military action against Libya

From the New York Times today...
NATO Warns Rebels Against Attacking Civilians

We'll bomb you, too!!!

Good lord.

There are no good guys in this picture. Reminds me of a girl on a volleyball team I once played on who asked a guy on another team about the Ducks Unlimited T-shirt he was wearing ("You actually shoot ducks with a shotgun??") and the guy replied something like "Yeah, I've shot lots of ducks, but they were ALL bad...")

1 Reply

@Irishk,

Maybe, they can use a dart board to determine who to bomb next.

0 Replies

@Fido,

My point was that you learn from history but each situation is different . At some point, it all becomes "ancient" history .

Quote:

You should never box them in, but give them an out if winning is going to be possible at a reasonable cost

True, but I dont think we are dealing with someone who wants an out .

1 Reply

@Fido,

Quote:

YOU are and idiot...

Usually, dickless, you would follow a statement like that with at least a difference of opinion . But you then went on to discuss totally different aspects of the Poenic Wars . And what was the tirade after that all about ? Quite a rant problem you have there, idiot .

0 Replies

@Irishk,

Quote:

The warnings, and intense consultations within the NATO-led coalition over its rules for attacking anyone who endangers innocent civilians, come at a time when the civil war in Libya is becoming ever more chaotic, and the battle lines ever less distinct. They raise a fundamental question that the military is now grappling with: Who in Libya is a civilian?

from Irishk's link.......

Anyone who looks at a couple of pic and reads accounts of the so called rebels in action from even a week ago would have been able to understand how much of a canard the Wests claim of being able to find pure civilians to protect was. A lot of these guys look like they just walked out of the smoke shop, and when talked to they clearly have not the first clue what they are doing. Also it should have been obvious to anyone with any historical knowledge of any civil war that has ever been fought.

How Obama got away for so long floating his obvious BS I would love to know...And how such a supposed bright cookie like Obama got talked into No Fly Plus when the confused battlefield was almost a guaranty I would love to know. A straight up no fly zone would have been simple, and it might have even been a good idea. No fly plus was a boondoggle the second Obama approved it. There was no way it was going to work unless we took out Gadhafi, which would have caused its own problems for us.

0 Replies

@RABEL222,

RABEL222 wrote:

What choice do we have. We can vote for a democrat or a republican who has been bought by big business and money people who will make sure that the middle class suck hind tit while the money people live high on the hog. Politicians vote the way money tells them, some great choice. You dont have a clue that your one of the ones being screwed. Unless your a big money man or a hired hand.

Rejoice rejoice, you have no choice... You do have a choice... RESIST...
Forget the parties and resist...

0 Replies

@gungasnake,

gungasnake wrote:

There are no good guys in this picture. Reminds me of a girl on a volleyball team I once played on who asked a guy on another team about the Ducks Unlimited T-shirt he was wearing ("You actually shoot ducks with a shotgun??") and the guy replied something like "Yeah, I've shot lots of ducks, but they were ALL bad...")

You can always tell the ones that had their peepees bit by a bad duck they were trying to feed... They never see life in quite the same fashion again... I was bit by a horse once... I have been on a few since, but I never trusted the bastards... When they try to scrape you off on a low branch, or a tree, or mash you into a barn because they have better things to do than give you a ride you start to re-examine that whole man horse pardnership thing... I rode one once that would do just fine, provided one had a stick in hand of any size... I dumped the stick about a half a mile from the stable, and the horse decided right in traffic that he didn't need this **** no more... With people and carriages all over the place the dumb horse decided to git all nutty... I am still trying to figure out how he figured out I had dropped the stick in the bushes and get off the damned sideways backward walking bone head ungulate without running over the top of some pedestrian... I am no more surprised to hear of a horse killing a person than I am to hear of a person killing a horse... I love them, and I hate them...

0 Replies

@Ionus,

Ionus wrote:

My point was that you learn from history but each situation is different . At some point, it all becomes "ancient" history .

Quote:
You should never box them in, but give them an out if winning is going to be possible at a reasonable cost
True, but I dont think we are dealing with someone who wants an out .

Who is it that learns from history??? People do not get into positions of power unless power alone is their goal... For such people there is only the form, and with the form the paradigm in which all reality makes sense... Those sorts do not have the ability to look outside of their form and examine other forms of government, society, religion, or economy as abstractions... They cannot take a lesson other than in details, to not make the same mistakes as Napoleon, or Caesar... Because they have no formal understanding they have no idea of what can be changed, or what must be changed... With formal understanding you realize that all human progress requires a change of forms, and yet, as Jefferson pointed out in the declaration, people do not change their forms easily... None of us do, and yet there is a huge difference between the formal understanding of history, and looking at history as so many distinct lessons and morals...

0 Replies

Now that the rebels are on the run will Obama now support Gadaffi ?

0 Replies

New Yorker article that gives me some new perspective about who the rebels are (with their disarray) -

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2011/04/04/110404taco_talk_anderson

Again in the NYer, a Steve Coll article, Don't Arm the Rebels -
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/03/libya-dont-arm-the-rebels.html
I haven't read it yet.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Although Gates is saying we should not arm the rebels, Obama said he's going to keep that option open.

2 Replies

@cicerone imposter,

Way to cast a slim shadow over the sand guys Rolling Eyes

0 Replies

Quote:

Some of the United States’ partners have acknowledged that the initial descriptions of the intervention in Libya no longer apply. “What is happening in Libya is not a no-fly zone,” a senior European diplomat told reporters, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity. “The no-fly zone was a diplomatic thing, to get the Arabs on board. What we have in Libya is more than that.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/lawmakers-batter-gates-on-libya/2011/03/31/AFLSRdAC_story.html?hpid=z2

WHAT A GREAT IDEA! I have no doubt but that the Arab street takes great comfort in our dishonest determination to get Arab leaders to sign on the dotted line. I am also sure that Arab leaders will think three times if the Western powers ever again pass a referendum around asking for their support.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

Quote:

Mullen and Gates stressed that even though powerful combat aircraft like the side-firing AC-130 gunship and the A-10 Thunderbolt, used for close air support of friendly ground forces, will stop flying after Saturday, they will be on standby. Mullen said this means that if the rebels' situation become "dire enough," NATO's top commander could request help from the U.S. aircraft. The U.S. also has used Marine AV-8B Harrier attack jets as well as Air Force F-15 fighters and B-2 and B-1 long-range bombers.

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20110330/US.US.Libya/

Interesting, because given the wording and claimed rational for the UN resolution under which this military action has legal authority I would have expected this to read "if the civilian situation became dire enough". I must have missed something.

0 Replies

@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

Although Gates is saying we should not arm the rebels, Obama said he's going to keep that option open.

I think it is pretty clear that Gates advised Obama that we should not take military action against Libya at all, and we know that Obama went with the chick hawks instead. It must kill Gates to need to sit in front of Congress and say anything nice about this campaign at all.

4 Replies

@hawkeye10,

Yea, Gates is the right man to advise, but Obama has his own agenda; war presidents are remembered, while all others just fade away. Obama is going to leave a lot of scars as the first black president, because his attention is needed in the home front where too many are unemployed and struggling. Spending millions on bombs is not a good idea no matter how you look at the Libyan crisis.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

I worry that you're right, as I mentioned before, re Obama and Hillary, but I'm not at all sure. When I was reading Jon Lee Anderson's piece in the NYer, I got a glimpse of being glad the french acted, no doubt to me re our ok. Which makes me question my own opinions. I still think it is our big feet causing conflagration as we walk.

Options open is an obvious stance to take for Obama. As is posturing from the guy Set calls got daffy.

One thing I do doubt, is that the general population in Libya, be it in Tripoli or Benghazi or the land in general, actually want to face war and destruction. And that at least some many in both the so called west and the so called arab world agree.

0 Replies

@hawkeye10,

I bet you are right.

1 Reply

@roger,

Quote:

I bet you are right.

we know enough about Clinton and Obama to know how she rolled him too, she did not go in saying "we have to be tough, we need to control events on the ground" , she rather said "we have a moral obligation to save the victims".....all of the problems that this creates, all of the hypocrisy this conveys given all of the other people that we dont save and all of those we have killed or injured in our assorted military actions over the recent past, was glossed over. Obama was not smart enough to look one move ahead, nor a good enough judge of character to see that he was being played by a chick who loves to get her rocks off in a passive/aggressive fashion.

The Brits and the French went for using power too, but that was after we guilted the Brits into it, and because a politically wounded French leader was looking for a cause to champion. Had Team Hillary not applied the guilt trip to the British and and had we not been pushing for something behind the scenes that we were not willing to push for in the open (entering the war on the side of the rebels) we would not have handed Sarkozy a ready made cause.

1 Reply

military action against Libya

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know