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US Attacks Libya
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Anonymous
Exactly what did you think we should have done in Egypt? Bomb the youth protestors with cruise missiles? |
Anonymous
| What is our exit strategy? Did Libya attack us? How is victory defined? Will we be photographing any body bags returning from war zone? Are we at war? When is mission accomplished? Is this blood for oil? How many innocent civilians have been killed by our missiles? Did congress authorize this act of war? If we break it do we buy it? If the dictator stays do we lose? Why are we in the middle of another countrys civil war? Why do we enter libya civil war and not irans? If radical islamists end up taking over is of a massive failure. Will we have to occupy and rebuild and make sure radicals or terrorists don't take over? Did Obama lie and now people die? Are haliburton or blackwater involved in any of obama's wars? Why guantanimo still open? Since Obama refuses to close guantanimo is he guilty of war crimes? I thought the patriot act was wrong, why did Obama just extend it? If we bog down in libya will we have a surge? Is there a suicide problem in the military due to obama's 3 war fronts and fatigue? How much better would the deficit be without obama's continuing wars? Why is obama always on vacation while soldiers are at war and dying? WTF is going on? |
Anonymous
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The alternatives were weighed. There really were no good choices other than going full Buchanan isolationist (which wouldn't deter the true nutjobs.)
A few weeks ago, when the rebels were taking cities left and right (and were even within shouting distance of Tripoli), the West made a bunch of calls for Gaddafi's ouster and more or less encouraging the people of Libya to rise up against Gaddafi. You know, like Bush I did with the marsh Arabs and Eisenhower/VOA did with the Hungarians. Keep in mind this rebellion is tribal in nature, which means a greater likelihood of wide-scale butchery when one side wins. Then Gaddafi started to win, perhaps even doing enough to get a promotion to Brigadier General. Then, we were faced with the prospect of betraying people we had encouraged to rebel, dealing with a dictator who we had previously called to leave office, a non-trivial chance of wide-scale butchery, all atop a large source of really sweet (i.e. easy to process) oil. At least with us backing the rebels, we do have some say in holding them back, whereas if Gaddafi won, the chance of him reverting back to 1980s form and harboring a plethora of terrorist groups would be out there. The mistake was made when we made a premature call for Gaddafi's ouster and then dithered on the setup of a no-fly zone. We had at that point pissed off Gaddafi and yet (through inaction) were implicitly backing him. In Egypt, IIRC, we didn't call for Mubarak to leave until after he had promised to leave office in September. We've made no such call in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, etc., etc. |
Anonymous
God, I hate Republicans! I mean, they love nothing more than bombing brown people and starting wars on the basis of flimsy pretexts in order to steal oil that really belongs to other countries. 
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Anonymous
This is all well and good except for the inconvenient fact that there was a full-on uprising beforehand, as you said yourself. There was a war going on. As you said, rebels were already taking cities left and right. Calling for his ouster was an attempt to resolve what was already ongoing. In Mubarak's case in Egypt, the result was less violence. It didn't work with Gaddafi, but that doesn't mean that it was the wrong thing to do. |
Anonymous
Hey, when Clinton launched a war in 1999, the bad guy (Milosevic) resigned, and the ok guys (Kosovar Albanians) were spared ethnic cleansing. Bush's wars led to lengthy occupations that have not yet been unqualified success. |
Anonymous
Troll. |
Anonymous
we sure have stolen a lot of oil from Iraq. 
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Anonymous
Where is Waldo? |
Anonymous
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Can the trolls take a break?
The Libya situation seems like Kosovo with a flavor of Afghanistan: we can bomb precisely all we want but the boundaries keep changing and even if the current leadership goes down we could end up with someone worse or a broken up country with multiple worse leaders.... Seems like we just kicked a hornet's nest. |
Anonymous
Truth hurts?  The simple fact is that, if the Libya intervention had been ordered by President McCain (R), this is precisely the charge that many who post here would have leveled. Why is it different when the military action is ordered by President Obama? I do not believe that it is the act of troll to point that out.
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Anonymous
If Obama got hit by all this, he would be a slobbering mess. Bring back Bush...he can take it. Obama is too weak to take these questions 24/7 for the next 2 years. I think the racist reporters think Obama can't take these questions over and over since he is black and they give him affirmative action softballs. |
Anonymous
LOL. I didn't mean to suggest that I agree with that accusation. I think it's absurd, which I thought was clear from my post. Personally, I happen to think that the invasion of Iraq was was a mistake that Bush made for good faith reasons -- he was wrong, not evil. I also think that the intervention in Libya is a mistake that Obama is making for good faith reasons. Back under my bridge, now, I guess. |
Anonymous
Obama was evil for incessant attacking of Bush for his policies when he had every intention of continuing and expanding each one of them. Iraq/Afghanistan/ now Libya/ patriot act/ guantanimo/ tax cuts/ use of haliburton/ surges/. If he was not evil then he is waaaaaaay stupider than Bush because Bush knew these were the Best policies and Obama didn't. |
Anonymous
| I think we have played this pretty well so far. Let the Brits and France take the lead. We lob a few cruise missiles - might as well be a war game or target practice. Hopefully the army has a coup against whathisname and we can all go home. |