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I am leery of a No Fly Zone.
When the multitude of rebellions in N Africa broke out, I knew it was
just a matter of time
before one of the dictators went "Tian An Men Square" on their people -
ordering a wholesale
military slaughter to quell the revolt. Gaddafi was the first guy to
try it. My heart aches to see
bloodshed and carnage and instability, but for the US to get involved
will just make it worse, in my view.
There is no way to keep a No Fly Zone "surgical." Civil war has
started, and is very dynamic.
The pilot we bomb today might have been planning on switching sides
tomorrow - like the pilots who
defected to Cyprus a few weeks ago. Also - rebels are in charge of some
military and air installations,
especially in the eastern part of the country. We will be killing
rebels to save them from being killed by Gaddafi.
How are we going to keep track of who's who, unless we are very, very
involved? From whom will we
be getting our information from, and what are their motivations? Maybe
some nice, democracy and
free market-minded, US-loving guy we can trust, like Curveball and
Chalabi?
I think you're making this more complicated than it needs
to be.
We could drop leaflets that say, "Anything that
flies will die."
If the rebels grab part of the military we could stay out of it,
but if Gadhaffy's boys are the only ones flying, we slap them.
What are the Libyan people,
regardless of their views, going to think of the US and British
military
coming to their aid, or the aid of their oil? They certainly have no
reason to trust us to begin with
- plus look at the mess we made of Iraq! Who wants the kooks and
doofuses and gangsters who
run the fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan to show up on the beach?
We're not going to land on their beach and we can't take their oil from the air.
France and Italy are offering to help while Obama dithers and that makes America look weak.
How can we have any sense of
confidence that our military will get the correct targets this time,
given our track record of precision bombing weddings and children
gathering firewood?
Libyans won't appreciate being collateral damage more than anyone else
does.
The rebels don't have jets.
I'm only suggesting we pull Gadhaffy's jets out of the sky.
Sure, it's possible someone could be hurt of killed by falling jets but
that's
gotta be better than a dozen Gadhaffy jets strafing little towns over
and over.
What are other Muslim nations going
to think about Americans intervening in Libya - possibly
during the same week we are having Congressional Hearings on The Muslim
Problem? Up to now,
the rebellions which are breaking out all over, that we have let sort
themselves out without intervention,
have conspicuously lacked crowds chanting Death to America and Israel.
If we send in our planes,
will this provoke anti-American sentiment in the uprisings? (My view so
far is the rebellions are economic
- people toppling the billionaire poodles of the Globalist Banksters -
and I'd like to keep it that way.)
You seem to be assuming the rebels have asked us to stand
down.
If that's their wish, I'm all for granting it.
The reports I've seen have said they're wondering why we refuse to help.
We got away with intervention in
Serbia with few consequences only because of geography - the region
was white and European, and largely Christian (we killed Christians to
save Muslims), and because we
had clear, limited goals and knew what was going on. It's way too big
of a risk to jump into the volatile
Muslim North Africa or the Middle East. Intervention in Somalia was a
disaster.
You're saying all military intervention is the same and
it always ends in a quagmire.
We could have one aircraft carrier a hundred miles off shore.
The Libyans would never see our carrier and would
probably never see our jets.
When the AWACS say some jets have taken off, we scramble a couple of
F-18s
and they lock on their missles and BOOM, no more Libyan jets.
No quagmire there.
Gaddafi got uppity in the late 70s
and aspired to regional Arab leadership, just as Saddam Hussein did,
but whatever ambition he had to counter the US and Israel by ordering
terrorist operations was neutralized
by Reagan's 1986 air strikes. He kept a low profile until after the
9/11 attack. He, like Saddam Hussein,
was a secular leader, which had drawn the ire of Muslim
fundamentalists, and was targeted by Al Qaeda
himself, narrowly escaping several attempts on his life. It was in his
best interest, to protect himself and
better the lot of Libya, which had been a pariah state, by offering
intelligence and aid to the US in the GWOT.
(The world has been pretty cosy with him since. Prince Andrew of
Britain, of which Lockerbie is a part,
has close ties with him and his family. 50 Cent was revealed today as
giving musical performances to the
Gaddafis for seven figure fees, as did Beyonce, Mariah Carey, Lionel
Ritchie, Jose Carreras, and others.)
No quagmire there.
He is just one of the With Us's,
not one of our trusted allies, like Mubarak, or BFFs, like Saudi Arabia
- which is also now firing upon demonstrators against the
government there. Do we have any plans to
create a No-Fly Zone there if those demonstrators don't go home when
the House of Saud starts bombing them?
I think we should stop the slaughter in Libya and deal
with the future if and when it happens.
I saw a headline, "Door to rebels
winning is closing."
If Gadhaffy succeeds, every dictator will have a blueprint of how to
stop the rebels - wholesale slaughter.
I'm against that.
Intervention. Sanctions. How do
these things get decided? The late 80s saw a massive popular uprising
gathering in Tian An Men Square, China, calling for more freedom. We
watched it unfold on our tv screens
for weeks. It was inspiring, mesmerizing, and produced iconic moments
of resistance to brutal power, like the
man standing in front of the advancing tank. Then, China ordered CNN
out, and ordered the Army to crush
the revolt. To this day, it is unknown how many were slaughtered - but
it was thousands dead, and tens of
thousands wounded. I wrote a letter of protest to Poppy Bush, demanding
him to condemn China and take
some sort of action against them for this massacre - perhaps economic
sanctions. He wrote back to say that
his view was that punishing China was counter-productive, and that a
long view of open, constructive
engagement was called for; our good example would get them in the end.
I was naive enough to consider this.
In hindsight, Poppy was probably laying the groundwork for moving
American manufacturing to China,
which would destroy American jobs and thus render the middle class and
working people powerless - something
that his son would see to completion in later years. And now China is
bankrolling our wars through loans.
I don't want to argue dozens of foreign policy
hypotheticals until we're both blue in the face.
The Libyans are being slaughtered right
now and we can stop it by lifting a few fingers.
In the traditional manner of the
American whore media, you're going to hear more about Gaddafi's
crazy clothes, instead of anything important, as the matter to commit
to a No-Fly Zone is decided.
Newt may have called for a No Fly Zone, but he really wants war - a
real big one. Lots of people, some of
them very insane, do. And maybe things are so fucked up, and there is
so much money to be made - that is
inevitable. There's a lot of nice people who hate seeing governments
slaughter their own people, but they have
to be careful about what they might be being manipulated into, as
people (like NeoCons and the religiously insane)
will use the chaos to find opportunities to advance their agendas.
I think you're making this much more complicated than it
needs to be.
Clinton stopped a massacre in the Balkans - without losing an American
soldier.
Don't look at all military action thru the Monkey Bush lens.
Just a few weeks ago, insane WP
columnist David Broder called upon Obama to invade Iran. It would make
him a hero even among Republicans and Conservatives, Broder wrote, for
revitalizing the American economy
into prosperity "just like" WWII did, and for destroying an existential
threat to Israel and other allies. It was the
most evil thing I'd read in years. I hoped real hard Obama didn't need
to be liked by everyone that bad. I've been
pretty hard on him, but at least he's only just continued Bush and
Cheney's wars, and not started a new one
- I give him credit for that. (Broder died yesterday - fuck him.)
Hammer on,
chookie
see some skinny punk repeatedly slapping his wife, I'm going to step in and stop the slapping.
No quagmire there.
Thanks for the tangle :)