After decades of botched meddling in other nations’ domestic affairs, American foreign policy reached fever pitch during the Bush administration. More often than not, our meddling has resulted in backlash or terrible unintended consequences, from the installation of right-wing dictators in South America, to the Iranian Islamic Revolution. This doesn’t even take into account the various foolhardy wars we’ve stumbled into, from Vietnam to Iraq. So I come at foreign policy from a very cautious position. I’m not quite full-on pacifist, but I’m close.
All that said, reports out of Libya are disturbing to put it mildly – the violence against Libyan protestors is truly horrendous. For all the defections of air force officers and diplomats, there is report after report of slaughter. Qaddafi’s special forces are attacking protestors with snipers, artillery, tanks, and from the sea and air. They are dropping bombs from helicopters. Hundreds are dead, though we have no way of knowing the actual death-toll.
Aziz Poonawalla writes:
It’s rare for me to advocate something as direct as a military action – but a no-fly zone is something we must as a nation do, and do immediately, if we are to do anything to help bring about a new golden age of democracy in the Middle East. After Egypt, all Arab leaders feared their people; after Libya, the people will again fear their tyrants. All the progress will be lost, all the potential will be wasted.
This is the moment that must be seized. And only we can do it.
I don’t know. I’m conflicted. This is one of those many moments I’m glad to not have Obama’s job.
I suppose I still come down on the non-interventionist side, no matter how horrible the actions of the Qaddafi government may be. There are rumors that the military might still turn on Qaddafi – let’s hope there is truth to these. And it’s important that the Libyan people own this revolution. I don’t wish death on anyone, but this is not our fight, no matter how much we wish we could step in and do something. If there are other actions the US and international community can take to aid the protestors – including aiding defecting Libyan troops, setting up border hospitals, and keeping communications as open as possible, I think we should exploit these as much as possible.
All that being said, I don’t often write about foreign policy because there’s an element of armchair general inherent in it that I like to avoid. I don’t have the facts to say with certainty what sort of response is appropriate at this point. But I hope the killing stops soon, and that Qaddafi is brought to justice.
Cris
Is al-Jazeera providing the best coverage of this situation, or do I just think that because I like their accents?
Anyway, paging morzer.
Yutsano
I’m sure this suggestion is only coming up because we have a neat nifty little Air Force base outside of Roma. Otherwise this wouldn’t even be near a possibility. And a unilaterally imposed no-fly-zone is not an act of war how exactly? Plus that just brings up images of shot down passenger planes and things could get too ugly too fast. Nope, stay the fuck out of it.
wsn
And it’s important that the Libyan people own this revolution.
I think this is the most important thing to remember. Perhaps also the humility to recognize that there are things that we simply cannot do.
JPL
This is beyond my pay grade. No fly zones sound good but what happens if a jet is shot down. We can rid the country of Qaddafi but at what cost. The loss of life could be lower if we took that approach but I don’t know. It’s apparent that Qaddafi plans a massacre, at least to me.
Why in the world did Bush befriend this murderer?
Cris
That certainly seems to be the position for the moment, based on Secretary Clinton’s pronouncement: “Now is the time to stop this unacceptable bloodshed.” As opposed to the, you know, acceptable bloodshed. These are not fighting words.
morzer
@Cris:
And if Gaddafi wins, slaughters his people and we did nothing, will that make you happy, Cris?
Alex S.
Gaddafi needs to go as quickly as possible. This will not be achieved by foreign military intervention. But I would freeze his foreign bank accounts and stop buying libyan oil. His fall should be a matter of days, if not hours.
balconesfault
@JPL:
Heh … oil, of course …
Oh yeah – and promoting freedom?
Yutsano
@morzer: Then we turn him back into an international pariah and lock up his oil reserves like we did before. It’s not like Gaddafi has always been an angel here. He has faced international sanction before and it stung. Plus he does have overseas assets that can be seized. I’m sure his sons will start squaking if they can’t go on their monthly playboy junkets to Europe.
Cat Lady
Can we get Israel to enforce a Libyan no-fly zone? Would that trigger the wingularity? Shit’s stirred up, why not go all in.
Just Some Fuckhead
Let the United Nations handle it. That’s what it’s for.
Cain
Intervention is going to be a very tricky thing. I hope Obama knows what to do here. He’ll earn his paycheck and more on this deal. I think definitely maybe the U.N. needs to get involved and mobilize and stop the killing.
morzer
@Yutsano:
It stung, but Gaddafi was still in power, and that won’t do anything to help the people who dared defy him. We’ve had sanctions on Iran for a long time – the mullahs are still in Qom. We had Saddam sanctioned up the wazoo, and he enjoyed huge palaces and every luxury. It would be nice if sanctions worked, but there really isn’t much reason to believe that they will do so in such a way as to save the protesters from Gaddafi if he wins.
Violet
@Alex S.:
Tell it to Berlusconi. Something like 20% of Italy’s oil comes from Libya.
WyldPirate
@morzer:
OMG, someone call out the Marines!
You must of slept through the entire Bush 43 era.
Here’s the take home lesson for your dumbass. Successful revolutions start from and are won by the people wanting their freedom, not at the point of the gun of an invading Army that has radical cultural differences.
Pooh
The first question we need to ask before even getting into “should we or shouldn’t we” is “can we?” As in CAN WE do something that doesn’t make the situation worse, ARE WE willing to commit to the level of involvement that entails? Before jumping into the philosophical arguments for and against, I think some notion of practicability, cost, and secondary impacts needs to be considered.
Anne Laurie
@Violet:
Maybe Berlusconi can offer Quadaffi and his family a long-term lease on a nice isolated estate in the Italian countryside?
Hey, no telling when Silvio might need a little quiet time out of the limelight himself…
Alex S.
@Violet:
Yes, sadly some people believed that Gaddafi had changed so they cooperated with him. Cutting these ties will hurt, but only for a short while. And now is the time to make this regime collapse. I don’t know who Gaddafi’s supporters are, but the oil industry is probably still among them. They have to be convinced that a quick revolution will hurt them less than a prolonged struggle.
PurpleGirl
@Pooh: I agree completely. It would be nice to send in the Marines to do their thing but do we have that capability, do we have the will to do that and take the foreign country flack we would get. There isn’t a good solution and we need to be careful.
I don’t consider these uprisings as our fights. We shouldn’t consider ourselves the policeman of the world anymore. Besides, I don’t think our past actions were always so pure of intent. We need to go slowly.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@Cain: I think the UN is what’s likely the plan behind the scenes. There’s just too much risk for the US to blow up into a boogeyman over this, and shit-can the whole revolution — and all the other revolutions kicking around, like Bahrain and Iran.
The real lesson of the Iraq surge and subsequent events — and of what’s happening in Afghanistan — is that Democracy isn’t a fragile flower, but it is a rambunctious one. You can’t just plant it somewhere, you have to grow it and feed it from the ground up, from the people on the street, not just from the top down. Bush acted like Democracy could be dropped like a bomb, and I’m glad Obama is more nuanced and complex in his stances, to date.
Corner Stone
Do do do do do do do, da dooo,
da da doo doo doo doo dooooooo.
Emma
The problem with military intervention is that the moment America shows up swinging their big…. stick…. everyone is going to forget their fights and start pushing back against us. Didn’t we learn anything from Iraq, for god’s sake?
Violet
@Anne Laurie:
Italy’s probably top of the list for a sanctuary state for Gadaffi and his family. The ties between the two countries have increased dramatically in the last decade. On a recent visit he hired young women to try to convert them to Islam. The Italians weren’t all that happy about that idea:
morzer
@Emma:
We spent a lot of time in Iraq trying to remake them into a client state while studiously ignoring the ethnic tensions and religious division that effectively made it three countries. We don’t have to be that dumb again.
El Cid
__
I have no idea how anyone could possibly suggest that the installation of US-backed, directed, funded, protected, and rewarded right wing dictators in South America could have been “backlash” or “terrible unintended consequences.”
This is utter, utter nonsense, it has absolutely nothing to do with either truly empirical and widely available history or the declassified United States records.
There is no justification whatsoever in granting the notion of “unintended consequences” just because one would be uncomfortable with the absolute fact that the consequences were intended because they were cruel, murderous, and shameful.
Violet
@Alex S.:
I guess that depends who you are.
Italy could have a lot to lose.
The oil industry is definitely in there. The Italians are in deep:
The US most likely needs to work via Italy if they want to get involved. Italy has a unique relationship with Libya among European countries.
JWL
The greatest foreign policy shock of the 1930’s wasn’t the Nazi-Soviet pact, but the earlier British guarantee of Poland’s sovereignty.
I don’t believe we’ve entered into any binding contracts with any of those nations currently in upheaval.
WyldPirate
@morzer:
The mullahs came to power because of US meddling in their affairs due to our ineptitude in 1953 when the CIA staged a coup and overthrew the Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran to install our US strongman bitch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It seems we took exception to not having our “boy” in place since Mossadeq nationalized the oil industry.
Corner Stone
@morzer:
No, you’re right. We have an infinite variety of ways we can be bone stupid this time around.
morzer
@Violet:
Britain actually has rather a lot of embarrassing ties to Libya as well. Basically there was a trade – the Lockerbie bomber (maybe) al-Megrahi was sent back to Libya in return for some nice little business deals.
JPL
@morzer: Collateral damage if we do go in or one can only hope.
morzer
@Corner Stone:
Doubtless. And we also have ways of getting things right. We don’t have to assume disaster every time the US does something. This ain’t Iraq, Bush ain’t in charge, and I doubt that Halliburton and cronies will be able to start hacking the country into satrapies for oil. We can’t refuse to act forever because we got it wrong before.
MikeJ
@top:
The best way to unify the military on the government’s side is to give them an external enemy. If the army sides with the people, we can then offer any assistance they need.
Violet
@morzer:
Yep. Didn’t a lot of that come to light with the Wikileaks info?
Pooh
@PurpleGirl: I should state that I’m categorically opposed to a “boots on the ground” scenario. We don’t have the money or resources to do it right, (assuming such a thing is possible, which I might object to as “facts not in evidence”) and doing it wrong, well, we’ve seen that movie.
Is there something short of that which could be done to at least curb the worst excesses of the current crackdown? I dunno, but it’s the first question we should be asking ourselves.
Stillwater
@WyldPirate: Successful revolutions start from and are won by the people wanting their freedom,
Just like the US won its fucking independence without any fucking help from the fucking Frenchies.
Roger Moore
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Actually, the UN is only supposed to be involved in international issues, not in internal political problems, no matter how nasty. So it would not be the UN’s job to get involved unless Libya asks for it.
If the US wants to get involved, we should make sure it’s behind the scenes. We can probably do more good by applying a bit of carrot and stick in private than by military intervention. Helping to find a place for Qaddafi, a few top aides, and their families to flee from retribution, plus a threat to return Libya to pariah status if he stays, will probably do more to remove him from power and stop the bloodshed than any amount of bombing.
Yutsano
@Pooh: Send the Mercy, camp it outside the Bay of Tripoli, and offer as much medical and humanitarian assistance as necessary. Other than that no American touches Libyan soil until everything blows over.
morzer
@Violet:
There were always rumors in Britain about the deal, and it’s fair to add that a good number of people thought that al-Megrahi had been stitched up at his trial, given the dubious nature of a lot of the evidence. I did quite a bit of research on it, and I was never sure that the conviction was the right outcome. That said, I don’t know why Gaddafi made the deal, if al-Megrahi didn’t know something.
El Cid
However, hypocritical or not in some historical sense, at present what actually matters is that various national foreign policy leaders take the sorts of actions (or in some cases avoiding harmful reactions) which will help prevent or stop slaughter and aid in self-determination.
That last bit is one which the West will be very cautious about, because the long record of US and European contact with these and other 3rd world nations has varied from actively destroying any self determination by the population or taking every measure that such self determination is limited in its ability to affect policies important to the foreign policy establishment’s policies.
Hopefully there will be some sort of conjunction of events which really helps the population and other powers to maximize whatever degree of stopping of repression and slaughter and a peoples’ ability to run their own nation might be possible.
On official levels maybe the physical and economic isolation of Libya and other population-attacking regimes is a very good idea.
In non-governmental actions it seems like aid to visibility and communication like Al Jazeera and Google’s phone-to-twitter and phone-to-dialup connection. And countless known and unknown smaller groups.
I would love it if for once our foreign policy happened to support my national interests, and those of my fellow actual Americans, instead of “the national interest”, as interpreted by various powerful elites.
Sometimes things happen that way.
WyldPirate
@JPL: @morzer:
Yes, The Infallible One, The Jedi Master of Revolution, President Obama will get it all just right if we go poking our nose into the middle of a revolution.
Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, but you are stupid.
MikeJ
@Stillwater: The US asked for help. Several years before we declared independence, the frenchies came in and fought the British here. At that point, Americans for the most part sided with their government, the British, against the foreign interlopers.
matoko_chan
c’mon EDK.
pony up the link or retract what you said about me.
i pulled all mistermixs fangs, and unless you can get Cole to ban me this will never end.
you choose.
endless kanly with me demanding the link to my statement or acknowlege that you pulled it out of your ass.
link please.
jwb
@morzer: You think we’ll get it right this time, when we’re already fighting two wars and we have half the country screaming about muslim terrorists? How many ways can this go wrong?
Emma
Morzer: We can’t win this one. The Middle East has a very long memory and we have been trampling about with hobnailed boots for too long.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Roger Moore: It became an international incident when two Libyan pilots defected to Malta rather than fire on their own countrymen. :)
Gustopher
If we can out Qadaffi, without creating a massive clusterfuck, we should. I’m just not sure we can.
Where are the fuel reserves for the Libyan air force? Are they nicely centralized? Can we create a no-fly zone that way?
Any revolution has to be won by the Libyan people, but if we can prevent Qadaffi from using the military to effectively resist the people, I’m all for that.
Maude
@Pooh:
Other countries have a dog in this race.
Oil workers are being flown to Malta from Libya.
We don’t belong there.
I don’t know why anyone thinks that the Libyan protesters would want the US to intervene.
A nice bit of news. Some people in Egypt have ordered pizzas for the WI protestors.
Pooh
Marc Lynch, who knows much more than I do about such things, has some interesting thoughts. He comes down on the side of “do something” but “doing something” in his description involves a lot more “jaw, jaw” than “war, war”.
PJO
This is a little off topic but I need to vent —
Apparently, we all know that intervention in Iraq was all for the best – this is from Jeffrey Goldberg today: “There is a chance that Qaddafi will cut and run. There’s also a chance that he will unleash wholesale slaughter. Libya is a partial answer to those of you who ask whether we should have waited for the people of Iraq to overthrow Saddam. There would have been very few people left by the time that particular revolution burned itself out. Just ask the Kurds.”
I would humbly submit that, while one can’t know whether the casualties of a democratic uprising in Iraq would exceed the more than 100,000 that even the most conservative counts of Iraqi deaths estimate caused by our invasion, we can be pretty damn sure that almost 5000 US soldiers would not have been killed, thousands more would not have been maimed, over a trillion dollars would not have been flushed down the toilet (which might even help the national debt!), and the US’ reputation would not have been trashed had the US refrained. This doesn’t mean that intervention is always unwarranted, but it certainly should give one pause to think about whether our military presence is desired and helpful.
Ailuridae
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It is really not what the United Nations is for …
Pooh
@matoko_chan:
I say this will all possible kindness, but would you just fuck off already? The grownups are trying to talk here, and you keep whining for your bottle.
morzer
@Emma:
@jwb:
First, Libya isn’t exactly in the front rank of war machines. Second, most of the population want Gaddafi gone, or are just hiding until it’s over. I don’t see them rejecting forces that could clear out the tyrant and save them from his wrath. Third, if we do the job right, half the country will be happy to see a “win”. Silly, yes, but that’s how they roll. Yes, we can win this one, so long as we do it sensibly. Remove Gaddafi, cut back troops to a minimum to protect the transition government, and make clear that as soon as they have held elections, we are gone. Send in food aid and so forth. This is not impossible. It’s not Iraq II, and Obama and team are not Bush & Co.
Stillwater
@MikeJ: But. It was still only won because of that. Also, if most people sided with the British, who were the people comprising the ‘US’ who in the end asked for help?
Violet
When someone suggests sending in the Americans, why do I always think of the Paris scene from “Team America”?
WyldPirate
@Stillwater:
You will allow for the fact that it was going on for a long damned time before they parked their fleet off of Yorktown at the very end, no?
Yeah, I know, we got some dough from them and arms throug Ben Franklin’s efforts when he was otherwise engaged in hosing the French hussies while he was over there.
That’s a far cry from sticking our noses into the middle of a burgeoning revolution a region where the US has been propping up tyrants who have been fucking over their people since WWII.
matoko_chan
@WyldPirate:
you mean our missionaries with guns?
jwb
@PJO: What the fuck you doing reading Jeffrey Goldberg? Surely, you knew what you were in for going in.
matoko_chan
@Pooh: make me.
what would you do if someone called you a racist?
El Cid
@Roger Moore:
That’s simply not true. The UN is bound by convention to back any number of human rights whether or not a local national government feels like respecting it or not.
Clearly how it does so is very vague, given the fact that there really is no “United Nations” as the important part, the Security Council, is simply a collection of superpowers (and former superpowers) who can veto each others’ votes.
For example, there is no national sovereignty protection in any international law for committing genocide. It is by the UN’s conventions that intervention is not only permitted but required to halt such.
It’s honored more in the breach, but national sovereignty is not viewed by the UN as superior to a number of basic human rights.
Pooh
@Maude: Right, and that’s part of the “what can we do/what does it mean?” questions we have to ask first. In the Lynch post I linked above, he mentioned that Qatar is calling for an emergency meeting of nations in the region to address the issue. Is it possible with us to work with those groups to establish a very limited billet for us to possible good by creating a no fly zone or something similar? I don’t know, but those are the questions that need asking rather than the more abstract political philosophy question, I would think.
JPL
@WyldPirate: Sometimes I find your posts thought provoking, this one not. WTF
morzer
I just want to know whether the people on here calling for the Libyans to own their revolution will be ok with the possibility that they lose, we do nothing, they get slaughtered, and the Arab world chalks up another case of the US talking about freedom and democracy, and then watching as a tyrant goes on the rampage. We let that happen to the Kurds and the opposition to Saddam after Gulf War I with Daddy Bush, and that wasn’t great for our reputation either.
matoko_chan
@Emma: this.
Big White Christian Bwana GTFO.
Stillwater
@WyldPirate: I concede all that – except the bits about Franklin’s activities (is that really true?). I was just mentioning that populist revolutions are very hard to come by without some external assistance.
WyldPirate
@matoko_chan:
The missionaries are even worse. Those fuckers are tossing around Buybulls and jabbering about a cloud riding Sky Daddy that gets the natives all incensed.
Suffern ACE
@Violet: And tell that to the Brits. I believe they are the ones with the huge contract there – so lucrative that they released one of the Lockerbie planners for humanitarian purposes to win it. It’s not like we’re the ONLY western country subject to a corporate oligarchy.
matoko_chan
@morzer: wow you are a dumbass.
read my lips.
THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO.
Defense against proselytization is encoded in shariah law. It is part of the muslim faith, like proselytizing is part of christian faith.
you cant have freedom of speech.
you cant make a tame little judeochristian democracy in majority muslim nations.
it cant be done.
you’re fucking neck deep in senile dementia.
Pooh
@matoko_chan: What would I do if someone called me a racist? Probably not really care because I know I’m not.
I obviously can’t make you fuck off, but it is my fervent wish that you do so, because you’re a tedious little twit, and if you need, I can provide as many links as you want to back up that assertion. starting here for example.
Pooh
@Emma: This is most likely right, sadly.
matoko_chan
@WyldPirate: defense against proselytization is encoded in shariah law.
it is part of the muslim faith.
that is why there cannot be freedom of speech in islamic democracies.
freedom of speech allows proselytization.
Even Indonesia has anti-blasphemy laws. blasphemy is proselytization. apostasy is proselytization.
it cannot be done.
jwb
@morzer: I just don’t think this is our fight. Under the auspices of some other command, perhaps we could help out. But people generally don’t like invaders, however helpful they might want to be, and if we go in we’ve got ourselves ensnared yet another place we really have no reason for being.
Maude
@Pooh:
We can work in concert with other countries who will be dealing with Libya, but in the background.
Instituting a no fly zone is a military invasion of Libya and an act of war.
Countries who have ties to Libya and in the region can gauge what can or can’t be done.
I am so glad Bush isn’t president. Or McCain.
JPL
@morzer: There’s another unknown to the situation. While in Germany, HC did not seem to be on the same page as the administration while discussing Egypt.
Svensker
@morzer:
You are proposing an “if, then” which only exists in your head.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@morzer:
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
By those parameters, we “won” the 2nd Iraq War. We broke their capacity to fight armies in days.
That wasn’t the issue. It was the people who decided to kick Americans in that country after we won the War proper that made it a morass.
Read up on Libya. Understand that, like Iraq, like the Yugoslavia situation, there are a LOT of cultures in the region. The first problem is that we Americans have to stop seeing these areas as monocultures, and understanding they are just as diverse, if not moreso, than America. Taking over Libya means taking those issues on, giving cranky bastards a target, and we’ve already seen how well that worked in Iraq.
This is why you allow the people to resolve this if at all possible, so that those elements get mitigated as best as you can. Bringing in foreign guns gives those elements more targets, and more chances to stir up haterade. That’s not wise, although it is very, very painful to watch.
Mike in NC
Has John McCain surfaced yet and claimed “We are all Libyans now?” What color necktie has Andrew Sullivan decided to wear?
Snark aside, the only thing the US government should be doing is having the Sixth Fleet stand by to evacuate endangered American nationals, just like they’ve done in the past in every country where this has happened.
Chyron HR
@matoko_chan:
Really, what a baseless characterization.
matoko_chan
@Pooh: idc. EDK said this.
show me the data.
he is lying. he adhommed me because he was uncomfortable when i questioned his “libertarianism”. so he ran off and got mistermix, who proceeded to beclown himself.
EDK has a simple choice.
retract or pony up the link.
Gian
that anyone, after we just “went it alone” in Iraq, except for the Brits, and the bribed former Soviets…
If there would be anything like intervention it’d need the former yugoslavia model adapted to libya, and I’m no expert but I don’t thinl the Arab League has anything on NATO in Europe.
Our right wing has this air power fetish as well. A lesson they failed to learn from Viet Nam. Many More bombs were dropped in Viet Nam than WWII (not just because it was longer in Viet Nam)
http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/FacultyPages/EdMoise/limit1.html
If we really feel compelled to intervene, we could probably manage to smuggle in surface to air missiles that the locals could use to target the aircraft and make it closer to a fair fight.
JPL
@jwb: What is our fight? Was Germany our fight? We have supported Saudi for years because of our love of oil and until we start using alternate fuels, the middle east will be our fight.
matoko_chan
@Chyron HR: pardon, that was only EDK.
MikeJ
@Stillwater:
One of the people who asked the French for help later was George Washington, the former Major who fought the hated French at the Battle of Monongahela.
Times change, and what was good for the colonies was not good for the fledgeling U.S. It remains true that the best way to unite people is to bring in an external threat.
If the Libyans want us, they’ll ask. If they don’t the best way to prop us the current government is to have Americans killing Libyans.
morzer
@jwb:
But will you be ok with it if we do nothing and the protesters get slaughtered by Gaddafi? That’s the real question too many people shy away from. It’s easy, as some people on here have shown, to denounce intervention as imperialism or blundering about, or to assume that we have to screw it up because that’s just what we should expect from ourselves, as good Americans. I just want to hear some of those people explain what the plan is if Gaddafi wins, or looks like winning. Do we just shrug and chalk it up to “Well, stuff happens, dude, and at least we didn’t intervene and get everyone all pissed at us”? Is that the plan? I am genuinely curious to know how people feel about the third option, other than happy revolution or successful intervention.
Pooh
@matoko_chan: I dunno, you tossing around “Big White Christian” as a pejorative in this very thread seems to suffice. But seriously, I don’t care if you’re wrong or right. You’re fucking boring and now you’ve sucked me into the cycle of tedious sniping, so shame on me I guess.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Gian:
Yeah, like we did in Afghanistan in the 80s. What could go wrong there?
morzer
@woodrow
And maybe, just maybe, you might notice that I keep ruling out “taking over the country”? Is it too much to ask for you to respond to what I actually said?
matoko_chan
@Pooh: is christian a race now?
hey guys, what about Bahrain?
any interest? or is it that the King of Bahrain is a US ally and Ghaddafi is not?
Bill ORLY
@matoko_chan: Jeebus Hussein Christos, will you just STOP? I rarely read these quotes and I’m fucking sick of your “me me me” shit already!
jwb
@Gian: “If we really feel compelled to intervene, we could probably manage to smuggle in surface to air missiles that the locals could use to target the aircraft and make it closer to a fair fight.”
I seem to remember us helping some guy named Osama fight the Soviets in Afghanistan this way, and that turned out real well.
WyldPirate
@Stillwater:
I agree that popular revolutions are hard to pull off without outside assistance–no doubt.
I just think that our direct military involvement would be frigging disasterous because we have propped up many of the worst regimes in the region and turned a blind eye to their abuse of their people.
We actually pulled one off in Afghanistan back in the ’80s. We turned our back on the place once we got our primary objective accomplished though–giving the Soviets their very own Vietnam.
As for Franklin being a “lady’s man”, I perhaps exaggerate a bit there. He was pretty old by the time he went over there and likely could have benefited from the “little blue pill”
as this review of an autobiography of Franklin says:
Pooh
@morzer: See this is why jumping to second order philosophical debates is completely counterproductive (and BTW is some of the same kind of first principle bullshit that got us mired in Iraq). I think if you are in favor of intervention, the onus is on you* to first say what we can possibly do, how that makes it better, and why that would be worth the cost in terms of lives, money and international politics. Otherwise you’re just Sullying.
* I say this because I think we can agree there is a pretty strong presumption that invading other countries is a bad idea.
Maude
@JPL:
Thank you for pointing that out.
Obama is telling the State Department exactly what to say.
I doubt Clinton will be ab libbing on this.
I wish he’d fire her.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@morzer:
No, that’s not what we did; you’re conflating two actions.
What happened with the Kurds was that we sent Special Forces in to train them and get them up for fighting Saddam. In return for their manpower, we promised them we’d directly support them and get them out from under Saddam’s thumb.
At some point after the 1st Gulf War, the decision was made to pull our (semi)covert teams, and the support, leaving the already-revolting Kurds high and dry. Not the same as any of Obama’s actions at all, frankly, esp. as we didn’t exactly promise the Kurds “democracy”, just freedom (so far as I understand the situation).
matoko_chan
@morzer: that wasnt the problem. we tried to terraform a culture without substrate.
a moron could see it was doomed to fail.
BobS.
@El Cid: Like, for instance, the Righteous One’s veto of a draft resolution (one so radical that the Security Council vote was 14-1) condemning Israeli settlement building in contravention of international law.
This is the guy some folks upthread trust to get it right in Libya.
jwb
@JPL: Does Libya offer an existential threat to US interests the way that an expansionary Germany and Japan did in WWII? Under your analogy, Iran is a far better target for invasion than is Libya. When Libya starts invading its neighbors, get back to me.
matoko_chan
@Maude: he uses her. its part of the 13D chess game. he got her to chill out mubarak and the sauds by headfaking support while keeping himself sparkly clean to congrat the egytpian people.
genius.
Comrade Luke
I gotta believe that the Jeebus Rapture folks are looking at the events of the last few weeks and are thinking “it’s almost time!”, amirite?
Corner Stone
@Maude:
Me too.
matoko_chan
@Bill ORLY: blame EDK, dont blame me. all he has to do is give me the link.
;)
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@morzer:
You can say it, but the experience is that when you go into a country with guns, you’re an invader. You’re taking over. It’s very, very hard to convince a population that’s not occurring.
So yes, I walked past tat because I don’t see where saying “hey, we’re just here until you have free elections” is actually going to convince anyone in Libya, especially with the already-examined history of such actions from the West on the Near East (among many other regions). And that means we still rile them up, exactly as I ref. and gave examples of.
If you have counter-examples, I’ll be curious. If you’d like to debate any of the points I made, feel free. But no, I think that idea, if it’s your core, flies in the face of even recent experience.
Svensker
@morzer:
Those are the choices? Mess where we are hated, happy revolution or successful intervention? What about fucked up intervention? That seems the likeliest outcome to me should we intervene.
Where you get this idea that the US is filled with awesome golden supermen who can waltz in and fix stuff, I don’t know. Show me a “successful intervention” that the US has done?
matoko_chan
@Corner Stone: she is useful.
shes is also the good cop in the good cop/bad cop on Israel.
and yes, Obama tells her exactly what to say.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Luke:
I’ll start getting nervous when someone blows up the Dome of the Rock.
JPL
@jwb: What threats did Germany have for us in the late 30’s? We saw atrocities and ignored them. In fact several of our corporations unknowingly, I hope, abetted them. All I meant to convey is sometimes we sleep with strange people. We are dependent on oil and that colors our foreign policy.
morzer
@woodrow
Well, you know, sometimes people tend to have kind of negative views of countries who promised them freedom – as we did under Daddy Bush – and then decide – as we did under Daddy Bush – that we’d done enough and maybe keeping Saddam around to counterbalance Iran might be a good move. And yes, we did talk big to them and made a good number of promises. And we screwed them over royally, and Saddam butchered them. How you find that to be an inaccurate account, I have no idea. Either way, you can duck the question as long as you like, but it’s still going to be present. Are you happy with the prospect of us doing nothing, the protesters losing, and Gaddafi slaughtering them? Because that’s the third possibility everyone is trying to hide from.
morzer
@Svensker:
And why do you have to exaggerate this into a question of golden supermen? Can’t you come up with an honest argument?
jwb
@morzer: Unfortunately, in this case, I would have to say that if the world is not outraged and motivated to do something as a group that we have no business acting unilaterally on our own.
gwangung
Heh. And she was the one pimping Avatar, the epitome of the white, cultural imperialist story.
JWL
I hope the killing stops soon, too. But I don’t care if Khadaffi spends the rest of his life in luxury on the French Riviera. As long as the motherfucker is gone like the wind, today.
Even better that he be ensconced in luxury, free to write his memoirs.
Roger Moore
@morzer:
The situations aren’t really analogous. In Iraq, we encouraged the Kurds to rebel with the promise of assistance that failed to materialize when needed. In the case of Libya, we’re providing moral support to a rebellion that was quite clearly started by the Libyan people without any US involvement.
If there’s a lesson from the Kurdish example, it’s that we shouldn’t make anything that sounds like a promise of military aid unless we’re damn sure we can follow through. If we limit our public involvement to pious statements about respecting the lives of Libyan citizens, the success or failure of the uprising will be a Libyan internal matter. If we get involved militarily, success will still be seen as the result of the brave Libyan citizens, but failure will be a result of our military weakness.
Maude
@Corner Stone:
I can always tell when Clinton is speaking on her own. It is usually more harsh and doesn’t sound like Obama.
She sometimes has a Douglas MacArthur persona that makes me wince.
I wonder if she’s still swigging the bourbon?
I think the diplomatic community sees the rift and waits for Obama to state the US policy.
Getting rid of her could be touchy, but she has got to go.
matoko_chan
blah blah blah
and what about Bahrain? the King of Bahrain is a
US allyUS stooge.we should be able to do something there.
Svensker
@morzer:
You posited “successful intervention”. The only way I can come up with a s.i. is via golden supermen, cuz the US Army’s not bringing it.
If you have another way of getting to this “successful intervention”, please let me know. You might also shoot Obama a note, since he could use some help on that front in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Svensker
Speaking of the ME, anyone heard from Wilfred? Wasn’t he in Bahrain?
matoko_chan
@Maude: /sigh aint gonna happen.
its all kabuki, Maude.
Just Some Fuckhead
@morzer:
Not being for neocon-like intervention doesn’t automatically make one happy about an otherwise undesirable outcome.
Corner Stone
@Maude: Wait a second. You honestly believe she has ever uttered one thing contrary to Obama’s policy?
You think she swigs a couple back and goes rouge? (!)
Are you out of your fucking mind?
MikeJ
@Maude: Meh. It’s often good to let people outside the US know that more than one view is being considered. If people believe your course of action is already decided, there’s no reason to talk. It can be useful to have one person saying something in public that doesn’t match the rest of your rhetoric.
morzer
@Pooh:
Having said repeatedly what I think we can do, I can only recommend that you actually read the thread, rather than ducking the tough questions with waffle about philosophy.
I don’t expect anyone to directly admit that if the protesters lose and we do nothing and they get slaughtered, that’s fine by them, but it’s pretty plain where the discussion is going. We can talk idealistically about the Libyans “owning” their revolution, or we can dismiss any idea of intervention as far beyond our capacities because we have to assume that we are just going to screw up all the time (although why we have to make that assumption is pretty questionable). Or we can just assume that Gaddafi wins and we all go back to sleep and it’s fine. What we can’t do is confront the possibility that we do nothing, the protesters get butchered, and fundamentally it’s a long way away so, not our problem anyway and how do we all feel about the NFL labor crisis. Priorities, right?
Corner Stone
@morzer: You’re the one who set her elevation in motion.
We don’t exist in the right plane to resolve this issue.
ergo, golden supermen must be required.
Pooh
@morzer: I don’t see how “we feel about it” as the slightest import here. We’d all feel best with democracy whiskeys sexy and a pony, but you’re skipping the crucial step of telling us what, exactly, we can do and why it would work.
morzer
@Just Some Fuckhead:
And not every intervention is a neo-con intervention. I just would like to know where people stand on doing nothing and the protesters getting butchered. Fair question – right?
Reks
@matoko_chan
Show me on the doll where EDK touched you.
You might not be a racist. But you are a cancer on this here blog.
matoko_chan
what about Bahrain?
why arent you fussbudgets worrying about the people there?
so pathetic. desparate to find to find some slim validation of the ditch liquor the oligarchs have been slopping you with your whole lives.
arguingwithsignposts
Can we just give m_c the Uber Troll of the Year award if she’ll just STFU, already?
Brachiator
@John Cole
I know what you mean. I was thinking that events in the Middle East are reminding me of the year 1968, in which revolution seemed to be in the air, from Mexico to Czechoslovakia and stops in between. Those days did not work out well for everyone. And what will happen in Libya and elsewhere is anybody’s guess.
It is amazing, though, to see people attempt to face down dictators.
Also, though, you have to pay attention to other regions as well. The Sudan recently voted to split the Arab north from the rest of the country. Sudan is one of the largest countries (in land mass) in Africa. No one knows if the separation will be peaceful. There are estimates that as many as 800,000 people will emigrate from the north to the south.
Also, you may be seeing here the beginnings of the unraveling of the old colonial boundaries throughout the continent.
So if you think that things are wild now, just wait.
morzer
@Pooh:
Well, people have been pretty happy to express their feelings about intervention and protesters owning their own revolution. Why not discuss this possibility too? What’s the problem with facing what is a very real possibility?
I will add that I laid out for you what I thought we could do repeatedly in the thread.
srv
Q and his boys don’t have anywhere to go, all those frozen bank accounts of Mubarak should make that clear. They and their lackeys have to fight.
We have lots of practice from Iraq and Serbia plinking airfields and plenty of assets in the region.
But we don’t any deep relationships to the Libyan army like we did Egypt. There’s no Omar Sulieman on our payroll there. Maybe the Italians have somebody. We probably have enough evidence of Italian-Libyan illegal collusions to pressure Italy, but we probably have the same on Tony Blair and crew. I don’t see the UK joining any NATO effort, so not going to happen.
Why hasn’t Bobo written an update that Obama should throw Libya up against the wall and make an example of it? Put the fear of America back into the ME and Iran.
jwb
@JPL: Not sure I get your drift. We officially joined the fight against Germany after being attacked by Japan. The administration had been more or less openly aiding England and France since the war started, but we also had business interests in Germany right up to the point of joining the war. The analogy to the situation in Libya is what exactly?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Roger Moore:
lolwut?
Saint Ronnie sowed this uprising when he dropped the seeds of freedom on Libya.
matoko_chan
@Reks: I AM TROLL. rawr.
a disciple of the Mighty DougJ.
show where i said “pretty awful racist things” …..or admit EDK pulled it out of his ass.
ABT.
JPL
@Corner Stone: I don’t know. The reaction to Egypt coming out of Washington was steady and the same. While in Germany she did come out for Muburak. Who knows maybe it was coordinated but it sure didn’t look like it. In fact Kerry pointed out in an oped piece that except for that one little glitch, Obama’s message hadn’t changed. Who really knows though what happened.
morzer
@Corner Stone:
Planes? Elevation? I know she’s a Jets fan, but really…
matoko_chan
@arguingwithsignposts: i want the link.
ill be satisfied with that.
Pooh
@morzer: I must have missed it, what the fuck are you suggesting we do? If the hard truth is that we really don’t have any cards to play here (which is, you know, possible), recognition of this fact makes us, what’s the delightful phrase “objectively pro-slaughter?”
You are coming at the probably 180 degrees backwards, and by looking at it through the lens of what you wish we could do, you’re almost bound to be disappointed by the fact that our actual capabilities are far short of what you’d like to see, and that a half-measure has a real chance of being worse than doing nothing. Or maybe it isn’t, but you don’t have the first damn clue (and neither do I) because you skipped the step of looking at the realities and went straight to emoting. Or, if I may coin a term, Sullying.
WyldPirate
@morzer:
poor, poor, misunderstood morzer. All these mean people ganging up on you simply can’t see your special genius and must resort to “waffle about philosophy”.
burnspbesq
@Anne Laurie:
The Telegraph is quoting what it calls credible intelligence sources that Gaddafi has already bugged out and is on his way to … [wait for it] … Venezuela.
matoko_chan
@JPL:
AMG its not SUPPOSED to look coordinated.
burnspbesq
@Emma:
That’s a rhetorical question, right?
Just Some Fuckhead
@srv:
I think we oughta punch ’em in the nose, all Friedman-like.
Maude
@Corner Stone:
There are exaples of her saying something and the White House correcting it. I’m no saying she is drinking and going rogue. I am saying that she has a sense of self importance and it gets out of hand at times.
When she was in Africa, she made a statement about North Korea. The WH corrected it and said that the US policy hadn’t changed.
At the UN, Clinton talked about Iran and the reporters asked P.J. Crowley if she meant the government should be changed and he walked it back.
She does speak out of turn.
What happened in Germany about Egypt was serious. It was a very delicate situation and it was a blunder that could have serious consequences for the Egptian people as in Mubarak thinking the US would back a bloody crackdown of the protesters.
Evolved Deep Southerner
Just got here, haven’t read the comments, and don’t know what anyone’s said, but I vote “Stay the hell out of it.” Just in case anyone’s counting.
Pooh
@burnspbesq: I’ve learned that since a Dem is in the oval, what ever we do will be wrong by definition!
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@morzer: One: We didn’t “just promise them freedom”. We Sent Troops in — just as you’re advising on Libya — and them pulled them out, and left them for the slaughter. That’s a whole order of moral bankruptcy than encouraging freedom fighters from afar, as you did comparing now w/Obama to that past series of actions, and that’s my point, and what I found horrifically inaccurate.
I’m not hiding from it, nor is anyone else.
It’s 100% possible there will be a slaughter. That’s why I mentioned, as have others, the UN be involved. Hell, there’s a who sub thread here about if and how the UN can be involved you’re ignoring so you can put me in a moral headlock.
What I and others keep saying is that unilateral use of force is an absolute last resort, because — again and again in history — it can and does lead to the cure being amazingly painful in itself. A multinational force, esp. one with a strong African/Arabic contingent, mitigates some (far from all!) of the invader effects I spoke about in my last comment. Contrast that with the “Coalition of the Willing” GW Bush put together — because the US formed and made up the majority of troops, it was clearly “the US is invading Iraq” — and we did little to change that approach, to our eventual sorrow.
I’m not saying that, in my heart of hearts, I want ANYONE hurt, and I’m bluntly offended you even try to hint that. I am saying that the mark of history is that actions have consequences, and I seriously doubt a US-led “provisional occupying force” in Libya is going to be anywhere near as smooth as you opine.
And yes, I do think the option of doing “nothing” is on the table, and might have to be played. I don’t like the innocent slaughtered, esp. in a region I deeply want to know more about, as I have for over 20 years, now.
But I’m mindful that our last few invasions haven’t exactly gone smooth, and the same set of overall reasons apply here, as well. Sometimes — sometimes — doing nothing is the only thing that’s right to do, just as it was in Egypt, and it is in Syria, Bahrain, and elsewhere in that region.
It don’t make my life happier. It doesn’t make me happy. So don’t lay that on me, clear?
matoko_chan
@gwangung: wallah you dont get Avatar. the mytho-poesis of avatar is the triumph of eastern universalism over christian individualism ( capitalism). grace AUGUSTINE is absorbed by the Mother Tree.
Cameron isnt exactly subtle.
JPL
@jwb: At what point do we go in simply because of the atrocities that are occurring. That’s something that I can’t answer. That’s the only correlation.
PurpleGirl
Will everybody ignore the troll I will not name. Maybe if we ignore the posts, the posts will stop. Let’s not ruin another thread. Please.
Pooh
@PurpleGirl: What the hell did I do to you?
Oh wait, that wasn’t directed at me? Nevermind…
arguingwithsignposts
@PurpleGirl:
Magic 8-Ball says, “Sadly, No.” I think She Who Shall Not Be Named has moved beyond trollery into stalkerism.
lllphd
fwiw: one, ran across this interesting message out of libya today:
no idea who this person is, but i suspect it’s a common if not universal sentiment over there. this may sound heartless, but it will mean far more to them if they do this themselves. if the military splits open and enough defectors can fight back, they may well do it. besides, if we intervene, it will only raise another brand of fear in them.
two, wrt western investment ties, oooh, lots of those. just for starters, all those ‘usual suspects‘ you’d expect to set up shop as soon as bush did the setup in 05. halliburton, shell, raytheon, etc. funny how they seem to have just vanished.
three, i know how hard it is to see folks suffer, especially as brutally as this appears to be going, but we truly have to just STOP that inclination. we cannot perpetuate this horrible ‘policeman of the world’ charade when the outcomes have been so negative, with the singular exception of WWII and the marshall plan. we’ve completely run out of luck on that count, and we needn’t be pushing it in any way, as it’s bound to backfire now.
there’s no better rule than to respect your own limits, and this is ours. we can, however, lobby hard for the UN to do something here; this is their job, after all, and why we signed on. this is what we should have done in rwanda and, well, everywhere else, most obviously in iraq. but we got no business swingin’ our meat over there; that action figure is toast.
morzer
@Pooh:
So you still won’t face the question, and you have to throw in some cheap talk about emoting. So much for the heroic realists of this world.
matoko_chan
@Maude: i think it was deliberate. i think Hilary avoided King Abdullah giving Mubarak a shittonne of money and support by saying that.
and they play Israel. Hilary is the good, AIPAC friendly cop, Obama is the bad cop.
they are a team.
PeakVT
Why is everyone complaining about m_c? All I ever see is talk of pie, pie, pie.
jwb
@JPL: I think today we can only really go in on a humanitarian mission under the auspices of a real UN mandate, and in this case in particular someone other than us needs to be leading it.
morzer
@woodrow
Don’t distort what I said, and then try guilt-tripping me either – clear?
soonergrunt
ED– here’s an exercise for you:
I have a 16-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter. Imagine, if you will, telling my 12-year-old daughter what benefit to the United States you thought would be derived from sending her father to Libya, and if that benefit outweighs never seeing her father again.
Imagine doing that about 1000 times.
Hopefully, that has disabused you of the notion that the US military exists for any other reason than defending the nation’s prime interests.
What, exactly, is in Libya that’s the worth of a turd?
The oil doesn’t count, and I’ll tell you why: It’s an oil-exporting country. Exporting oil is WHAT THEY DO. It’s what they’ll either continue to do during the unpleasantness or they will resume doing so shortly after the unpleasantness is over, one way or another.
I wish the people of Libya luck, good health, and democracy.
I really do. But none of those things for them is worth my life, nor the lives of anyone I know. Just like Iraq.
joe from Lowell
@morzer:
Why, after the Iraq War, do you continue to insist that unleashing the United States military is the “safe” option to avoid bad outcomes?
Will you “be ok with it” if we intervene and end up allowing al Qaeda to set off another mega-death-level civil war, like we did in Iraq?
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: Since she is now claiming to be a disciple of DougJ, I wonder if she would listen if he told her to STFU.
Yutsano
@PurpleGirl: DNFTT. That is all.
@Woodrow “asim” Jarvis Hill: Libya has a long, diverse, and amazing history going back thousands of years. The ruins of Carthage are still able to be toured and the Berber tradition of hospitality long predates Islam. It really is an amazing part of the world. It sucks they haven’t had a better recent history.
@soonergrunt:
No. No no no no no no and no. It was barely a Yes for Afghanistan. No American soldiers in Libya period. I shudder to think what Grandpa Walnuts would have done.
matoko_chan
@PurpleGirl: i just want the link.
EDK can stop this inna heartbeat by giving me the link…..if it exists.
/sideways smile
otherwise it wont stop.
i dont think DougJ will ban a fellow troll.
after all he trolled the LoOGies.
Pooh
@morzer: What the fuck are you talking about? The onus is you as the interventionist to describe what and how it will work. I don’t see any good options on the table aside from working the diplomatic angles as best we can, but if you have an actual better idea instead of clapping louder for Neocon tinkerbell, I’d love to hear them. Like I said, if you posted your proposed course of action, I must have missed it, by all means, repost it, link it, whatever.
You’re not going to “shame” me into supporting a course of action, but you could possibly convince me.
Evolved Deep Southerner
Can we all agree that “isolationism” is way the hell underrated? I think it’s a good concept that got a bad rap for a while but may be coming back into geopolitical vogue. I sure hope so.
arguingwithsignposts
@PeakVT:
I have used the pie filter on SWSNBN before, but unfortunately, she fucks with every goddamned post that either a) references the middle east or Islam, or b) is written by or mentioned Kain.
She’s gone into such a spittle-soaked rage over his recent conversion that she posts shit in two-day old threads that nobody reads. Even WyldPirate isn’t that prolific with chaff that makes trolls look like saints.
She claims to troll like DougJ, but that’s basically insulting a master troll who knows what he’s doing.
And for all that, I wish Sully had comments so she’d go pollute his threads with her insanity.
lllphd
@burnspbesq:
this was happening earlier today; venezuela is denying it. moreover, qadhafi is on libyan state tv right now, and says he is not in venezuela. (not sure how the libyan tv could work out of venezuela, but whatever.)
matoko_chan
@jwb: see above ;)
DougJ tole meh, ABT, when he trolled the LoOGies.
gwangung
WHich is the white man’s burden. Totally racist. Which you don’t get, because you’re a racist yourself.
You’re enough of an asshole to lecture oppressed people on how they’re not really being oppressed. Totally self absorbed and you really don’t care about oppression of other people.
Totally. Not. Getting. It.
Pooh
@lllphd: I’m sure he brought a big old flag with, to use as a background…
burnspbesq
@matoko_chan:
I would engage in objective, self-critical reflection in order to determine whether they were right. Alas, you seem incapable of that.
Just Some Fuckhead
Why doncha quantify it for us, morzer? Exactly when are we compelled to act in your scenario? How many Libyans have to die for themselves first? How do we determine when that has actually occurred? How do we know that a few more deaths won’t be required? How do we know we’ll be greeted as liberators?
matoko_chan
@arguingwithsignposts: but DougJ tole meh to ABT.
see?
all i want is the link.
one of you could help him out.
use your searchfu
should be easysauce for EDK to come up with it.
JPL
@jwb: Hope it works.
joe from Lowell
For all of this whining from morzer about other people “not facing the question,” I don’t see him stepping up to answer any of the many, many times he’s been asked to consider the rather likely possibility of an intervention going wrong and getting even more people killed, like the Iraq War did.
I will be terribly sad if the Libyan revolution doesn’t work, but we’ve got to play the percentages. That the stakes are high doesn’t make it less important that we look at the probabilities and make the smart move, instead of the emotionally satisfying one, but more important.
burnspbesq
@Pooh:
Can you imagine what sort of behavior President McCain and Vice President Palin would be engaged in right about now?
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
No, DougJ said *he* was ABT, cudlip. You’re not trolling. You’re a two-note hack who’s too stupid to engage in a wide-ranging discussion.
You sully the name of a true genius by even mentioning his fine art in the same breath as your pathetic ad hom attacks.
m_c: ABS – always be stalkin.
lllphd
@Pooh:
no, actually, an umbrella.
he hasn’t left libya. yet.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
I’m not going to waste search fu on your “link.” Mistermix gave you one earlier, and you could just search “Bell Curve” for your own stalker self.
Corner Stone
@Maude:
Hmmm.
Neither you nor I will ever know the actual truth, but speaking for myself, I am of the opinion that Obama is The Boss. And if HRC was punking BHO he would dispose of her quickly, quietly, efficiently and in a way that made it seem like he honored her for her service.
Or maybe he’d get Breitbart to do a heavily edited video of HRC on a barge in the middle of the Mighty Mississip’ surrounded by a bunch of dildos, candles and dried out cow skulls.
Either way, I’m going to bet my bottom fucking dollar that HRC ain’t never said a god damned thing the Obama Administration didn’t pre-approve of.
Just Some Fuckhead
@burnspbesq:
Nonsensical tweets and facebook updates?
matoko_chan
@burnspbesq: i know myself very well.
Behold!
my hair shirt.
and my journey.
matoko_chan
@Corner Stone: i approve this message.
matoko_chan
@arguingwithsignposts: i admit to being an IQist. i believe there is a hereditary component of intelligence.
how is that being a racist?
and please, the exact phrase.
not what you THINK i said, what i actually said.
i pulled mistermixs fangs already, and it was a blast.
all your fangs are belong to us naow.
:)
4tehlulz
No fly zones are nice when you’re shooting at MiGs, not so much when some mercs in a cargo plane show up.
Do you shoot down an unarmed plane, even if its full of thugs, or let it land, knowing that the passengers are working for Gaddafi and will kill people?
WyldPirate
@burnspbesq:
JDAMs would be falling with abandon guided by the already inserted SF troops?
burnspbesq
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I suppose that’s theoretically possible. More likely that every carrier battle group we have would be on its way to the Med, and as so often happens when you put people with guns in close proximity to one another, some stupid misunderstanding would blow the whole theater sky high. I’d bet a car payment that Libya has Exocets or some equally capable anti-ship weapons, and Aegis is pretty untested. I would expect to see us lose a carrier.
soonergrunt
To anyone who thinks we should go into Libya–what will the locals think? How will they react? How many of them will greet us with flowers, ala Dick Cheney, and how many with RPGs, SPGs, AKMs, PKMs, PKs, and every other fucking letter of the alphabet?
I mean really? WHY oh WHY do westerners as a group, and Americans in particular tend to ignore the people who live in a region when they are cotemplating doing something involving the US military?
It’s entirely possible that the average Libyan might seen the landing of US Marines at Benghazi as exactly what it would be–you know, a military invasion by a foreign country.
They might not like that, even if we tell them that we’re here to help.
Violet
@burnspbesq:
We are all Muhammadens! Oh, wait. We are all Gaddafi? Hmmm…. Governating is hard! Let’s go buy another house, some cute shoes and a little more plastic surgery.
4tehlulz
@burnspbesq: They would have launched airstrikes against the Soviets, for backing Gaddafi.
arguingwithsignposts
@matoko_chan:
hah. how is the food in the alternate universe you live in?
arguingwithsignposts
@soonergrunt:
I appreciate your comment earlier. I was mentioning a documentary by John Pilger called “The War Against Democracy,” which got eated by WP about our war against self-determination in Latin America – available via Google video if you want to look it up (apparently FYWP doesn’t appreciate the link I used). You’d think we’d have learned something from that, but apparently not.
Maude
@Corner Stone:
We can agree to disagree.
Can you imagine Palin as veep during this?
Yutsano
@arguingwithsignposts:
I’m guessing bland and uninteresting. Like British food with no salt.
Comrade Bukharin
Speaking as a reader, not a frequent commenter. Why hasn’t matoko chan been banned? Her posts are extremely tiresome to read
JPL
@Corner Stone: kinda magical thinking. I have no idea.
WyldPirate
@Corner Stone:
Thanks for that, Corner Stone. That’s the first real belly laugh I’ve had in a couple of not so good days.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Bukharin:
Maybe for you, but I’m fluent in pidgin English.
Chad N Freude
@burnspbesq: @lllphd:Aaccording to Reuters he’s still practicing his Spanish at home.
General Stuck
The ONLY justification for us or any other country to get involved militarily in Libya is if some reports of genocidal actions by that crazy motherfucker are true. His UN delegation apparently thinks that is exactly what is happening in their country right now.
I”m guessing they won’t be going home any time soon.
Corner Stone
@JPL: What?
ETA WTF do you mean? If you think for one second that Obama is not the boss, and he has a rogue SecState he can’t tamp down then please fucking tell us that.
soonergrunt
@General Stuck: There is NO national security interest of the US that could be served by a US invasion of Libya.
Genocide or no, there’s nothing there that threatens us by its existence, nor could strengthen us by our acquisition of it.
matoko_chan
AWS, in moderation too many links
take 1
my response.
he beclowned himself.
i didnt even have to do anything!
Scott de B.
Given that there is a near communications blackout from Libya, how are they supposed to ask?
matoko_chan
now take 2.
lying liars and the gormless morons that believe them.
General Stuck
@soonergrunt:
I have always supported US intervention to stop confirmed genocide. I believe it is the world’s and mankind’s interest to stop such behavior when possible. And we are the country most capable of doing that.
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
OK, I’m done with this bollicks.
Someone re-post this since I’m in @matoko_chan’s ban filter because of this, but this comment is exactly where she got accused of being racist – by me:
[Emphasis mine, as are all the words above — and for the slow, Islamophobia has aspects of both racism and religious bigotry. It’s like two mints in one!]
So once she sees it, there’s some hope she can now rant about how horrible and ignorant a person I still am, and finally move off this topic!
JPL
@Corner Stone: I don’t know. Gotta say that’s above my pay grade. All I know is that it appeared the administration was on the same page except for that little glitch in Germany who supported Mubarak. Could have been planned but I have no idea.
As far as firing someone like Clinton, good luck with that. There are lots of folks who still want her as President.
I’ll repeat what I said though, I don’t know.
matoko_chan
@Yutsano: actually i drink martinis made with your tears and eat thai food.
;)
Corner Stone
@Maude:
I’ll ask you the same thing I posed demo woman.
If you think for one second Obama is not the boss, and has a bad SecState he hasn’t reigned in, then please let us know?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
That’s like one of those “Can God make a rock he can’t lift” conundrums. You are a clever one, friend.
soonergrunt
@General Stuck: If it is in the world’s interest to stop a genocide, then the Europeans are only a couple of hours away, and they have an army that isn’t strung out on continuous operations in two theatres for 7 years.
When they jump, then I’ll rethink my position. Given that they wouldn’t even intervene to stop genocides in Bosnia and Kosovo, that were right on their fucking doorstep without us leading the way, I think I’m pretty secure in my position. We’ll know how that will go when the Europeans start making noises along the lines of “Somebody should do SOMETHING” while staring at us.
They hate the US military until they decide that they need it for something. Like Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo, for three recent examples.
JPL
@Corner Stone: We don’t know what is going on. What we do know is that the administration was on the same page in Egypt except for the glitch in Germany. Maybe it was planned, maybe not. I certainly don’t know. Your idea that you can just unload someone like Clinton if indeed she went off on her own which I don’t know, is an illusion.
lllphd
@Chad N Freude:
reuters would paint a love-in. note how they leave out key info regarding the ‘coup’ of ’02, which US neocon interests manufactured.
not at all sure chavez is as stupid as reuters would have us believe.
Corner Stone
@JPL:
And if only the czar knew…
BethanyAnne
Oh, this is where Makoto is currently playing. Since you’ve given up on the previous thread where you were flinging poo at EDK, I’ll repost.
I’m unsurprised EDK banned your emails. What surprises me is that *you didn’t get the point*, and decided to come fuck with him over here, shitting all over this blog and telling folk who object to “pie me”, as if it’s our responsibility to not object to your assholery. I don’t know about racist, but you sure as hell are an ageist bigot, want me to look those posts up?
and I will say that all the “GTFO Big White Christian Bwana” in this thread strikes me as making it perfectly valid to call you a racist. https://balloon-juice.com/2…..nt-2424421
Oh, look, you repeated it here in this very thread. But, Bethany, I hear you saying, what about sexism? You wanted sexist insults? Well, if you hag, dimbo, and bitchy old broads works for you, then try this thread on for size.
https://balloon-juice.com/2…..nt-2214391
I will give you this, Matoko, I for one am impressed that you would lob insults from such a firm moral high ground.
joe from Lowell
Given how fast things developed in Egypt, and how the administration’s position evolved based on events, and how they deliberately maintained a public posture that included plenty of diplo-speak ambiguity, there are plenty of more likely explanations for Obama and Clinton briefly having their messages crossed than Hillary, wholly out of character, striking out on her own in public.
Sebastian Dangerfield
@Anne Laurie:
Let’s call it “Salo.”
General Stuck
@soonergrunt:
You are quite secure in your position regarding hapless Euros in these situations in their own backyard, and our overstretched military and budget. But what you gonna do when evil comes calling like it does with genocide? And you have the ability to stop it. Say the other guy should have? And let it happen anyways.
Corner Stone
Is Obama the boss?
Dude canned the fuck out of McChrystal.
HRC has no base to challenge anything Obama decides. She went all in when she accepted SecState.
If she isn’t serving Obama then he’s got nothing to consider giving her a Presidential Medal of Freedom on her way out.
This is ridiculous. Obama is the boss. Al punto.
Chad N Freude
@soonergrunt: Well, there’s always the petroleum domino theory.
joe from Lowell
I’m thinking Silvio B. is going to keep a lid on offering people gifts for a little while.
Just a hunch.
jwb
@soonergrunt: What a UN mission, which we did not lead?
joe from Lowell
@Corner Stone: And not only is Obama the boss, but I’ve seen absolutely nothing that makes me think that Clinton has been anything but a loyal soldier, working her ass off for Obama, putting her shoulder into pushing his initiatives, and doing her best not to let any daylight show between them.
I was one of those people who was quite skeptical when HRC was tapped for Secretary of State, but she’s done a bang-up job, and I see no reason for people to push this story line, except for nostalgia for the drama of the 2008 primary.
jwb
@General Stuck: Generally, humanitarian intervention hasn’t actually worked out all that well in practice. It may be the least bad alternative, but past experience doesn’t make me enthusiastic about it.
General Stuck
@jwb:
I am only talking about real time mass murder and simply stopping that, if possible, no more really.
soonergrunt
@General Stuck: Well, yeah.
At some point, it becomes the responsibility of people to fight for themselves.
We had the power to free Iraq from a murderous dictator. I don’t remember that one working out so well on pretty much any level. I mean, Saddam’s dead, but are we as a country stronger or weaker because of Iraq?
So, tell me–how many American Soldiers are you willing to throw away to salve your outrage about Libya?
Because honestly, and I don’t mean to sound mean here, but I don’t give two shits about Libya. There’s nothing there that is worth the life of a single American Soldier. They’ll sort themselves out one way or the other with or without us. There’s no American national security interest that is implicated by the goings-on there.
El Cid
@BobS.:
What else is new?
Who on Earth who had a clue about US foreign policy would have imagined a different result?
Look, Israel will be allowed to plunder as much of the West Bank as they desire and destroy any actual likelihood of sovereignty and any appearance of liberation by the Palestinians, until it’s such time to cast them off and ‘agree’ to a peace accord in order to discard the burden of Palestinians forever, except for routine attack and repression.
Then when Palestinians are finally allowed to have their joke of a dessicated criss-crossed sandlot of a ‘state’, the US & Israel can pat themselves on the back for their final moral victory, and we’ll have to see how the neighboring Arab states give much of a damn anymore.
Maybe there’s another possible outcome, following Arab Spring, but I don’t see it yet.
Comrade Kevin
Another E.D. Kain post, another idiot explosion by matokook_chan.
Chad N Freude
I just got a call from Amnesty International soliciting urgent donations for “the Middle East” and presumably Liby as well.
Jack Bauer
Err, we stay the fuck out. Few more military defections and it’s all over for the crazy Col.
General Stuck
@soonergrunt:
There was no immediate genocide in Iraq, so that is a bad comparison to make, despite the wingnuts claiming it a reason for invasion. There was real time genocide going on in Kosovo, and I am glad we stopped that. To intervene in Libya there would need to be a clear situation of something similar and on a scale of at least Kosovo. I don’t really think that will happen, but was just saying if it did, it is in the world’s interest to stop it. As far as sacrificing a single US soldier to stop a genocide, I guess you and I have a different take on what genocide means, and to me it has nothing to do with US interests, or Libya, or anything else political or strategic or any other purpose than to stop something that is evil in my view, if you have the means to do it while it is happening.
soonergrunt
@jwb:
UNOSOM I didn’t have the power or authority to tie their own shoe laces. UNITAF/UNOSOM II was the 10th Mountain Divsion and some guys named Mo.
Who gives a fuck about details on the org chart? Would anything have happened there at all without the US military standing between the Somali factions and well, everybody else?
Chad N Freude
@soonergrunt:
Aside from the potential consequences for the world’s oil supply, there is a risk to the US of seriously hostile new regimes coming to power. I have no clue how great that risk is in Libya, Bahrain, or any other Middle Eastern or North African country, but to say that there is no national security interest is short-sighted. The risk in each case has to be weighed by people who (one hopes) know what they’re doing. The risk assessment has to include realistic appraisals of what damage might be done to US interests, including loss of American lives and effect on the economy of each possible action.
Having said all that, I do not think that we would gain anything by military intervention, and we stand to lose a lot in stirring local hostility and spending more lives and money on what could turn into yet another indefinite military presence.
Chad N Freude
@General Stuck: The genocide argument is particularly troubling: Is there a limit on the cost in lives and money in carrying out what can be seen as a moral imperative (or duty, if you prefer)?
General Stuck
@Chad N Freude:
Why is it troubling?
soonergrunt
@General Stuck: The problem is that when you send Infantrymen into a chaotic situation, you either keep them so tightly reined that they are nothing more than bullet magnets, or you have to accept that a lot of them will get killed starting out, and that they’re going to kill some of the wrong people sooner or later.
That’s not going to get you what you want, which is an end to all the bad shit going on. I sympathize, but we are the wrong tool for the job.
We kill people and break things, very quickly, and fairly efficiently. Frankly, nobody does that better than us. This, we can’t do very well.
The State Department should try to broker a deal whereby Khadaffi and his family go into exile somewhere relatively quiet with several billion dollars. It will cost us less and fewer people will die that way, and they’re actually pretty good at that kind of thing.
I wonder if there’s any real estate available on Malta.
arguingwithsignposts
This is an interesting take on the genocide argument from the LGM blog.
matoko_chan
@BethanyAnne:
he never banned my emails. i was talking about the Instapundit.
He blocked my mails after our big fight about Expelled.
retard.
cows cant read well i guess.
None of that makes me a racist. i might be ageist, and i am definitely and healthily bigotted against proselytizers, WECs, missionaries, pretribs and stupid people.
but “christian” is not a race.
and neither is stupid.
GTFO Big White Christian Bwana.
;)
General Stuck
@soonergrunt:
Well, I never used the word invasion regarding Libya, especially ground invasion. I would guess a simple threat that we would spare no effort to kill him Quadaffi if he continued slaughtering his civilian countrymen would likely do the trick with that chickenshit. Mohamar is scared of our air force, or so I heard.
Jamey
Somewhat related, but who do you call when your car breaks down in Libya?
Triple-E.
Than Kew!
General Stuck
@arguingwithsignposts:
Thank you, that post at LGM is exactly what I am talking about.
BethanyAnne
@matoko_chan: Let’s just go with bigot, then. That works for me.
joe from Lowell
@soonergrunt:
On the other hand, during the decade prior, we had the power to enforce a no fly/no drive zone in Kurdistan, preventing Saddam from killing how many tens of thousands of them and allowing them to live with a moderate level of peace, security, and democracy. That actually did work out pretty well.
The argument against invasion and occupation and the argument against other actions are not precisely the same.
Pooh
@arguingwithsignposts: Was about to post that.
Mr Furious
We all know that’s a load of shit. If any of us actually believed you’d go away, this thread would be filled with links.
Pooh
@joe from Lowell: Though in the case of Iraq, we had a country separated into 3 more or less homogeneous regions, which made the whole thing easier. Where do we set up a no fly zone? It can’t really be the whole country, can it? And if it is the whole country, seems like a lot of things could go wrong with that.
soonergrunt
@General Stuck: And what happens when he doesn’t stop and we can’t manage to kill him with aerial bombardment. If memory serves, we tried to Khadaffi himself with aerial bombardment about 28 years ago. He was in a tent, which ain’t known for its imperviousness to high explosives and fragments. We killed damn near everybody around him but he’s still drawing breath.
The Serbs didn’t stop their bad shit in Kosovo after 30+ days and nights of intense bombardment by NATO until after the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Unit disembarked from their ships into Albania.
Shock and Awe didn’t kill Saddam Hussein. He was dragged out of his hole by a grunt from 4th ID.
The Air Force is a sledge hammer for killing a fly, and they miss more often than they want to admit, but they leave a big-ass hole in the wall.
Jamey
@Anne Laurie: Maybe Beyonce will kick back some of her performance fee from NYE 2010: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2010/01/confirmed_beyon.php
Chad N Freude
@General Stuck:
I thought that explained “troubling”. We should do something to stop genocide, but maybe stopping it is not feasible. Do we have right now the human, financial, and material resources to carry out a successful anti-genocidal intervention? We should intervene in a genocide, but I doubt that we can in the foreseeable future.
joe from Lowell
@Pooh: Mine was not a point about operations, but a response to soonergrunt’s argument about the morality of intervention.
I don’t even know if a no-fly zone is the right tool for the job here.
Chad N Freude
@soonergrunt: This is an excellent explanation of what I was feebly trying to get across talking about risk and “troubling”.
General Stuck
@soonergrunt:
So if Quadaffi, or any leader of a country somewhere insisted on carrying out mass murder on a genocidal scale, you would just say it’s not worth spending us blood and treasure to stop it? Anyways, with Quadaffi I think it would work, he gave up, or pretty much gave up terrorism after we killed his daughter with an air strike, I think, and maybe some other relatives . Listen, I am against US military intervention in other countries and always have been, unless in only a very few cases, or situations. And stopping on going genocide is one of those. We didn’t lose a single soldier in Kosovo. So there is a way to orchestrate a threatened military response in tandem with diplomacy to stop these things. If the right folks are in command, and I think they are. Maybe you should read the LGM post with the legalities of nations letting other nations engage in genocide and doing nothing when they can do something. But I agree with you that the last thing the US needs right now is stewardship of another failed Arab state via an occupation.
Chad N Freude
@arguingwithsignposts: I had thought about posting something about this not being properly called genocide, but most of the definitions that I looked up included “national” and “political”, and I decided not to risk more embarrassment than I usually have on this blog.
soonergrunt
@Chad N Freude: And I submit to you that if it’s such a moral imperative, so easily morally defensible, then I say we go after the second Italian regiment debarks in Benghazi, accompanied by French Naval Infantry and German Falschirmjaegeren. We can supply aerial tanker and AWACS support to the squadrons of Spanish F-18s and French Rafaels and German Typhoons.
The “genocide” is on Europe’s doorstep. Let them do it.
Chad N Freude
@General Stuck:
That’s my point. Do you think there is any limit to the amount of US blood and treasure we would spend stopping it?
General Stuck
@Chad N Freude:
I stipulated IF we had the means, so the things you list are of import that we are capable, but I suspect we are. Sorry if I wasn’t sure where you were coming from. It is a very tough call, something like this, especially with our recent history of intervening and occupying Arab/muslim countries. I am not saying we should just mass up on Libya’s border and charge in like with Iraq, but doing nothing is also a non starter in such a case as genocide. imo
Chad N Freude
@soonergrunt: The moral imperative doesn’t have to met by the US alone, or, if other nations can meet it, by the US at all.
Corner Stone
FWIW, I Gaddifi myself a few times a week.
It’s the only way I can focus.
General Stuck
@Chad N Freude:
Good question. And a tough one. personally, I can’t think of a more justifiable reason to spend blood and treasure than stopping what I consider evil. And I don’t use that word very often, or actually about never. In such a case the UN could likely drum up something of an international force, since I can’t think of any of the 5 with veto power in the Security Council vetoing such a thing, like Russia did on behalf of their traditional ally the Serbs. I doubt most of the Libyan military is too keen on slaughtering Libyan citizens wholesale, and already a couple of pilots have defected rather than do that.
soonergrunt
@General Stuck: Again, if this is something worth doing on it’s own merits, then it’s worth doing for others as well.
We are not now, nor should we ever allow ourselves to again be the world’s police, or more accurately, Europe’s 911 force.
Surely the legalities of allowing a genocide apply to other nations who are physically closer and have military forces that are better positioned and WELL RESTED.
As far as there having been no US Soldiers killed in Kosovo in the beginning, that’s utterly irrelevant. Bosnia and Kosovo are on Europe’s doorstep, (and Libya is at least on the stoop if not the sidewalk in the front yard) and still they did nothing without hiding behind the US military. There is no interest there that is unique to the US, and if it is a genocide, then you should be calling the Italian, French, Spanish, and German embassies.
trixie larue
If we are actually going to help democracy to occur, then we can’t have a role in putting into place the new leader selected by the US. That’s happened way to many, many times and always has gone bad.
But if there was a war to support, it would be an true, actual war for democracy, with the above restrictions in place.
soonergrunt
@Corner Stone: TMI.
General Stuck
@soonergrunt:
I agree fully with this sooner, it should be the euros first this time, and like i said I doubt any of the 5 with veto power would stop the UN security council from forming a force to intervene that ideally would be other muslims, or nearby europeans.
soonergrunt
@Chad N Freude: If it’s truly a moral imperative, that would apply to Europe more than us.
They are capable of dealing this better than we are just now. It’s also closer to them, and Libya trades with them a lot more than us.
I’ll bet that nothing happens, though. The funny thing about moral imperatives is that they mostly only seem to put my friends at risk, and nobody else.
Sloegin
The thing that totally escapes me is that nobody here thinks “what would we want if it were us in this situation?”
I’m not sure of much, but I’m pretty damn sure the last thing we would want if a revolution were going on here is the fucking Chinese army coming here (as an example) to enforce the peace and setup a new government for us.
It’s a simple thought experiment. Put yourself in the other guy’s shoes. Works in a million ways in a million places. Just some people are too thick and can’t grasp it.
Chad N Freude
@soonergrunt: I don’t think we’re really in disagreement. The point I was trying to make was that in the case of genocide, with no national interest at stake, stopping it can be seen as a moral issue, and someone, not necessarily the US, should act.
soonergrunt
@Jamey: For Dog’s sake, man! Slap yourself!
Chad N Freude
@Sloegin: If we were in the other guy’s shoes in this case, we would be a powerless citizenry being militarily attacked by our government. We might just want someone from outside to come in and stop it because we couldn’t do it alone. Just a thought experiment.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@ED: I just looked at the quote from Aziz Poonawalla. You seem to have left a few words out.
You can come down on the non-interventionist side, and you can be conflicted, but don’t try to make a case by Breitbarting a quote. I’m really disappointed. You’re better than this.
Corner Stone
@soonergrunt: Yeah. When was the last time you struck a blow for freedom?
Jenn
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
I’m a little confused by the accusation of “Breitbarting” – the quote EDK pulled out was advocating action by non-Libyan forces, just as did the expanded quote you posted.
On second read, I can see why you thought that – it just seemed clear to me that Libyan protesters weren’t going to be able to maintain a no-fly zone, so it didn’t occur to me to read it otherwise.
jwb
@soonergrunt: This was more along the lines I was thinking in terms of a UN operation.
El Cid
@soonergrunt: Hey, we did manage to kill his toddler daughter.
soonergrunt
@Corner Stone: This morning right after I woke up.
And since things seen cannot be unseen and mental imagery cannot be unimagined, can we PLEASE, in the name of what passes for good taste around here, get on different track here?
Corner Stone
@El Cid:
I remember that breaking my fucking heart. What a sick society we live in where that just slipped past.
It would probably be celebrated today if it happened.
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude
@Jenn:
I found omission of the explicit calls for US action misleading.
El Cid
@Corner Stone: The Italian government told Khadafi a day or two before, but apparently the plan was to flee the residence only when local Libyan monitoring detected the approach of the aircraft. That doesn’t work as well anymore with long-distance ‘fire and forget’ air-to-surface missiles.
I always thought it was more impressive the way our Navy blew an Iranian airliner out of the sky and killed a couple hundred people and the reaction was, “Ooops! Better luck next time!”
matoko_chan
@BethanyAnne: well i do hate me some proselytizers. they are responsible for 99% of the worlds woes.
most especially the epic fuckup in A-stan and Iraq.
@Chad N Freude: we could have intervened in Rwanda .
Romeo D’allaire said 5000 UN troops could have saved 800000 lives.
you see….Rwandans are BLACK, and they have no oil.
nits breed lice, doontcha kno?
El Cid
More.
What are all the “neocon” anti-Arab / anti-Muslim hawks going to do when so many Arabs start appearing to ordinary Americans as brave and admirable and fighting for democracy or some such?
How is that any fun? They’re just supposed to be undifferentiated masses ululating and burning American flags! They’re going to make it a lot less fun to push for bombing them.
matoko_chan
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude:
that is just fucking stupid maftoonery. the US cant help bring about a “golden age of democracy” . shariah law is incompatible with free speech, because free speech is proselytizing.
BTW our hands are soaked in muslim blood.
And just how would that be accomplished? a no fly zone?
lawl.
more missionaries with guns?
double lawl.
the best thing we can do is nothing.
bi la kayfah
matoko_chan
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude: me too.
the best thing we can do is nothing.
Suffern ACE
@El Cid:
Lie. Go on TV and repeat a lie.
Peter
@matoko_chan:
I’m sorry, could you provide the definitions of those two terms that you are operating under? Because I’m not sure you understand either of them.
El Cid
@Suffern ACE:
Well, it really was more a rhetorical question, because we’ve already seen what they seized as their current strategy: radical Islam, Muslim Brotherhood, Iran 1979, threatening Israel, cutting off oil, allying with Hamas and Hezbollah, dupes of Iran, etc.
E.D. Kain
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude: I’m not “Breitbarting” a quote. I’m just pulling a section of the piece that cuts to what I viewed was most relevant. How is the context changed here at all?
Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly Known as Chad N Freude
@E.D. Kain: Look at
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly known as Chad N Freude. I may be the only person who didn’t understand what you were doing. But it looked to me like you were trying to make it appear that Aziz Poonawalla was saying the Libyans should do it without outside help.
Sandals
I think qaddafi has crossed the fuckin line. Artillery and air strikes against demonstrators for Gods sake. The very thought makes me gag. Every horrible fuckin war picture I’ve ever seen flashes before my eyes. If it’s not genocide it’s just one step below it. I believe intervention is justified.
Intervention doesn’t have to be an invasion to destroy the government. Even if all we do is stop the air strikes at least we will have done fuckin something.
Evolved Deep Southerner
Just coming for a cookie.
cokane
i’d be willing to see the US intervene if a huge coalition of other countries joined as well, especially european states near libya.
matoko_chan
@Peter: free speech is proselytizing to muslims. defense against proselytization is encoded in shariah law.
christians believe their faith commands them to proselytize, muslims believe their faith commands them to resist proselytization….articles of religious faith.
Free speech is incompatible with shariah, because free speech means proselytization.
matoko_chan
@Sandals: we did nothing in Rwanda. And after Iraq we have no have no moral credibility to do anything in the ME.
We are morally bankrupt…
we cant afford to do what Dr. Poonwalla wants.
@Reader of the Most Depressing Blog Evah, Formerly Known as Chad N Freude: I got that impression too. but EDK is known for trying to sit on two horses with one ass.
@E.D. Kain: could i have the link naow to where i said “pretty awful racist things”? it should be simple to retrieve it.
then we can all move on.
;)
soonergrunt
@Sandals: It isn’t justified for us. Under any circumstances here.
I don’t give a fuck if he’s ripping babies out of their incubators, there is no American national security issue that is implicated by the events in Libya.
Their freedom from oppression is not, by itself, worth my friends being killed or maimed.
@cokane: Let other countries do it themselves if it’s so important and righteous.
matoko_chan
@Kain
yet still you blather on and on you intransigent glibertarian fucktard.
YOU LINK the maftoon Dr. Poonwalla who is full on Superawesome World Police America Fuck Yeah! and begging for AMERICAN MILITARY INTERVENTION to establish a no fly zone. Did you miss what he SAID?
more fucking meddling and interventionism.
and then you say this
whos justice you fucking liar? Big White Plastic Jesus justice? the world is getting pretty damn sick of that.
chadnfreude is right, you are breitbarting. and most of these dumb cows cant read well to see it.
and AMG sooner is right.
sooner gets it.
you dont, you fucking dishonest glibertarian whorebag.
matoko_chan
a question for the commentariat.
arent REAL libertarians anti-interventionist?
jus’ curious.
Peter
@matoko_chan: But that’s not what you said earlier. Earlier you said that free speech ALLOWS FOR proselytization. Not that it IS proselytization. Which are very different things to say. One of those statements, for example, is technically accurate but not very helpful, while the other is equivalent to saying ‘beef is lysine, which is obviously insane.
Also ED Kain has never called you a racist. He has said that you said some pretty racist things, which is true, and other people have already provided plenty of documentation of. That is not the same thing as calling you a racist. Nonracist people say racist shit all the time.
Of course, since you eagerly proclaim yourself to be ‘IQist’ (which makes you hilarious, incidentally) and you also insist on you ‘IQism’ containing a pretty hefty racial component…well, you can be the judge.
matoko_chan
@Peter: I SAID shariah law is incompatible with freedom of speech because freedom of speech ALLOWS proselytization.
a large part of shariah is encoded defense against proselytization.
no one has provided a quote. if that is true….show me the quote.
link please….where i SAID it.
what you THINK i said and what i actually said could be very different things.
I was just doing my troll job of questioning EDKs “civil libertarian” chops and he randomly slurred me as a racist, and then lied to mistermix about an essay i sent him.
Perhaps EDK IS evolving….but i have read him for three years. And lying and adhomming are not encouraging signs of change.
So you think im a racist?
show me the data….show me what i said.
the interwebz are forever.
and the truth is out there.
:)
matoko_chan
In majority muslim nations free speech IS proselytization under shariah.
this is not true in jc democracies.
is that more clear?
matoko_chan
@Peter: you know…..what i really object to is the idea that IF i was a racist, that would invalidate my criticisms of EDK.
you seem wholly persuaded, along with mistermix and the bulk of the commentariat.
we were talking about the meaning of civil libertarianism in the US. libertarians are one leg of the conservative stool. i think EDK is still the same kind of “civil” libertarian he has been since ive known him.
and to prove im wrong he adhomms me and lies.
qed
matoko_chan
then STFU.
there is no appropriate AMERICAN response you fucking spinner.
do you know what they say in MENA?
the cure for the scorpion is the sandal.
GTFO Big White Christian Bwana
Peter
@matoko_chan: I am not going to give you more links, because they have already been given to you and you have decided to fastidiously pretend they do not exist. Even as you respon to the comments in which they were linked.
Your ‘criticism’ of ED is nontopical and frequently nonsensical. Accusing him of using ad homimen against you is a bit of a laugh when you do that in every comment I have ever seen you make. I understand that you find him intellectually useless and that’s fine but for the love of god, screaming the same attacks against him in every thread – generally word for word – is not the way to go about it. At least address what he’s saying if you want to tear him down. Otherwise you just look like a screaming lunatic and Kain looks a good deal more rational by comparison.
matoko_chan
@Peter:
Lie.
no one has given me a link.
again, this is the interwebz. show me where someone gave me a link where i SAID “pretty awful racist things.”
i have. other people have like chadenfrude in this very thread, like aimai, like zuzus petals.
he never adresses any questions from me. he has consistantly refused to talk about fetus=slave, DougJ trolling the LoOGies, and libertarianism. i just called him out for breitbarting…..crickets. i have read him for 3 years. i dont see a change.
and i allus give links.
:)
mistermix a.k.a. mastermix
@matoko_chan:
http://bit.ly/matokotroll