The liberal NY Times:
There is no perfect formula for military intervention. It must be used sparingly — not in Bahrain or Yemen, even though we condemn the violence against protesters in both countries. Libya is a specific case: Muammar el-Qaddafi is erratic, widely reviled, armed with mustard gas and has a history of supporting terrorism. If he is allowed to crush the opposition, it would chill pro-democracy movements across the Arab world.
Sigh.
cleek
well sure. but does he have … stockpiles ?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Shorter NYT, playing the game of CLUEless:
I accuse Colonel Mustard, in the oil field, with the AK-47. Let’s check the cards. Hahahaha, I win again! No, you don’t get to look at the cards, only I do. OK, who wants to play this game again?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
John Cole, I feel I must speak firmly with you. You continue to convolve Gulf II with OIF. Gulf II was founded on false premises, but did actually accomplish its stated mission goals–Saddam was deposed, and terrorists did not acquire the WMDs (which turned out to be mythological).
Operation Iraqi Freedom, the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, WAS an epic fail, because islamic culture is incompatible with westernstyle democracy and because western interventionism actually CREATES more terrorists and more terrorism. OIF was actually a terrorism generator.
The rest of the civilized world and certainly Barack Obama understand this, even if you do not.
UN Resolution 1973 was SPECIFICALLY written to PREVENT another OIF.
NO invasion, NO occupation, NO boots on the ground.
Is that clear?
Dennis SGMM
Italy presses for Nato command of Libya war
Bulworth
And please don’t anyone raise the stupid “where’s our exit strategery” question. Our media villagers are tired of it. It’s so 1990’s. We don’t do exits.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/03/how-do-we-get-out-of-libya.html
cleek
@Dennis SGMM:
NATO?
under what logic could this be a NATO operation?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
You might want to check out a few books about modern Turkey. They might be in the restricted section, so don’t forget to borrow Harry’s invisibility cloak.
Dennis SGMM
@Bulworth:
Absolutely right. The establishment of a Jeffersonian democracy in Libya will require lucrative contracts to Halliburton and Xe.
Dennis SGMM
@cleek:
Don’t ask me. This is what a part of the Coalition of the Thrilling has brought up.
Chris
We don’t intervene in Bahrain or Yemen for the simple reason that we can’t, or don’t want to, risk destabilizing the current order in the Persian Gulf, which would risk destabilizing the Saudis. Both because of the oil and because we’re afraid that whoever replaces them wouldn’t be as accomodating as they’ve been.
Let’s not pretend that this is about anything else, or about the need to act “sparingly” when it comes to military operations.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: AKP is the islamist party, and the majority party. Turkey has an islamic democracy.
They are also pro-business and liberal. Go figure.
Westernstyle democracy includes freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Islamic democracies do not.
Cairo declaration.
Proselytization is forbidden under shariah law. Freedom of speech legalizes proselytization.
Like I said, islamic culture is incompatible with westernstyle democracy.
Just look at the epic fail of Iraq and the failing in A-stan.
OIF and OEF COULD NEVER WORK.
The rest of the world understands this…why is this so difficult for Americans?
Sure, it would better to have freedom of speech and freedom of religion in islamic democracies….but it is impossible. You cant terraform cultures in your image. You cant change the religion of 1.8 billion people.
Give up.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: AKP is the islamist party, and the majority party. Turkey has an islamic democracy.
They are also pro-business and liberal. Go figure.
Westernstyle democracy includes freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Islamic democracies do not.
Cairo declaration.
Proselytization is forbidden under shariah law. Freedom of speech legalizes proselytization.
Like I said, islamic culture is incompatible with westernstyle democracy.
Just look at the epic fail of Iraq and the failing in A-stan.
OIF and OEF COULD NEVER WORK.
The rest of the world understands this…why is this so difficult for Americans?
Sure, it would better to have freedom of speech and freedom of religion in islamic democracies….but it is impossible. You cant terraform cultures in your image. You cant change the religion of 1.8 billion people.
Give up.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Dennis SGMM: But we arent going to do that! UN Res 1973 is EXPLICITLY WRITTEN to prevent another OIF.
NO invasion, NO occupation, NO reconstruction, NO boots on the ground.
What is wrong with you?
RP
I don’t know about the mustard gas (didn’t he destroy most of it?), but Qaddafi actually does have a history of supporting terrorism.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
How can anyone argue with what the rest of the world understands? How very convincing.
Judas Escargot (aka "your liberal-interventionist pal, who's fun to be with")
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I hear that the world’s largest democracy may have a few Muslims in it, too.
lacp
So crushing opposition in Bahrain and Yemen won’t chill pro-democracy movements across the Arab world? What kind of fucking moran wrote that?
Mnemosyne
So now apparently Flight 103 never happened? Or is it that, because the last guy was attacked under false pretenses, we can never again accuse someone of supporting terrorism even when that person has a long and documented history of supporting terrorism?
PIGL
@Mnemosyne: And the US has a history of lying about everything to do with foreign policy. It’s not like Iraq II: The Vanquishing was the first and only example ever, the one time America made a widdle bitty mistake. It was rather but one spectacular example in a long history of duplicitous and blood-thirsty adventures.
It’s kind of like the boy who cried wolf. There may be a real wolf this time; Q may deserve his mantle of cartoonish diabolically-evil super-villain de joure. But the USA should not be surprised by a certain scepticism.
PeakVT
…armed with mustard gas…
This proves that Saddam had WMDs, of course.
NonyNony
WTF? Their argument seems to be that even though all of these countries are gunning down the opposition, we need to intervene in Libya because Qaddafi is a “bad guy” while the leaders of Bahrain and Yemen are people most American have never heard of.
I mean seriously – either we’re intervening in Libya because Qaddafi crossed the line by gunning down his own people or we’re not. If that’s why we’re doing it we need to start considering interventions in a lot of other places, because there are a lot of governments that cross that line. If that’s not why we’re doing it, then why are we doing it? The NYT seems to be making the argument that we’re doing it because Qaddafi has been a pain in our ass for years and he’s finally given us an excuse to take him out. That’s stupid – and if that’s what’s passing for logic in the State Department and the Oval Office right now people need to be fired.
NonyNony
@NonyNony:
And just to add – I suspect that why we’re doing it is not because Qaddafi crossed a line but because our allies in Europe decided it was time to take him out. I don’t think this is because he “crossed a line” by gunning down his own people – it’s because he “crossed a line” by being a wild-eyed crazy man who was going to send refugees pouring into Europe and the Europeans need to shut him down quick.
PIGL
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: I for one think Article 10 is a pretty good idea. The spectacle of western fundies spreading their viscious fairy-tales throughout the third world is something we could do without.
It a question of freedom from subversion, not freedom of speech.
ppcli
I don’t see what’s the problem with the terrorism bit. Lockerbie bombing, Berlin Disco bombing,…. these things were outrageous, and they really did have Quaddafi’s fingerprints on them. We already bombed him once over the Berlin thing, but I don’t see why that should wipe the slate clean. This isn’t just some breathless “Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague” rumor fastened on by the credulous to create a false impression of links that don’t really exist.
Brachiator
@Chris:
We didn’t intervene in Egypt and it drove a lot of people nuts, including the Saudis and the Israelis and the Iranians, even though it risked destabilizing the current order in the region. And equally significant issue for the world, even if Americans don’t realize it, is the upcoming separation of the Sudan.
Toppling Gaddafi is risky for all kinds of reasons, especially since, like Saddam Hussein, he sat on all kinds of dissidents who may either do well or cause mischief if unleashed.
Anybody who thinks they have either a cynics or realpolitik handle on what is happening in the region is fooling themselves. And this goes double double for most Americans, who typically fall back on reductive economic determinism when trying to explain anything having to do with foreign policy. Oil! Bananas! Coffee! Cheese!
Comrade Dread
From my upcoming Journalism 101 text book:
How to be a successful journalist:
Log into computer
Search archives for 2002 columns.
Copy, paste.
New analysis of Libya situation.
Cash paycheck from NYT.
Attend cocktail party thrown by DC congressman/lobbyist
Print anonymous gossip and sniping.
Cash paycheck from NYT.
Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy
So I guess we are accepting the renamed & slightly filtered ‘tako-cjin as a serious creature?
Why?
Tsulagi
Damn, just add aluminum tubes and mushroom cloud to that blockquoted NYT paragraph and you got the full 2002 Iraq salsa.
Hob
@Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy: That fits the title of the post, doesn’t it? It is mildly interesting to see Hermione/matoko attempting to speak in coherent sentences to keep up the new persona (but still sounding exactly the same). However, I have a feeling H/m is about to be proselytized to the pie filter faith… and that’s going to be 100% successful.
Bob L
Mustard gas, they have some boiler plate for that some were. Probably written by the British in the 19th century and mocked by Mark Twain.
Chris
@Brachiator:
Well, I’d argue Libya is different from Egypt and Tunisia because it didn’t devolve into a civil war with regime forces maintaining control “by all necessary means.” The suppression of the movement wasn’t successful, whereas here it looks like it would have been without foreign intervention.
(Course, the same’s true in Bahrain. Yes, we’re still full of shit – the Arab world knows this, I have no doubt).
True, and the biggest source of discomfort in all this (for me at least) is that we don’t know who we’re backing. Right now, the anti-Qaddafi movement’s across the board – everyone hates him. Once he’s gone, we don’t know which faction will take over.
To be fair, that’s true in every broad insurrection like this.
Agree on the economic reductionism. Economics explain a lot, but not everything, and people sometimes focus on it too much (oil in the Middle East case) at the expense of other, equally important factors.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Wow, racist much? Just because we don’t know how to get them to democracy by force, because how the fuck does that work, doesn’t mean those brown people can’t handle democracy you fuck stick.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@RP: You know who else has mustard gas and supports terrorism? We do.
Josie
@Hob: I was just thinking to myself as I read through the comments that the cadence and attitude of Hermione seemed oddly familiar.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@PIGL:
IMHO the evidence tying Libya to the Flight 103 bombing is sufficiently convincing that if there were such a thing as an international court for putting terrorists and their state sponsors on trial (a thing that policy makers here in the US would be wise to be leery of given our own past history of sponsoring terrorism, e.g. in Central America during the 1980s) and an effective international police force for apprehending them and bringing them to justice without imposing massive collateral damage on innocents and bystanders, then I think Gaddafi would belong in the dock. Unfortunately I think the USAF is too much of a blunt instrument to be suited for that particular role.
I’ll throw out a somewhat different position on this war, which I haven’t seen posted yet, so you all can rip it to shreds.
I’m not convinced that this campaign is going to go all pear shaped on us. I don’t see a substantial ground campaign happening, nor do I suspect that the Libyan opposition will turn out to be a Pandora’s box of anti-US radicalism. Rather, OIF convinced me that if we are to have any hope of using US domestic public opinion (which like the USAF is also a very blunt instrument) to prevent catastrophically bad wars from being launched by future US administrations, we have to establish a very simple and clear threshold for justifying the legitimate use of force by the US, and that is: only as a last resort when there is a grave and imminent threat to our core national interests.
For that reason I, like Larison in some respects, do not support the idea of the United Sates waging wars of humanitarian intervention at times and in places where our national interests are not threatened. Purging the world of evil whenever and wherever it may be found is not a national interest in that sense. The US is currently too big, too powerful, too clumsy, and based on our recent history far too eager to search the globe looking for opportunities to improve it, for that idea to work well in practice, however appealing it may sound in theory. Too many of our interventions in the past came with what sounded at the time like good reasons and were pursued with good intentions, yet did not end well.
I want to stop this cycle, and I don’t think that trying to cherry pick the good wars from the bad wars based on the nuanced details of each specific case (which is what the pro-war arguments in these threads seems to come down to) has worked well our past; I see no reason to believe that it will work well in the future, given the current state of commonly held geographic and cultural knowledge here in the US and the structure of our domestic news media as a sales and marketing dept for the military-industrial complex.
I suspect that this latest war is likely to be limited in scope and to “end well” so far as the news media and the broad majority of the public are concerned. That’s the good news. The bad news is: that makes it the gateway drug to the next war, which won’t end so well. My prediction is that the worst impact of this war so far as the US is concerned is going to be that it will help us to very quickly unlearn the lessons of humility and restraint and the possibility of blowback (insofar as they ever sank in to begin with) which we should have learned from OIF. For that reason, I am against our participation, and I am particularly against our taking on a leadership role, in this war. Not because I think Gaddafi isn’t evil, nor because I want the opposition to him to be slaughtered or don’t care what happens to them, but because other people will suffer and die in very large numbers in the future if the US doesn’t start learning that we can’t be the policeman of the world and we aren’t even very good at it when we try.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Barb (formerly Gex): democracy is consent of the governed. Islamic democracy works fine for majority muslim states.
Westernstyle/judeochristian democracy with freedom of speech and freedom of religion is impossible for the reasons I delineated.
It is impossible to change peoples religion by religion by force I think.
We are actually arguing this on muslim blogs, arguing with quranic exegesis and hadith and sunnah references.
But I think Iraq is an obvious example of the differences between islamic and judeochristian democracy. Iraq has shariah law in its constitution, and Iraqis vote in democratic elections. Did you know Israel has a judaic democracy? There is a law forbidding outmarriage for Israeli jewesses. Not all democracies are the same. How is that racist?
And this is for Judas as well, Indonesia is an islamic democracy, and actually has anti-blasphemy laws and laws against building churches without government approval. Blasphemy and church building are defined as proselytizing under shariah law. The Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) is the third largest party and they are islamists.
Svensker
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Nice sweeping statement you got there. You know this how? And don’t invoke the Middle East, since the US has been propping up dictators there since the Brits got out.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy: there is always pie. I actually prefer that to being called a “fuckstick.”
;)
Barb (formerly Gex)
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: That is a really good point about this becoming a gateway war. Gulf I seemed to leave all too positive an impression on Americans’ minds. Hell, it’s entertaining! Turn on the news and see a missile carefully guide itself into a building that we’re “certain” is a military installation, while patting ourselves on the back because although we seem to wage a lot of wars, we feel good about ourselves because when we do, we *try* not to kill too many people. It’s pretty sick.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Is it “Western sytle” democracy or Judeo-Christian democracy? I see that in order to counter my criticism, you’ve re-worded the phrase such that my criticism seems out of line. Nice work at being utterly dishonest in your argument.
ETA: Hell, you could be a goalpost moving Republican with that kind of policy discussion.
ETA2: The funny thing is, I think, once we got past your personality disorder, we’d agree on a lot of issues. I just don’t have the tolerance for people who argue dishonestly and in bad faith like you.
Cris
The problem is that Qaddafi’s known support of terrorism is ancillary to this particular operation. We’re not destroying his air force to stop him from exporting terror, we’re intervening in his internal affairs.
So Cole is right to call it out because the Village is falling into their old habits: using “he supports terror” as an excuse to send in the Wolverines.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Svensker:
Because I am a muslimah and I read the Qu’ran and the hadith and sunnah.
Because shariah law forbids proselytization, and freedom of speech legalizes proselytization. Westernstyle/judeochristian democracy incorporates freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Islam is incompatible with freedom of speech and therefore incompatible with westernstyle democracy.
Libya is 97% muslim. Egypt is 90% muslim. A-stan is 99% muslim. Iraq is 97% muslim.
To install/force (like Barb said) westernstyle democracy you have to either rewrite shariah or change the religion of the governed.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: You need to make up your mind between western-style democracy and judeo-christian democracy. I agree the latter isn’t suited for the middle east. Duh. Thanks for stating the obvious in the most tedious manner possible.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Barb (formerly Gex): I hope I never argue in bad faith or use sophistry.
Empirically I just think there are different kinds of democracy.
To me judeochristian democracy and westernstyle democracy are equivalent….judeochristian is the word conservatives use (Angela Merkel too!), i think it means anglosaxon protestant basis with some secular enlightenment values added.
All western democracies are sort of ideologically related to the original british evolved representative governement.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Barb (formerly Gex): see above ^ does that explain it?
To me it is the same thing.
Judeochristian == westernstyle
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Barb (formerly Gex): Im not trying to be dishonest or score points, I’m trying to explain.
If something is unclear just ask, and I will attempt to clarify it.
;)
Brachiator
@Chris: RE: We didn’t intervene in Egypt and it drove a lot of people nuts, including the Saudis and the Israelis and the Iranians, even though it risked destabilizing the current order in the region.
This is not really relevant to whether what happened in Egypt was destabilizing. Israeli hardliners, for example, are still worried that changes in Egypt will upend Egypt’s peace agreements with Israel, and the most strident hardliners have been pushing the noxious idea that the US is “supposed” to support authoritarians and allow the masses to be suppressed in Middle Eastern countries as long as it helps maintain the status quo in the region.
The Saudis, and others, are deeply concerned that Mubarak, who held power for so long was deposed. One little remarked fact is that before the upheaval in Egypt, Mubarak was set on installing his son as a vice-president. With Mubarak’s fall, a hereditary dynastic succession was prevented. This is a tremendously significant change in the way that many governments in the region behave, and its consequences may be far reaching.
And of course, the buried lead in all this is the failure of the diplomatic and intelligence services to have the slightest inkling that any of this was brewing. What are we paying these people to do?
Of course, Arab governments are full of shit as well. Ain’t parity wonderful?
RE: Toppling Gaddafi is risky for all kinds of reasons, especially since, like Saddam Hussein, he sat on all kinds of dissidents who may either do well or cause mischief if unleashed.
Yep. Of course even when we know who we’re backing, we don’t know who we’re backing.
I don’t know what the right move is here. But the sentiment seems to be that we backed authoritarians in the past, and this ultimately did not consistently work in our favor, so now let’s try backing democratic movements. That the right sees this as naive tends to make me like it.
I think that economics explains a lot less than people think, but I take your point here, and you are obviously right when you note that there are other factors at play.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Barb (formerly Gex):
In Gulf I we followed the UN resolution, and turned back at Karbala.
The UN res only allowed the expulsion of Saddam from Kuwait.
UN Res 1973 is worded to explicitly prevent another OIF from happening.
NO invasion, NO occupation, NO boots on the ground.
As long we follow the limits of the UN resolution like we did in Gulf I we will be fine.
;)
Mnemosyne
@PIGL:
Good to know you’re happy to ignore actual terrorism as long as you can bash the US. Who cares about those people who died in Berlin — the US lied about Saddam Hussein! Who cares about the policewoman who died in Britain in a botched assassination attempt or the 25 assassinations that Amnesty International documented in just 7 years — the US lied about Saddam Hussein!
In other words, you’ve never heard of Lockerbie and aren’t interested in any actual facts, thankyewverymuch, because they might interfere with your self-righteousness. Gotcha.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
There seems to me to be an assumption packaged into your arguments that the relationship between Islam and democracy is timeless and unchanging. I don’t see much evidence to support that idea, nor does it fit with the analogous process whereby “Western Democracy” (or whatever you want to call it) developed in Europe.
Historically, freedom of speech and religion in Western Europe developed not because of an altruistic and idealistic view of these things as good in and of themselves, but as a practical response to intra-Christian sectarian warfare which with the wars of the Counter-Reformation became so bitter and so severe (c.f. the first half of the 17th Cen in Germany) as to pose an intolerable threat to the very fabric of the states in question. It was only gradually and with some reluctance that these freedoms, which were essentially the byproduct of a Catholic-Protestant truce, were fully extended to non-Christians.
Hopefully nothing that horrific will happen between the different sectarian branches of Islam and their associated states, but pluralistic societies today face similar pressures to extend tolerance of worship and freedom of expression to their citizens for the sake of social peace and to gain stability for the state, pressures which Islamic states are no more immune to than were the states of Europe.
The other thing is, your ideas sound very similar to arguments made back in the 1970s that there was some sort of vague cultural imcompatibility between “Western Democracy” and Catholicism, citing as evidence the prevelence of miltary dictatorships in the Iberian peninsula and Central and South America at the time. That theory turned out to be wrong, yours may too.
Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy
‘tako-chin: Pie don’t work on kindles, fuckstick.
And it’s not what you say, it’s that you say it over & over & over & over again with no demonstrated inclination to learn why you might be wrong or misguided. You’re not stupid, but you are pretty much an encyclopedic representation of an annoying idiot.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
they are not similar at all. stop throwing radar chaff.
now this is true. And on islamic blogs we discuss if parts of shariah are still in mutawatir, still….in uninterrupted transmission. Like most muslims agree that the injunction to cover is no longer in mutawatir. But al-Islam evolved EGT defenses against proselytization, and as long as the West attempts to proselytize, I think anti-proselytization response is still in mutawatir, still sending.
Under contemporary quranic exegesis and islamic jurisprudence Islam and westernstyle/judeochristian democracy are not compatible.
If the west would trying to impose/force/install jc democracy, maybe the anti-proselytization reflex would go away, and islamic scholars could take jihadism out of mutawatir.
But as long as the West instists on trying to impose westernstyle democracy, the jihadism can never stop.
What we TRY to do is stop muslims from killing proselytizers. There is a lot of that in the Quran that is still sending.
Chris
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
My God! Thank you!
That’s occurred to me too a few times when watching arguments about Islam in recent years – the many ways in which it’s really in the same place Catholicism was a hundred years ago (both in domestic U.S. politics, and world politics in general).
As it turns out, the American nativists of their day were wrong: Catholics integrated into the United States and the republic isn’t any worse off for it. And the more big-picture people who thought Catholicism was incompatible with modern democracy were wrong too: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, most of Latin America, all of their examples have turned into counter-examples.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy: that is a lie. I say different things all the time. For example, I have never mentioned mutawatir or the process of quranic exegesis here before.
you can just scroll on by.
;)
Svensker
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Oh, matoko. Never mind.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Chris: You are wrong. Catholics and Protestants are CHRISTIANS, meaning profess a belief in the Christ, the Jesus godhead.
There is an enormous chasm between christianity and islam.
Christians believe their faith commands them to proselytize. Muslims believe their faith commands them to resist proselytization.
Both are articles of faith, and not amenable to reason or logic.
And neither one can be switched off, like I just explained, about mutawatir.
Muslims cannot become christians because of surah iklas.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Yeah, not similar at all, except for that whole using a narrowly defined and rigid template for what constitutes true democracy rather than treating it as a broad category of political structures sharing a common set of assumptions about state legitimacy and consent of the governed as expressed via free and peaceful elections, whose details are everywhere historically contingent and culturally inflected thing that you have going on. That is kind of similar, actually.
Agreed. I humbly bow before your obvious expertise, in that regard (see present thread for details). I know better than to compete with a true master.
Bob Loblaw
Is there a reason you guys keep letting matoko-loco keep trolling you over Islam and democracy?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Bob Loblaw: am I trolling? refute me then.
You cannot refute me. The empirical data is right there.
In the Epic Fail of the Manifest Destiny of Judeochristian Democracy in MENA, otherwise know as OIF, OEF, and COIN.
A-stan alone is costing a billion dollars a month and all we are doing there is making more terrorists.
The Taliban will be part of whatever government we leave behind, just like the Sadrists are part of Iraq’s government. Like the MB in Egypt, PKS in Indonesia, AKP in Turkey, LIFG will be in Libya, Hizb’ in Lebanon.
All empirical data.
All true.
PIGL
@Mnemosyne: Never heard of Lockerbie? Hell, I’ve never even heard of the 1972 Olympics.
Q’s government is accused of having killed several hundreds since he early 1980s. The US lies and manipulation re Iraq led to the deaths of hundred thousand civilians and the discplacement of millions. The past actions of Libya should not be used to justify this intervention, certainly not by any Americans.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: i am not using “true democracy” as a template. You are.
You are saying “true democracy” must have freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
I am saying democracy is the consent of the governed only.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Bob Loblaw: Think about that Bob….the Taliban will be part of whatever government we leave behind….after we have spent 10 years and nearly 400 billion dollars trying to wipe them out and they are going to be part of the A-stan government we leave behind.
And they are not going to be our friends.
Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy
‘tako-chin: Which one of us is skirting a ban, hmmm?
And it’s not like I haven’t called bullshit on frontpagers (although rightly or wrongly is open for discussion).
Hermione Granger-Weasley
Can you assholes really blame Obama for wanting to be on the right side of history for once?
He couldn’t do anything to help the Greens, to help the Egyptians, to help the Saudi Shi’ia or the Jordanians or the Yemenis or the Tunisians or the Bahrainis but by gawd, a WHOLE LOT of people were BEGGING him to do something about Qaddafi, to help the Libyan people.
And all you retards are clutching your pearls and swooning about making another Iraq.
Well fuck off.
and DIAF.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy: so get Cole to ban me.
but then Alan the Brownshirt Hall Monitor will come back.
Its your choice.
;)
Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy
‘tako-chin: I don’t want you banned, I want you to think before hitting submit, and for god’s sake, learn to edit yourself for concision and clarity. We know you’re not stupid, now try and act like it.
Also, by your own admission you are a convert to islam and from conservatism. Good for you. Now try and figure out why people cannot stand the enthusiasm and surety of a convert.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy: oh.
okthen…..but i’m a revert, not a convert.
That is not helpful is it?
Although it is concise.
honus
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: but rocketing his home and killing his teenage daughter wasn’t terrorism. You reap the whirlwind.
honus
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: somehow, this prohibition on proslytizing doesn’t disqualify the jews from democracy.
Caz
That sounds very similar to what was said before we started the war in Iraq. The difference apparently is that a progressive is in charge this time, so it’s all good. Although I do realize the degree of engagement and involvement by the U.S. is much less this time around. But isn’t the principle the same?
Qaddafi has mustard gas, is a horrible dictator, and threatens peace in the region and democracy.
Saddam Hussein has WMD’s, is a horrible dictator, and threatens peace in the region and democracy.
Neither one poses any threat to our national security, so we should have stayed out of both.
There are plenty of other places like Libya too where you can make the same exact argument being made in support of our military action against Libya. Should we just start taking military action against every country with a dictator who threatens peace in their region and won’t allow democracy? That’s quite a long list, and none pose a threat to our national security.
You know what? The world is filled with shitty rulers and crushers of freedom, but it shouldn’t be the policy of the U.S. to intervene every time one of these places makes the headlines.
We have enough shit at home to worry about – why waste $1 million per cruise missile to help people oceans away from our soil when U.S. citizens are suffering from a variety of economic and societal maladies right now?
Imperialism never ends apparently, whether there’s a D or R in charge. They are just two factions of the same imperialist, big government, world’s policeman, political correct ivory tower residen party.
Is it becoming clear to any of you yet that some libertarian rule might be a good try for a change?
Really, is Ron Paul that bad considering who we’ve been handing the reins over to in the last 18 years?
Barb (formerly Gex)
@honus: HGW seems to have a belief that Muslims are incapable of democracy. But for really good, totally not racist reasons.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Fuck U6: A More Accurate Measure of the Total Amount of Duck-Fuckery in the Economy: Ooh! Did fuckstick take? That was mine!
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Listen, I’ll say this once more. You initially said “western style democracy”. Then you switched to “judeo-christian democracy”. That YOU consider them to be the same is totally irrelevant to me. You are trying to make a point, you best try not to confuse your own point.
I happen to agree that Muslims wouldn’t want a judeo-christian democracy. I don’t find that to be incompatible with a western style democracy.
You can tell yourself with your little mind trick that you didn’t argue dishonestly, but insisting on treating two things that are not the same as being the same thing is dishonest.
Suffice it to say, we’ve all heard your point. Muslims can’t do democracy. Gotcha. No need to keep repeating it.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@honus: jews dont proselytize. And in judaic democracy, like in Israel, Israeli jewesses cannot marry outside the faith.
Just like Islam.
No outmarriage for females.
@Barb (formerly Gex):
judeochristian democracy aka western democracy. Is that better? It is all there is. They are the same thing.
Muslims can do islamic democracy. Its in the Quran. In regard to governing, the Holy Quran advises governing with the consent of the governed. Can there be any clearer definition of representative government or democracy?
I don’t know how much clearer I can make this. I linked the surahs, I gave examples, I gave empirical data.
Judeochristian democracy and westernstyle democracy are EXACTLY the same thing.
I think you have to admit that both mandate the consent of the governed with freedom of speech and freedom of religion encoded as law. In Islam, resistance to proselytization is encoded as law. Proselytization is ILLEGAL in Islamic culture. Freedom of speech legalizes proselytization, therefore freedom of speech is incompatible with Islam.
No. That is false.
Iraq is an islamic democracy, Turkey is an islamic democracy, Indonesia is an islamic democracy, Egypt is going to be an islamic democracy, A-stan is going to be an islamic democracy, Pakistan is an islamic democracy.
And Libya and Yemen will be islamic democracies.
Im sorry, I don’t mean to come off as a smug convert.
I dont know how else to say this.
I am just speaking truth.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Barb (formerly Gex):
Ok. How are they different then?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
Results of the vote on the referendum in Egypt.
77% of voters approved shariah law in the constitution.
Islamic democracy is on the rise.