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Saturday, March 19, 2011

Here We Go Again

Dropping bombs at half a million a pop on children's heads, you know, for kids! "Winning!" (By the way, happy eighth birthday immoral illegal ruinously expensive catastrophically failed and very much ongoing Iraq war and occupation.)

9 comments:

Mitchell said...

You were in favor of leaving the Benghazi rebels to be defeated, then?

Dale Carrico said...

Simple as that, is it? And these monolithically construed rebels are assured victory now, on your view? And only the near-fiction of a no-fly zone as pretext for US-lead air strikes counts as support for Benghazi? Care to say with equal assurance what victory will look like when it arrives on the wings of our cruise missiles? Are you prepared to declare me a collaborator in the murder/incarceration of every freedom fighter around the planet just because I don't advocate America enter into a state of war, however undeclared, with every nation on earth (including our own) to protect their work? The no-fly commits Obama to regime change in Libya and if you think that is an unambiguously good course for us to be on I can only marvel at your confidence given our record since WW2.

Dale Carrico said...

Btw, if he pulls off a repeat of lightning-quick Gulf War 1 via Libya no doubt Obama will have given America just the dumbass hard-on it needs to re-elect him even if the wreck of the earth's third largest economy Japan, volatile oil supplies via petro-region unrest, and GOP obstructionism of any economically literate deployment of existing state-based tools to address severe economic downturns all conspire to raise the cost of living for average Americans while the jobs picture stays dismal (a state of affairs almost sure to get infantile Americans to boot him even when the alternative is palpably insane). None of that means we have to pretend war isn't as utterly deplorable a thing as it is. And it is. The whole thing makes me ill. (Yes, if you're wondering, I still am voting and campaigning strongly for Dems over Repubs, Obama included, in 2012 -- reasonable politics and reasonable ethics are different things.)

Mitchell said...

"Simple as that, is it?"

In the long term, no, but in the short term, that is what was about to happen. They had a big celebration in Benghazi when they heard about the UN resolution, then the tanks and the shells of the Libyan army started coming anyway. I suppose that in the absence of external military intervention, they might still have been defeated. But I saw Libyans on the net saying where is the UN, where is the UN, and they weren't just looking for speeches of support.

The longer term is much more troublesome because there are something like a dozen Arab countries where the regime might fall, and many of them are American allies. It all seems very 1989 to me, with Obama as Gorbachev, though I had not realized until now that the Middle East was America's Eastern Europe.

Dale Carrico said...

Again, I have to ask you if you are prepared to say that I (or you, for that matter) "favored" Ghadaffi's prior brutal crackdowns on failed Libyan insurrections just because we didn't demand bombing then as well (assuming you didn't)? Freezing assets, supporting rebels with arms and training, embargoes supplemented by humanitarian aid with free cities aren't exactly indulging in just pretty speeches, surely. If that's not enough you have to weigh that tragedy in the balance of clear national interests and unintended consequences. I can't believe you are handwaving footage of cheering crowds on day one at me like some neocon, which I know you are not -- I mean, here's hoping they're still cheering in Benghazi next year where we're going! If Benghazi becomes a UN protectorate in a de facto partitioned Libya still mostly ruled by Ghadaffi and maintained as a free zone at great US expense and with endless occasion for civilian casualties at our hands I wonder if you'll still feel this way? That it is so easy to propose this scenario makes me wonder how you can feel this way even now? Suddenly you are dropping freedom bombs across the whole of the Middle East and North Africa while practically intoning variations on the theme of the White Man's Burden, for pete's sake. You can be sure I want sustainable secular democracies in the region too -- but I am neither a neocon hawk nor a neolib interventionist, and I don't want to see US bombs or troops anywhere without a clear US defensive interest, let alone us taking charge willy-nilly when we're cutting domestic programs all in the name of swinging dick policeman of the world fantasies, however idealistic they sound in early days.

Mitchell said...

"Freezing assets, supporting rebels with arms and training, embargoes supplemented by humanitarian aid with free cities aren't exactly indulging in just pretty speeches, surely. If that's not enough you have to weigh that tragedy in the balance of clear national interests and unintended consequences."

I think that's a fair answer. I was a bit affected by seeing a citizen-journalist webcast from Benghazi a few days ago - the guy was killed while he was talking to us. War is hell, indeed.

Dale Carrico said...

Understandable -- I feel like every headline is knocking the wind out of me these days.

Poor Richard said...

I haven't said a word about Libya online and I've been feeling guilty about not taking a stand. Reading your discussion is very helpful.

Thanks. I needed that. You are making a difference to someone.

PR

Poor Richard said...

Here's my take on Libya and similar scenarios:

* People who just talk about the cost are shitbirds.
* Don't be hypocrites. Before launching missiles use all other means, which includes reversing all the ways we have been helping/enabling the regime for decades.
* Declare US corporations and persons which do business with or aid the regime to be terrorists or war criminals. Revoke their corporate charters, passports, freeze their funds, etc.
* That's probably enough, but if not, military intervention should be conducted through allies from the same region as the regime.
* Weapon systems we supply to such allies should be loaned and recovered after the conflict.
* Any direct US military intervention should be in defense of non-combatants only.

PR