, even for a fucking week, and see how this plays out.
Yes, we should definitely all shut up about the White House launching another war in a Muslim country. It's not like we have to pay for it!
"Is this our Suez Canal?"
Alimentary, my dear Ken, alimentary.
This is so obvs.
1. Carla Bruni & our beloved FLOTUS are like so solid it wuz easy for Barry to get…
2. Nicolas Sarkozy's planes bombing away, so to avoid the mustard gas issue…
3. The Frogs nuke Tripoli to take out 3/4 of the Libyan population, the mustard gas, and all of Guhdaffy's supporters… and as a bonus the fallout takes out the Italian wine crop & the price of French wines jump, jump, jump.
4. Nickie and Barry win easy next time and the first couples vacation in Hawaii.
Foreign policy is much easier than the maths.
Carla and Michelle running together side-by-side on the beach…
No matter what Obama does, he's double screwed.
Instead of a Catch-22, they should call it a Catch-44.
Plus he's on double secret probation.
In addition to 22 being double 22, it is because he's the 44th president.
In Soviet Russia, jokes explain YOU!
Also.
I'm so entirely pissed off about the "Obama was nagged into it by evil ladies who should be baking cookies and leave the warrring to men" bullshit, that for the first time ever, I'm rooting for war. GYNOWAR!
I do get sadistic glee, however, in the PUMAs who are always going on about how much better Hillary Clinton would have been as President being confronted with the fact that she's a warmongerer too.
GYNOWAR! The new PlayStation 3 game franchise filled with high-framerate Babe-itude, rendered in the bounciest of polygons.
I really appreciate all the Republican assholes who went on endlessly about how the left was indifferent to the Iraqi people's fight for freedom just six years ago and now when you have an actual armed rebellion against a dictatorship, they are all like: 'who gives a fuck'
It's funny, isn't it? Our policy post the debacle in Iraq was that we'd help oppressed people that first helped themselves. Here we have a people first arising to protest G-Daddy (something unheard of, and a veritable death sentence in itself), and then after shot from helicopters above their cities took up arms against the regime (a most certain death sentence), and suddenly we raise the bar even higher for what constitutes American involvement. How very damned convenient, no?
And, on the liberal end of things, we're always bitching about having missed stopping massacres by dictators. And here we have a place where an event meets with what's going on in the surrounding region, perfectly; an intervention that while it needs to be carefully weighed shouldn't be this controversial, and we get all of the bullshit and convenient conspiracy theories about how this intervention is for oil or defense contractors, and about how "we don't know who the good guys are" as if the moral superiority of Rwanda's two factions was any clearer than this, and asking "why didn't we do this in ______" as if that is somehow a legitimate argument against this very clear intervention.
I've been critical as hell of Obama ever since his presidency began, but fuck if I finally see what some of his supporters are a bit annoyed about.
Maybe I'm following too many Libyans on twitter, but their increasingly desperate and terrified calls for international help last week (and vocal support for airstrikes now) makes the humanitarian case pretty persuasive.
Me, too. I think it's different to help people fighting for their country then invade and convince them they ought to give a shit about their country. Plus, Q-man made Hussein look like T-Paw.
Obama shouldn't run for a second term. He's not qualified. But there is a man who is ready to shoulder this burdon. There is one man who is fully equipped and has been called upon by Providence to lead America out of the wilderness and stop this sickening slide into third world status. I hereby nominate the only one among us who can possibly connect with the American voter – ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Dog Whisperer.
I loved the news report on WNYC this morning:
"The US Military also said it hopes to turn the operation over to someone by sometime next week."
Haha. Someone? Sometime? This isn't like a hundred dollar bill your trying to get rid of at a homeless shelter here. Who is going to own this? Qatar? the broke UK?
I am more amazed how many people are into this whole thing. As if the last decade didn't teach people to question reporting, question the conventional wisdom, especially about events in far away places who've we've hated for years and have oil – but no. People are back on the "oh, he's a killer!" bandwagon.
We'll you broke it, you bought it. Hope this works out for us, but what are the chances.
One. The chance is one
Does PaddyPower have betting lines on world leader &/or nation-state most likely to give asylum to Qaddafi?
Saudi OFF THE BOARD
Zimbabwe 5-1
South Africa 11-2
Venezuela 15-1
Nicaragua 20-1
Russia 30-1
Norway 40-1
Turkey 50-1
China 100-1
South Africa? Wha?
I hadn't read any speculation about Muammar ending up in the RAS, but I threw it up there since the Mbeki & Zuma have tried to assert the nation's preemience on the continent, acting as a peace-broker in Zimbabwe & Botswana, &, of course, hosting the World Cup this past year. & let's not forget: before Ahmadinnerjacket was ever hosting David Duke & other Holocaust denialism, Mbeki was playing to the HIV-AIDS denial crowd.
I dunno. I kinda' support it. Why didn't someone ask me?
The wonket and the Christian Science Monitor are seeing this from the same perspective today, basically, although the CSM Editorial Board expressed it a bit differently.
We used to romp with CSM reporters in Eastern Europe during the post-Berlin Wall years, so it makes a certain kind of sense.
If Obama started shitting platinum eagles, Fox News would ask, "Why is he, the President, defiling the emblem of this country? This proves he hates America!" If Bush did the same they would commend him for helping to pay down the debt that he racked up.
When we get done helping and being helpful the Libyans are going to dash over here and help our protestors for freedom too. But I bet the neocons aren't going to like that they are here to help. The neocons will say, "Oh no you can't help because you be teh brown." or something.
Obama shouldn't be bombin' his African homeland. He's going to piss off all the Sotero clan.
Uhm, what country in Africa does the name "Sotero" come from?
This is a secret exit strategy from Iraq. We just don't have enough cannon fodder to engage a third useless occupation, so come on home from Iraq (with a brief 3 year layover in Libya). Should have killed that fucker in '86…
I'm not in favor of any war of choice, and this Libya thing is not a matter of our own National Defense against foreign aggression, but I am willing to give Barry a pass on this one; recalling the words of Benjamin Franklin, who said: "Any fool can condemn and criticize…and most do.".
You continue to claim Obama "doesn't give a damn" about supporting public employees in Wisconsin, but didn't he direct his entire '08 campaign apparatus to support public employees in Wisconsin? I know we've reached the point where Obama=Bush and everything he does deserves hysterical lefty criticism, but isn't that at least an eighth of a damn?
Is it really "hysterical lefty criticism" just because Obama's president now? Because I'm pretty certain there's not a soul on Wonkette's comment boards who would've refrained from criticizing Bush Junior for doing just this kind of thing.
Dpending on who you ask, bombing those fuckers has 70% support or 20%. Probably closer to 70%.
I'd feel a lot better about bombing Ghadafi if we hadn't already blown our wad and credibility in a.) Afghanistan, b.) Iraq, c.) Pakistan, d.) Yemen.
And if we had a clue as to how this might end. The "give Obama the benefit of the doubt" position doesn't have much in terms of recent history to back it up. Britain, France, and the Arab states should be involved with this if they feel so strongly about it. And the US, which has sold them all the military hardware in the world, should sit this one out.
“Why is Barack Obama so helpful to Libyan revolutionaries fighting their government, when he doesn’t seem to give a damn about the firefighters and teachers and janitors and police fighting for their vanishing rights to make a fair wage for their work, right here in the United States?”
I aske myself that question every damn day. At least, whenever I'm not wishing plagues of Biblical proportion on the Tennessee General Assembly.
“There needs to be a plan about what happens after Kadafi,” Lugar said. “Who will be in charge then, and who pays for this all? President Obama, so far, has only expressed vague hopes.”
Oddly enough, I don't remember this being a topic of discussion before Iraq, except by us traitors.
O yes, jq.
Shrooms are also on my list of things to do again before "Eternity," too.
Now is a grand time for all of the Republican chickenhawks who missed fighting for their country to parachute into Libya and show us how to kick Khadaffy's ass. Michelle Bachmann and the Sarah can lead the charge, and write IN GOD WE TRUST in the desert sands.
don't you wonkers know that at least one american leader is for this war, and any other war- John McCain! he's the dude that sang Bomb Bomb Iran, Bomb Bomb Iran (to the tune of Barbara Ann).
any war is a good war for McCain so he can show off his military muscle, i.e. i mean crashing airplanes as a pilot. but WTF, it's still a good war.
and i am sure the Military-Industrial-Complex is for all war, the more the better, because they be making piles of money selling bombs, guns, etc. so for them, the more wars the better.
fuck this blog shit
"Obama did or did not do something, conservative cry".
One can never say what could have been — yet Milosevic had already trashed the economies of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, and nations bordering the former Yugoslavia were feeling the pressure of hundreds of thousands of refugees. And yet even after it was clear to most Europeans that things were only getting worse, they couldn't agree until Clinton pushed them hard. Not that he would've extended Greater Serbia to England, but he had turned the Balkans into Europe's version of the Congo.
Not sure here, but you two appear to be in reasonably violent agreement.
Except for framing terms?
It really was merely the phrasing that I took issue with, which was probably stupid given that we're all wonketeers and tend to agree.
It was, as you rightly juxtapose, an intervention very similar to this one; an action against governmental forces brutalising civilians.
Circumstances were horribly different (Tito's death, fall of USSR etc etc etc I know you know this), yet outcome was what everyone hopes for in North Africa and the Middle East.
We do agree on the essentials, and the US plays the most important part in NATO.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to drag it out, I was still thinking about the comparison, while at the same time rolling over the details of the Yugoslav bombing campaign.
We'll just have to agree to agree then. Dammit.
Beat me to it! I keep waiting for a post on divisions in France to trot out Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.
I'm looking for a good spot to use "The sun never sets on the American clusterfuckpire."
And never forget that during the war, when he was taken prisoner, your grandfather had to stick that shitty frozen pizza up his asshole for safekeeping. That might explain why it's so shitty.
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