U.S. and Allies Strike Libya

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If you can't arbitrarily lob missiles into foreign countries to unwind after a hard day's work, what good is the freaking job anyways?
 
well, let me interject with something I haven't fully thought through!

Regardless of all the issues of policy and economics involved here, there is another side on the streets in Libya. Sure, not everyone is a fervent member of the opposition, or a rebel fighting on the street. But there are a very good number of people who were very joyful when they saw international planes flying overhead, and the amount of hope to a beleaguered and retreating people with good and just ambitions must have been great. And not only that, a multitude of innocent lives may have been saved.
Isn't it sometimes alright to step outside of all the cynicism (which I admit has its place - is needed) and feel a bit of hope and solidarity and support for those looking to live free from senseless oppression?

There are economic costs, and political costs, and disagreements about international law; but where does the cost-benefit analysis fall if, as a result, a nation of people can have a better life for themselves and future generations? So that people won't have to suffer the same fate as Iman al-Obeidi? Imagine the devastation if failure surmounted now?

I know that this is idealistic talk, and depending on how things turn out, it could get more complicated; but so far I think it has been a fairly smooth operation, and I don't see any moral outrages to supersede the massive benefits to humanity.

I don't know, I'm shooting from the hip here, looking for a silver-lining in this incredibly intense, suspicious and pessimistic world! At the same time aware that I could be close to doey-eyed dreamer territory!
 
Yes of course we should care about oppression, but there is oppression all over the globe-so why Libya and why now? And if Libya then everywhere else too. Like I said before-what about all the women being raped in the Congo and elsewhere? If that isn't senseless oppression then I don't know what is. How is it not a moral imperative to stop that?
 
sure, but are you suggesting that unless we intervene in all these situations we should not intervene anywhere? I don't see how that is defensible.
Or maybe you're saying that this indicates motives other than pure humanitarian considerations (probably very true.) But, I'm wondering if the end result is worth it in the grand scheme in spite of these motivations.

Let me try an analogy: If a greasy business man decides to donate to a charity so that he can boost his public image and/or be able to apply for a tax credit shouldn't we be happy he donates regardless of why he does it? And regardless of the fact that he is probably capable of comfortably donating much more, and to a greater number of charities?
 
1. Why get him now, after they've left him in there the last 25 years knowing what he was
2. Why go after him for attacking his people, when the people being attacked are a well equipped rebel army, and unarmed, innocent civilians have been mercilessly attacked in other countries, even recently, (such as Bahrain) and nobody did a darn thing about it? (Sudan? China? the list goes on)
3. We can't afford it!!!!

Just wondering if anyone who hated Bush for his warmongering is at all disappointed in Obama for not only not stopping but escalating war and starting a new one?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Change eh? :eyebrow:
 
This seems like a damning point:

Moreover, the Obama administration has explained its failure to fulfill certain promises -- such as closing Gitmo -- on having to obey limits set by Congress. If the administration's view is that Congress cannot constrain the president's actions in wartime because he is commander in chief, then those restrictions are ones the administration acquiesces to willingly in order to avoid making good on politically risky commitments. If Congress can't tell the administration it can't wage war, it sure as hell can't tell the president where to keep alleged enemy prisoners.

But, I'm wondering if the end result is worth it in the grand scheme in spite of these motivations.

You can certainly wonder it, but now that it looks like we're about to arm rebels with Freedom Weapons which shoot Freedom Bullets which Liberate people from life, a plausible concern is that we've created the situation where an extended civil war will kill more civilians than would have otherwise died.
 
Just wondering if anyone who hated Bush for his warmongering is at all disappointed in Obama for not only not stopping but escalating war and starting a new one?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Change eh? :eyebrow:

I'm not happy we're in there, but one can't really make a direct comparison.

The U.S. is not leading a full fledged war, unlike Iraq.

There was an actual violent revolution taking place, unlike Iraq.
 
Or maybe you're saying that this indicates motives other than pure humanitarian considerations (probably very true.)

Yes, more like that.

I also think the whole situation is a very slippery slope that could easily dissolve into something very problematic-even a full scale war. I don't want any more of that, we've had more than enough already.
 
sure, but are you suggesting that unless we intervene in all these situations we should not intervene anywhere? I don't see how that is defensible.

I think MrsS explained it.

For me, I think intervention in the Middle East, an area of the world which the Americans (and the west in general) have shown time and time again that they don't understand - culturally, politically, historically or in any other way is extremely foolish and unnecessary. There is no end game in sight, there is no long-term plan, there are no clearly set out goals or expectations and we have no idea who these rebel groups are, who we are dealing with or what the future of Libya should look like. So no, we should not intervene.

There are business interests here and such interested parties (France & Italy leading that pack) should be the ones risking lives and getting into debt for this.

Terrible idea. Obama shouldn't have done it. Though it is by no means the first thing that he's done that's been disappointing in my eyes.
 
And not only that, a multitude of innocent lives may have been saved.
Isn't it sometimes alright to step outside of all the cynicism (which I admit has its place - is needed) and feel a bit of hope and solidarity and support for those looking to live free from senseless oppression?

This :up:

I don't care what the motives were, I'm just glad the rest of the world is doing something to stop a dictator from slaughering it's people. It's a real damn shame they don't do anything else in places like Africa, but why shit on the international community for doing something, somewhere.
 
This :up:

I don't care what the motives were, I'm just glad the rest of the world is doing something to stop a dictator from slaughering it's people. It's a real damn shame they don't do anything else in places like Africa, but why shit on the international community for doing something, somewhere.

It's messy "damned if you do, damned if you don't" territory. No doubt.
I still am not sure where this will end, but I'm glad that it is truly an international effort and not just U.S. grudge vengeance.
 
I heard on NPR yesterday that Lindsay Graham is "deeply troubled" that we have grounded our planes to allow other members of NATO to take the lead in the air strikes.

Talk about "damned if you do, damned if you don't."
 
Marines on ground in Libya


An ABC affiliate in North Carolina says more than 2,000 U.S. Marines are on the ground in Libya.

WCTI-TV in New Bern reports those Marines, assigned to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) at Camp Lejuene, are "preserving the sanctity of the city [of Ajdubiyah] and the safety of the civilians within it."

Capt. Timothy Patrick with the 26th MEU told the station: "In Libya right now they are doing exactly what we need them to do. They are doing what they are told, and right now that's protecting Libyan people against Qadhafi forces."

Evidently the Marines' efforts are being successful. The commanding officer of the 26th MEU, Col. Mark Desens, says that following a second round of strikes by AV-8B Harrier jets, the Libyan dictator's forces "are now less capable of threatening the town than before."

According to the report, the 2,200 Marines with the 26th MEU are nearing the end of their deployment in the Mediterranean area and are due to be replaced with Marines from the 22nd MEU out of Camp Lejeune. A March 7 notice from the commanding officer of the 22nd MEU says that unit was being deployed to the Mediterranean Sea earlier than previously planned.

Marines on ground in Libya (OneNewsNow.com)
 
well, wouldn't there be a distinction between the Marine Corps and "ground troops"? My understanding is that the 26th MEU were deployed in 2010, before this current crisis. They are not stationed on the ground, but on naval vessels, where they are prepared for quick deployment (i.e. to rescue a fallen pilot)

But, I know very very little about this. Anyone else know more? I'd be interested to learn about it.
 
I looked into it, the article was mistaken, as they are not actually on the ground. They're part of the 26 Marine Expeditionary Unit stationed on the USS Kearsarge. They're off the coast of Libya.
 
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The following is the text of a letter sent to President Barack Obama on Wednesday by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. The misspellings and grammatical errors are in the original letter.


Our son, Excellency,

President Obama

U.S.A

We have been hurt more morally that physically because of what had happened against us in both deeds and words by you. Despite all this you will always remain our son whatever happened. We still pray that you continue to be president of the U.S.A. We Endeavour and hope that you will gain victory in the new election campaigne. You are a man who has enough courage to annul a wrong and mistaken action. I am sure that you are able to shoulder the responsibility for that. Enough evidence is available, Bearing in mind that you are the president of the strongest power in the world nowadays, and since Nato is waging an unjust war against a small people of a developing country. This country had already been subjected to embargo and sanctions, furthermore it also suffered a direct military armed aggression during Reagan's time. This country is Libya. Hence, to serving world peace ... Friendship between our peoples ... and for the sake of economic, and security cooperation against terror, you are in a position to keep Nato off the Libyan affair for good.

As you know too well democracy and building of civil society cannot be achieved by means of missiles and aircraft, or by backing armed member of AlQuaeda in Benghazi.


You — yourself — said on many occasions, one of them in the UN General Assembly, I was witness to that personally, that America is not responsible for the security of other peoples. That America helps only. This is the right logic.

Our dear son, Excellency, Baraka Hussein Abu oumama, your intervention is the name of the U.S.A. is a must, so that Nato would withdraw finally from the Libyan affair. Libya should be left to Libyans within the African union frame. The problem now stands as follows:-

1. There is Nato intervention politically as well as military.

2. Terror conducted by AlQaueda gangs that have been armed in some cities, and by force refused to allow people to go back to their normal life, and carry on with exercising their social people's power as usual.

Mu'aumer Qaddaffi

Leader of the Revolution

Tripoli 5.4.2011
 
General: US may consider sending troops into Libya - World news - Mideast/N. Africa - msnbc.com

AJDABIYAH, Libya — The U.S. may consider sending troops into Libya with a possible international ground force that could aid the rebels, the former U.S. commander of the military mission said Thursday, describing the ongoing operation as a stalemate that is more likely to go on now that America has handed control to NATO.

But Army Gen. Carter Ham also told lawmakers that American participation in a ground force would not be ideal, since it could erode the international coalition attacking Moammar Gadhafi's forces and make it more difficult to get Arab support for operations in Libya.

He said NATO has done an effective job in an increasingly complex combat situation. But he noted that, in a new tactic, Gadhafi's forces are making airstrikes more difficult by staging their fighters and vehicles near civilian areas such as schools and mosques.

The use of an international ground force is a possible plan to bolster the Libyan rebels, Ham said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Asked whether the U.S. would provide troops, Ham said, "I suspect there might be some consideration of that. My personal view at this point would be that that's probably not the ideal circumstance, again for the regional reaction that having American boots on the ground would entail."

President Barack Obama has said repeatedly there will be no U.S. troops on the ground in Libya, although there are reports of small CIA teams in the country.
 
Washington Post, April 8
The deputy commander of NATO operations in Libya acknowledged Friday that NATO warplanes may have mistakenly bombed rebel forces Thursday near Brega, killing at least five people and generating angry complaints from rebel leaders. But Rear Adm. Russell Harding, in a briefing from his Naples headquarters, declined to apologize for the lethal mistake. Instead, he sought to shift the blame to rebel commanders, who he said had deployed captured Libyan army tanks for the first time, unbeknownst to NATO pilots flying bombing raids high over the area.

...The admission further underscored the lack of communication between opposition leadership in eastern Libya and NATO. The rebel military commander, Abdul Fattah Younis, said Thursday that they had notified NATO they would be deploying tanks while also saying he was not in direct contact with NATO...Asked how communications between NATO and rebel forces could be improved to prevent more such friendly fire casualties, Harding said that was not NATO’s problem.
:der:
 
Notice how now we are not merely "protecting civilians" but instead actively aiding the rebels now.

What a farce.
 
Daily Beast, April 10
In less than four months, as uprisings have swept through the Arab world, we've seen that the once-comfortable Arab elites and their backers in Europe and the United States not only don't know what to do, they don't even know what to say. Regimes in Tunisia and Egypt toppled. Libya sank into civil war with NATO's desultory participation taking it toward stalemate, maybe even break-up. Bahrain erupted and Saudi Arabia intervened. Yemen continues blowing up and the dictator is finding himself utterly friendless while al Qaeda exploits the chaos. Syria is facing an uprising the likes of which it hasn't seen since the Hama massacre of 1982. Jordan is looking shaky. Palestinians are growing bitterly impatient with their own leadership and, now under bombardment from Israel, their anger continues to intensify. The Iranian regime is making mischief among the Arabs wherever it can, all the while worrying about a resurgence of the 2009 uprising that shattered whatever credibility its theocracy had left.

As this beat goes on, there's an ill-disguised hope in Washington and in European capitals that somebody can be stomped—a dictator here, a rebellion there—and somehow everything will calm down. (Does anybody in any Western capital, or in Israel, really want to see Bashar al-Assad go down in Damascus? The "what next" is almost too complicated and crazy to contemplate.) But no matter what Washington or Paris or London does, the unrest throughout the Arab world inspired by the self-immolation of a Tunisian vegetable seller on December 17 is going to continue. In Egypt over the last few days a military and police crackdown on Tahrir protesters cost two lives, and ex-President Hosni Mubarak made a speech defending his record. This isn't so much democracy as déjà vu, and there's doubtless worse to come. As Al-Hayat columnist Raghida Dergham puts it, the Arab Spring will be followed by summer, fall—and winter.

Ultimately, if we want to take the very long view, all this is to the good. Decades ago, historian David Fromkin put his finger on the essential problem in his classic history of the partition of the Middle East after World War I, 'A Peace to End All Peace.' "The characteristic feature of the region's politics," he wrote, is that "in the Middle East there is no sense of legitimacy—no agreement on rules of the game—and no belief, universally shared in the region, that within whatever boundaries, the entities that call themselves countries or the men who claim to be rulers are entitled to recognition as such." What we're watching right now is the painful creation of a new Middle East where, eventually, countries will be recognized as legitimate reflections of their people's national identities, and governance will have the legitimacy of popular support. As Fromkin pointed out, after the fall of the Roman empire, it took Europe more than 1500 years, and many disastrous wars, to get that far.

In the Middle East, the process won't last that long. We're probably talking decades rather than centuries. But those decades will be tough. And one of the great frustrations for the Western powers is that they're not really going to be able to do much to affect the outcome.
What Libya has shown us is that these powers only find the political will to act in extremis, to stop a massacre, not to build a country.

So, whether as spectators or erratic participants in events, there are a couple of key points we in the West would do well to keep in mind. First of all, it's time to get over the idea that Arabs really aren't up to the job of governing themselves. This has been the quasi-racist subtext of Western policy toward the Middle East at least since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, when European powers drew lines on maps and called them national borders. The presumption is that those countries had to be ruled by colonial powers or strongmen more or less beholden to them. The protests, uprisings, and revolutions we've seen in the last few months are entirely Arab, focused on Arab interests, and the governments that eventually emerge will be, too. But it's also true that the Arabs of today—the two-thirds of the population that are under the age of 30—are connected to the world and to each other to an extent never before imagined by their parents, by their rulers, or by the Western powers who thought those rulers were secure. In December and January, Burson-Marsteller conducted a poll of Arabs aged 18 to 24 in 10 Middle Eastern countries, and the results, published last month show just how quickly, and potently, political awareness has been growing. In 2008, only 50% of the respondents in that age group said "living in a democratic country" was important to them. At the beginning of this year—before any dictators had actually been overthrown—that figure had gone up to 92%. Clearly the Internet and social networking have played a role: In 2009, 56% used the Web daily, in 2010 the number was 80%, although most still get their news mainly from television.

...But nobody in the West can make these things happen for them. And nobody will.
 
Good article. :up:

I got a little curious this evening after I started recognizing a similar pattern in Libya discussions: frustratingly vague references to what everyone knew Gaddafi in his own words had promised would happen to Benghazi. He swore a massacre, a slaughter, no doubt, killing everyone in the town:

If I have the general references right, they all refer to roughly March 17th, when Gaddafi was about to hit Benghazi. And this is what Reuters said, via the HuffPo:
TRIPOLI, March 17 (Reuters) - Muammar Gaddafi told Libyan rebels on Thursday his armed forces were coming to their capital Benghazi tonight and would not show any mercy to fighters who resisted them.

In a radio address, he told Benghazi residents that soldiers would search every house in the city and people who had no arms had no reason to fear.


"It's over ... We are coming tonight," he said. "You will come out from inside. Prepare yourselves from tonight. We will find you in your closets."

The speech was broadcast on radio and television shortly after a defence ministry statement warned that any foreign military action would trigger counter-attacks and endanger all air and sea traffic in the Mediterranean region.

In Benghazi, live footage on Al Jazeera television showed hundreds of defiant Libyan rebels gathered in the central square waving the tricolour flag of the monarchy era in a rally after Gaddafi's speech was broadcast.

In the speech, the Libyan leader denounced the rebels and said: "We will show no mercy and no pity to them".

He also told his troops not to pursue any rebels who drop their guns and flee when government forces reach the city.

Several other articles from around that time followed in this vein, all saying roughly the same approximation.

Based on those sources, what would have happened in Benghazi sounds like what any army would have done in crushing the last vestige of an unsuccessful revolutionary insurrection. It would have been tragic and people would have died, but based on his words it does not sound extraordinary. Further, he even adds promises for those rebels who give up peacefully. This is, in a sense, fairly narrowly targeted: one could say "well, can you really trust a murderous thug like Gaddafi anyway?" (completely true! but the whole premise of the original argument I'm responding to is that we were supposed to take him at face value about his murderous promises!).

I hope I'm being understandable here. If one says "this intervention could cost many many lives by causing a stalemate", the response tends to be "at least we averted a massacre!" What is the support for that thought? I don't particularly enjoy defending dictators in some small measure, but this stems from a genuine desire to nail down the sources for why Westerners evidently thought disaster was about to strike Benghazi. If I am missing key quotes I would appreciate being corrected.
 
^ It's a good point, though to be fair to the case for 'preventing massacres,' I think the viciousness of the initial crackdown on (unarmed) protesters in Tripoli--which was also accompanied by Qaddafi publically urging his supporters to "attack them in their lairs," and did indeed result in massacres--probably affected how his later address concerning Benghazi was interpreted.
 
I hope I'm being understandable here. If one says "this intervention could cost many many lives by causing a stalemate", the response tends to be "at least we averted a massacre!" What is the support for that thought? I don't particularly enjoy defending dictators in some small measure, but this stems from a genuine desire to nail down the sources for why Westerners evidently thought disaster was about to strike Benghazi. If I am missing key quotes I would appreciate being corrected.

I hear you. We intervened AFTER the massacre, or at least most of it. What was the point?

Does anyone know what the death count in the protests actually were?
 
^ There isn't any truly solid data on that at this point, due to the lack of reliable sources inside Libya. Most estimates from major human rights NGOs I've seen (AI, HRW, IFHR etc.) put civilian deaths in the mid-to-high hundreds, with most of them occurring in late February.
 
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