Libyan No-Fly ZoneFollow

I think the cause justifies intervention. I just hate to see us get embroiled in another middle-east mess.

Maybe Barry knows something about the fate of Gaddafi that we don't.

Ask the local forum Republicans. They'd do anything to lower crude oil futures even if it does mean spending billions to fight another unnecessary war that we're not involved in. It's ok, we'll make all that money back in marginally cheaper gas prices, lol. Someone else can worry about paying for that war of aggression, I got mine, Jack!

Personally I want nothing to do with them. UN sanctions against Libya are fine, but this is their problem and I'd like to leave it at that.



Edited, Mar 10th 2011 12:28pm by bsphil

Oh, I'm definitely a liberal. Less liberal than, say, Samira or Smash but liberal nonetheless.

I'm considerably less liberal than Gbaji is conservative, though which I suppose puts me in the "moderate" part of the board spectrum. I'm even willing to start threads saying I disagree with the president when he's from my party!

Child-rearing has left you soft and emotional.

Like a liberal.

France has recognized the opposition rebel government as the legitimate government in Libya.

SoS Clinton says she'll swing by Libya next week sometime to chat.

Vive le Caliphate!

Makes me feel all snuggly that we've clapped handies at the removal of Mobbarrak in Egypt and the 'liberation' of free (predomninantly Moslem) people from pro-west despots.

Like we did in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan. . . Those all went swimmingly well, I thought.

Those joyful happy Egyptians, Tunisians (and before long, Libyans, Syrians, Jordanians) will in all probability soon establish Sharia states, tenderly nurture Al-Q'aeda nut-jobs and visit a Wal-Mart near you.

Keep the fUck out and let 'em sort out their own mess.

Oh, and Hi. I'm Nobby and I'll be your token limp-wristed British cnut for the evening. Now go fUck yerselves.

Nah. Sounds like hemming and hawing and not taking any sort of firm position until the mess sorts itself out and relieves them of the need to act. Not that any action taken wont have consequences, but by doing nothing you just make yourself irrelevant on the foreign political scene. It really looks more to me like Obama is so afraid of making a mistake (and I honestly can't blame him), that he's doing nothing.

Doing nothing is still doing something though. A lesson I thought we'd learned already.



Yup. The time to act really has already passed IMO.

No, reserving your support until it is needed is a perfectly valid strategy. It's much better for the rebels politically if they overthrow Qaddafi without outside intervention, so not coming out of the gate with heavy pressure is actually preferable. However, now that they are in much rougher shape, they will be more open to (And appreciative of, politically, which is to our benefit) outside aid. The statements made by Obama are quite a heavy volume of support diplomatically speaking, if he had gone with a straight combat damage mitigation motive that would have been much weaker support of their revolution.

When it was really needed was last week when the key battles that almost certainly decided the course of the attempted revolution were being fought and the rebel forces were begging us to inhibit air operations against them to give them a chance to win.

We did nothing. Anything we do now is too late. It doesn't matter if it was the politically expedient thing to do (I'm not saying it wasn't), but if you're holding out for Obama and co. to come riding over a hill at the last minute and saving the rebels from certain defeat, you're in for a big disappointment.



None of this matters though. The momentum has shifted. Even if Obama wanted to help them now, public support for any action seen as being on the losing side will be nearly impossible to get. If he was going to act, he needed to either do so two weeks ago when the rebels appeared to be winning, or even last week when things started to turn against them, but perception was still in their favor. Waiting until after they've suffered several major defeats and have been basically pushed back into a corner of the country and have no effective means of pressing any attack anymore effectively took the choice out of Obama's hands.

What he's doing now seems more like damage control to me.

Actually, I want to make another point about this that I missed before:



Even if that were the strategy (and I'm not sure it was), it wouldn't work. If your concern is making it look like the rebels are somehow beholden to us for their success, then waiting until they really need our help kinda defeats the purpose. Had we offered assistance or even just statements of support back when the rebels appeared to have the upper hand, no one could say how much of the outcome was from the rebels on their own and how much was from US support. They could save face by insisting that they didn't really need us, but were so strong and powerful that the US had no choice but to recognize them as the next power in Libya. Now, if the US offers help, there's no way to do that. Any victory now (and I doubt it's possible anyway) would clearly be seen as happening only because the US stepped in. It would be the US winning, not the rebels.


I agree that had the rebels won on their own, that would have been better for them entirely. But that's what I was referring to by making yourself irrelevant on foreign policy. You can always just sit back, take no position, and let things happen. My larger point is that the Obama administration seemed primarily to just not want to commit to any course at all. Even the latter choice could have been clearly stated as policy ("We're not going to interceded with a purely internal affair of the Lybian people... blah blah blah..."). But they didn't do that either. They just kinda sat on the sidelines being very careful not to say anything that could even be interpreted as a policy position.


There are problems with that approach IMO. In this particular case, it may not end out mattering much, but it's somewhat indicative of what we've seen of foreign policy from this administration as a whole, not just in this one case. They dithered on the fence with Eqypt (very mixed messages), hardly mentioned Tunisia, and were utterly silent regarding Iran. Similar lack of clear position has been the response to uprisings in Yemen and Saudi Arabia as well. IMO, that's kinda troubling. If these are the "tests" which we were warned would come if Obama was elected, I'm not sure he's passing them.

I hoe all the armchair warriors who want to have a no-fly zone over Libya enforced are willing to do the same for the Bahrainis....