U.S. and Allies Strike Libya

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I thought it started today, at least the talking about it. No links in there to news report, but I got the impression they felt they weren't needed at the moment, as everyone participating in the thread knew it was going on.

This appears to be the first post with the news:

http://www.u2interference.com/forum...ya-as-tripoli-burns-209729-7.html#post7154751

It's entirely possible I'm misunderstanding the last page or so of posts, and if so - sorry.
 
We were discussing it there. We were talking about whether or not the Opposition will be able to fill the vaccum effectively if and when Gadhaffi's regime comes crumbling down due to the new added pressure the air strikes are putting on.
 
We were discussing it there. We were talking about whether or not the Opposition will be able to fill the vaccum effectively if and when Gadhaffi's regime comes crumbling down due to the new added pressure the air strikes are putting on.




Please post where you were discussing the U.S. air strikes on Libya.


That was the current news on this thread.
 
It was mentioned on page 7, and several people commented on their opinions of the action taken. Honestly I don't care where it's discussed lol.
 
:huh:...I don't understand how you're not seeing the discussion, Iron Horse.

Regardless, it's probably better to have a new thread on the topic.
 
I was just passing on the most current news on Libya.

Are you, for some reason, incapable of seeing this posts and those thereafter?


The U.S. has fired missiles at Libyan forces loyal to Gaddafi, and French planes are patrolling the skies.

Canada is part of a coalition that includes the U.S. and France, and has sent six fighter jets to the region to participate in the strikes.
 
Some interesting commentary:

Those who remember the October War in the Middle East will find the numerical designation of this particular UN Resolution ironic, to put it mildly. The war launched to prepare the ground for peace— so claim the defenders of the late Anwar Sadat—led to the most dangerous moment in the Cold War since 1962.

Talleyrand, like many other people, is very perplexed by this most recent action. Several European nations, the United States and a few token others have decided to intervene militarily in a civil war on the losing side, and just at the moment when these forces were on the verge of defeat.

The assumption appears to be that Col. Gaddafi and those with him will be so intimidated, demoralized or simply disrupted as to surrender in short order and cede control of the country and its resources to a capable and effective national government led presumably by those now active in Benghazi. If that assumption proves incorrect, the next assumption appears to be that he will be defeated, also in short order, by superior air power. If that assumption proves incorrect, the next assumption appears to be that his Libyan enemies will be so emboldened by outside intervention that they will finish the job themselves. If that assumption proves incorrect, the final assumption appears to be that the “coalition of the willing” will just keep bombing until something else happens. That something else is vague, but the assumption appears to be that it will be better than the state of affairs in Libya during the past four decades.

The larger assumption, of course, is that this action, in addition to being the “right” thing to do, will keep the Arab democratic revolution alive and its well-wishers in good favor with the judges of History, their earlier actions and policies, and residual guilt, notwithstanding. And of course, that assumption is based paradoxically on another assumption: the immediate effects of this action will remain confined to Libya.

Talleyrand does not know if any of these assumptions is realistic. Unlike those making them, presumably, he knows very little about Libya and Libyans. But he is reasonably confident that one particular assumption will prove true: Colonel Gaddafi will be the last ruler ever to surrender his WMD, for any reason or at any price.

Jeff Goldberg:

But: Do we really know who would rule Libya if Qaddafi disappeared from the scene? I met a whole bunch of anti-Qaddafi activists in Cairo last week, and they didn't fill me with good feeling about their intentions or their beliefs. Or, for that matter, their competence. I know that there are many brave people among the opposition, and I wish fervently for their success, on the theory that they can't be worse than Qaddafi. But I'm not one hundred percent behind this theory.
 
This really reminds me of the beginning of the Gulf War in January 1991. We know it's mostly a just action, but where the hell will it stop?
 
Obama or Bush, it doesn't really matter does it?

Gunfire, explosions heard in Tripoli - CNN.com

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what on earth is the red and blue thing rolling with geordi? this fascinates me intensely
 
Whoo boy here's a behind-the-scenes:

As a fleet of French airplanes lacerated a column of Libyan army vehicles near Benghazi on Saturday, President Obama stuck to his pre-arranged schedule in Brazil, receiving whispered updates from his aides. Within three hours, more than 100 cruise missiles had hit two dozen targets in Libya. That’s just “the first phase,” William Gortney, the director of the Joint Staff, told reporters.

What he didn't say: it's the first phase of what will become Barack Obama's first new war. By directing the military to hit targets inside Libya, the Obama administration is trying to strike an incredibly delicate balance between a strong disinclination to invade a Muslim country and their determined desire to avoid looking like they’re walking away from the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents.

When Muammar el-Qaddafi first struck back against protesters, Obama hoped that tough sanctions and material support to the opposition would be enough to force the dictator from power. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned him that a “no fly zone” would be ineffective and essentially commit the country to war. By Monday night, it was clear to Obama that this policy wasn’t working. Countries like Iran were getting the wrong message. The Libyan military was selectively testing the patience of the world by striking opposition strongholds. The opposition was pinned down in the port city of Benghazi, swelled by tens of thousands of refugees. Qaddafi kept using a phrase: “no mercy” that stuck in Obama’s head. And France, smarting from seeming to abandon Egyptians during their time of trouble, along with the U.K., were champing at the bit to use force. The Arab League had kicked Libya out and was closer to the French position. It risked its own legitimacy, already questioned by many in the region, if it didn’t side with the rebels.

On Tuesday, during a meeting of his national security team, Obama said he wanted a new policy. “Clearly what we’re doing is not enough,” he said, according to contemporaneous notes kept by a participant. A “humanitarian disaster” was imminent unless something was done. He wanted more options.

Gates wanted to game out scenarios, knowing that any effective no fly zone would necessitate a cascade of other military actions that would look a heck of a lot like an invasion, no matter how carefully it was done.

Thomas P. Donilon, the national security adviser and one of the gatekeepers of Obama’s foreign policy, was worried about the strategic implications of both allowing Qaddafi to succeed in retaking control of Benghazi as well as what would happen down the road in other countries if a successful military response ousted him from power with a minimum of bloodshed. Even the lightest military footprint would result in civilian casualties, he warned. Almost as inevitable would be the death of a coalition soldier or the downing of an airplane.

Hillary Rodham Clinton said instability in Libya threatened to clip the democratic aspirations of its two neighbors, Egypt and Tunisia. She was also worried about the message to Iran if the U.S. and its allies did nothing in Libya: America was so afraid of committing its military to protect Muslims and Arabs that it would allow virtually anything to happen.

The meeting broke up.

Donilon would take charge of a rapid-fire series of conference calls and meetings and would, by that night, bring to the president three new policy proposals, each of which would call for a mix of diplomatic, military and intelligence actions against Libya. Obama had dinner with his combat commanders, and solicited their input about what challenges the military would face. At 9 p.m. that night, he reconvened only his principals. (Secretary Clinton was represented by her deputy, James Steinberg.) Donilon laid out his proposals. After about an hour, the Situation Room had come to a rough consensus: a no fly zone wouldn’t work, but more words would not work either. Obama instructed his U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, to inform the Security Council that France’s resolution, which called for a no fly zone and little else, was insufficient. He asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, to turn into him by the next evening a Concept of Operation Plan, or CONPLAN, for a NATO-executed military campaign in Libya that would be assisted by Arab countries.

In closed session at the UN, Rice laid out the U.S. position. The situation was urgent and dire. But the world had to know precisely what it would mean to keep Libyan troops from murdering their own citizens. Any resolution would have to include language authorizing strikes against Libyan military infrastructure on the ground to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. “We are not going to hide pooch,” Rice said in the meeting, according to a U.S. official. “We must be completely clear about what we are going to do and why.” And Arab countries must participate, she insisted, in some visible way, in the campaign. She proposed a number of amendments that added significant heft to the resolution.

For the next 24 hours, Clinton and Rice tag-teamed Arab countries and members of the Security Council. They argued that if nothing was done, despots and beleaguered leaders everywhere would vow never to repeat the “mistake” of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who yielded power without foreign military intervention. Iran, in particular, would find itself with an incentive to continue to spread its proxy forces to other countries and further repress its own citizens. And Rice has made the reinvigoration of the United Nations one of her prime goals as ambassador. The legitimacy of that body was at stake too, she argued.

On Wednesday, at about 6:30 p.m., Mullen and Donilon presented Obama with their CONPLAN for Libya. Its contents are mostly classified; an official said the air strikes on Saturday were one part of a larger campaign that includes a variety of overt and covert actions. Published reports suggest that U.K. special operations forces were secreted in the country, scouting out the battlefield in preparation for air strikes. The U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command moved several tactical air teams to a small base on Crete. In order to try and disguise their movements, the U.S. planes changed their call signs once they entered airspace over the Mediterranean, but commercial software that tracks their transponders revealed the shift, and word leaked out on Twitter. These teams would coordinate the air assault but are capable of parachuting into a region and directing them from the ground.

On Friday, the U.S. moved a Rivet Joint signals intelligence plane to Souda Air Base on a Greek Island, bearing the provocative call sign of “SNOOP 55.” Subs capable of launching Tomahawk missiles idled near Italy. The USS Florida, armed with more than 100 Tomahawks, moved into firing range. Twenty four hours after the U.S. introduced its amendments, it got its resolution, 10-0. Obama spoke with his counterparts in France and the UK and agreed that they’d give Qadaffi 24 hours to turn heel and retreat. If he didn’t, France would begin the bombardment.

It was important to the U.S. that Libyans and the world understand that this coalition of the willing was more than a U.S. rhetorical construct. An hour before bombing began Saturday, Clinton spoke to the press in Paris. Asked why military action was in America’s interest, she gave three reasons and implied a fourth. A destabilizing force would jeopardize progress in Tunisia and Egypt; a humanitarian disaster was imminent unless prevented; Qaddafi could not flout international law without consequences. The fourth: there’s a line now, and one that others countries had better not cross.

The development of a new doctrine in the Middle East is taking form, and it could become a paradigm for how the international community deals with unrest across the region from now on. The new elements include the direct participation of the Arab world, the visible participation of U.S. allies, as well as a very specific set of military targets designed to forestall needless human suffering. Though the Libyan situation is quite unique - its military is nowhere near as strong as Iran’s is, for one thing – Obama hopes that a short, surgical, non-US-led campaign with no ground troops will satisfy Americans skeptical about military intervention and will not arouse the suspicions of Arabs and Muslims that the U.S. is attempting to influence indigenously growing democracies.

I don't understand the depth of this Iranian paranoia.
 
what does this mean, anyway?

I'm sure it had to do with intervening in affairs that shouldn't concern the US.
IH is a staunch libertarian from what I gather.

But to answer Iron Horse's question in the context in which he asked it.

No. Is this a surprise?

And barring Carter, you can add every President since and including Truman to that list. They all intervened somewhere.
 
Damned if they do, damned if they don't, I suppose.
I tend to think - that anything beyond air support is too much from the US standpoint.
Let everyone else handle this one, if at all possible.
 
Militarily, I agree, but the paradigm shift taking place in the region now is the chance for the US to actually be a boon to the world community, to be diplomatically aid in regime change, and advising to emerging democracies in the region. These are big opportunities for the people of these nations, and a big chance for the US to make up for a lot of greedy foreign policy fuck-ups.
 
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