Libyan Civil War Megathread

[Hansmeister]

Was Kosovo well televised?  Really?  I can't remeber seeing a single explosion from that.

It ended up getting cancelled halfway thru it's first season and replaced with the High School drama "Columbine".

[Mr.Penguin]

Was Kosovo well televised?  Really?  I can't remeber seeing a single explosion from that.

It ended up getting cancelled halfway thru it's first season and replaced with the High School drama "Columbine".

They made two spin of series "hey, the Ruskies took my air port" and "Run Serb, run". Both poorly scripted...

[Hansmeister]

From NRO:

The president can't distinguish the Libya campaign from the Iraq War.
In the Democratic primary campaign of 2008, candidate Barack Obama scored points because he, unlike many Democrats, had opposed the Iraq War from the start. Although he was a state senator at the time of the 2002 congressional vote authorizing military action, Obama had delivered a speech to an anti-war rally in Chicago.

He said, "I don't oppose all wars.#...#What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne."

#ad#Regarding the justifications for war with Iraq, state senator Obama was unpersuaded: " I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.#...#But#...#he poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors."

As American forces join the war against Moammar Qaddafi, the nation is entitled to an explanation. How is the case for war against Qaddafi smarter (remember, Obama is only against "dumb" wars) or less "ideological" or more prudent than that for war against Saddam Hussein?

Certainly with an army of only 50,000, Qaddafi represents far less of a threat to his neighbors or to us than did Saddam, who commanded an army estimated at 350,000. As for humanitarian concerns, what Qaddafi is doing to the rebels in Libya is exactly what Saddam did to his domestic enemies, but on a reduced scale. As Obama himself said, Saddam was "a ruthless man#...#who butchers his own people to secure his power." Yet that didn't justify a war, state senator Obama told us.

Senator Obama did not believe that Saddam posed a danger to the United States or to his neighbors -- though he had attacked or invaded three of his neighbors: Iran, Kuwait, and Israel. Yet Qaddafi has hardly ranged beyond his own borders.

While Obama (like the rest of the world) was convinced that Saddam had "developed chemical and biological weapons" -- and though he knew that Saddam had actually attacked his own people from the air with chemical weapons -- he didn't think that his possession of those weapons warranted war. In Qaddafi's case, there is no threat of WMDs, as the dictator flamboyantly relinquished his WMD program after seeing Saddam's fate.

How are Obama's motives regarding military action against Moammar Qaddafi less "cynical" than those he was so contemptuous of in Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle? What "ideological agenda" was the Bush administration "shoving down our throats" that Obama is not himself duplicating? Is he opposed to the Freedom Agenda? What, exactly, was so obnoxious about the Bush program?

How has Obama concluded that a war against another Middle East villain is now justified and not "dumb" or "rash"? And on what principle can President Obama now decline to intervene on behalf of other freedom fighters around the globe?

We don't know, because unlike George Bush, who took his case for war to the American people through a vote in the U.S. Congress (with 110 Democrats voting in favor), President Obama has unilaterally put our forces into harm's way based solely on his power as commander-in-chief. (Code Pink, call your office!) If he is relying upon the vote in the United Nations as his mandate for military action, he is establishing a new principle of diminished U.S. sovereignty. American forces can now be ordered into action by the president and the U.N. but without the U.S. Congress?

On most of the foreign- and security-policy issues he preened himself about -- the folly of deposing despots, closing the prison at Guantanamo, using military tribunals to try terrorists, and withdrawing from Iraq -- President Obama has reversed himself.

He has performed these reversals without explanation and without apology for his shrill condemnation of his predecessor. He condemned Bush's "ideology" but his own foreign policy seems to have amounted to marketing the image of himself as the first African-American president and the first Muslim-sympathetic president. Image making is easier than policymaking -- and when it came time for decisions, President Obama dissolved into incoherence.

--- Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2011 Creators Syndicate.

It is good to know that Obama and 90 percent of the democrats opposition to Bush was purely partisan and devoid of any true ideological principal.

[Warspite]

I was expecting this to be as awesome and well televised as the Kosovo war was.
It is not.

Don't you listen to your Gill Scott Heron? The revolution will not be televised. 

[Razgovory]

First Republicans bitch that Obama isn't doing anything to help the Libyans out.  Now they bitch that he does.  Jesus, what can the man do to please you fucks?


Oh and it looks like one of our jets went down over Libya.

[Caliga]

First Republicans bitch that Obama isn't doing anything to help the Libyans out.  Now they bitch that he does.  Jesus, what can the man do to please you fucks?

While Hansie is right, the Republicans also oppose Obama for the same reason.  Conclusion = ideologues suck.

[Hansmeister]

While most Republicans have been stunned by the ineptitude on display by the Obama administration (not me, I completely expected the idiot to botch it), I don't really hear much opposition from the GOP.  Most complaints have been that Obama isn't doing enough, while being perplexed that Obama believed he needed the support of the Arab League and the UNSC, but not the US Congress.

The only outspoken opponent of note has been Senator Lugar, who is currently being primaried for being insufficiently conservative, not exactly a poster boy of the right.

Drawing a line between the Democrats reaction to Bush and the GOPs reaction to Obama is laughable, yet unsurprising from the partisan left.

If Bush had gone to war without congressional approval the democrats would have gone completely around he bend. Heck, even with congressional approval they went completely nuts, you're not going to see anything like that from the GOP, since they're not mentally unhinged like the left.

[Caliga]

Here's something I wonder about:

If Gadhafi starts to lose and get pushed back onto his home turf, and the rebels start slaughtering members of the Gadhafa tribe (as we all know they inevitably will), will we start bombing the rebels?

[Valmy]

Here's something I wonder about:

If Gadhafi starts to lose and get pushed back onto his home turf, and the rebels start slaughtering members of the Gadhafa tribe (as we all know they inevitably will), will we start bombing the rebels?

Hehe and this is exactly why we should not intervene in things like this.  Now we would be responsible for all the reprisals and everything that will happen going forward.

Drawing a line between the Democrats reaction to Bush and the GOPs reaction to Obama is laughable, yet unsurprising from the partisan left.

I find it laughable you Republican partisans actually think you are that much better.  You are either deluded or a liar.  Given your posting history I go with the former.

[KRonn]

Here's something I wonder about:

If Gadhafi starts to lose and get pushed back onto his home turf, and the rebels start slaughtering members of the Gadhafa tribe (as we all know they inevitably will), will we start bombing the rebels?

Hush... we haven't thought that far ahead yet. When that time comes, I guess we switch sides and start bombing the Rebels??     

Tough job being President. He was damned for not acting, now damned for acting.   

[Caliga]

I'm still trying to figure out if my 'get as many Libyans killed as possible' strategy is better served by bombing or not bombing.

[Valmy]

I'm still trying to figure out if my 'get as many Libyans killed as possible' strategy is better served by bombing or not bombing.

Probably not bombing unless you want the thrill of being sorta responsible for their deaths.  There might be massacres either way at the end but this should get us there faster.

[Caliga]

No, it's much better for us if they're responsible for their own deaths.

[Warspite]

Here's something I wonder about:

If Gadhafi starts to lose and get pushed back onto his home turf, and the rebels start slaughtering members of the Gadhafa tribe (as we all know they inevitably will), will we start bombing the rebels?

This is a question the liberal intervention crowd will have to deal with eventually. Unfortunately, it is not one they handled very well with in Bosnia or Kosovo. They may have a very clever plan to prevent such reprisals in Libya, but I doubt it.

This is the fundamental reason I am torn on this endeavour. I wish the average Libyan civilian to enjoy the same fruits of liberation as his Egyptian and Tunisian brothers. But I do not think civil wars are ever the straightforward dichotomy we wish them to be, and I am unconvinced that Libya was really a sufficient threat to international peace and security to warrant open-ended international military action.

It's a bit like Bosnia. We thought by sticking in blue helmets and slapping an arms embargo we would protect civilians and prevent a humanitarian disaster. In fact, nowadays I really believe that if we'd let the Muslims fight it out and buy weapons on the international markets, we would have far fewer gravestones sitting in the middle of Sarajevo and outside of Srebrenica. And, ironically, had the legitimate government of Bosnia been stronger in 1993, then it is likely that the Bosnian Croats would not have indulged in their shameful episode of separatism (and, thus, we would have fewer gravestones outside of Mostar).

If we really wanted to help the Libyan rebels, then maybe we should have, as someone else here or on Paradox suggested, suddenly have found that they were able to buy stingers and anti-tank missiles on the market ...

[Valmy]

This is a question the liberal intervention crowd will have to deal with eventually. Unfortunately, it is not one they handled very well with in Bosnia or Kosovo. They may have a very clever plan to prevent such reprisals in Libya, but I doubt it.

This is the fundamental reason I am torn on this endeavour. I wish the average Libyan civilian to enjoy the same fruits of liberation as his Egyptian and Tunisian brothers. But I do not think civil wars are ever the straightforward dichotomy we wish them to be, and I am unconvinced that Libya was really a sufficient threat to international peace and security to warrant open-ended international military action.

It's a bit like Bosnia. We thought by sticking in blue helmets and slapping an arms embargo we would protect civilians and prevent a humanitarian disaster. In fact, nowadays I really believe that if we'd let the Muslims fight it out and buy weapons on the international markets, we would have far fewer gravestones sitting in the middle of Sarajevo and outside of Srebrenica.

It does not seem to bother them very much.  I hardly ever hear anybody talk about the reprisals during those interventions and how we were enablers of them.

I really agree with that last paragraph.  Our policies in Bosnia were so disastrous and counter-productive it is ridiculous and mostly a result of basic ignorance of what was really going on there.  Simply the act of allowing the Croats and Muslims to arm themselves would have saved thousands of lives.  I have no reason to believe we are any smarter than we were in those days and it is one of primary reasons I am against this kind of intervention.