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UN Intervention Begins In Libya
maliamnon writes "US, French, and British forces began enforcing a UN resolution (1973/2011) to defend civilians in Libya today. French aircraft are attacking tanks, while the US and possibly UK are supporting the operation with cruise missiles from sea."
Update: 03/19 22:34 GMT by T :
Adds reader bloggerkg: "More than 110 Tomahawk missiles fired from American and British ships and submarines hit about 20 Libyan air and missile defense targets in western portions of the country, US Vice Adm. William Gortney said at a Pentagon briefing. The US will conduct a damage assessment of the sites, which include SA-5 missiles and communications facilities. A senior US military official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the missiles landed near Misrata and Tripoli, the capital and Gadhafi's stronghold."
FTFA: "The UN Security Council has passed a resolution authorising "all necessary measures" to protect civilians in Libya from pro-Gaddafi forces."
The goal of it is to assist the anti-Qaddafi rebels; they are the 'ground forces'.
Or so it seems based on the resolution.
The people against Bush were against the questionable intelligence of WMDs by the Hussein regime. This UN-sanctioned action is to protect civilians against a violent quelling of a peaceful uprising. Can you see a difference there?
...is like fucking for virginity!
Yeah, yer right, the nerve of the West to attempt knock over a ruthless dictator who has supported the worst sort of despots throughout Africa and who decided his people should have no right to self-determination. What were they thinking? What were you thinking?
The mandate for action and the goal seem clear. Clear the way so the Lybians themselves can march into Tripoli. Much better outcome than having US troops on the ground not knowing who to shoot. Added bonus, we -start- to make a clear break from the ruthless dictators we've supported in the name of the cold war and later the phantom menace, er, I mean the war on terror.
Letting the Q-Man succeed would have been the best thing the West could have done to ensure continued supplies of Libyan oil. They did the one thing that would jeopardize that flow.
The Arab League and the UN have spoken. Strangely enough, the French acted first in support of both those organizations. Us and the Brits joined them. Also, if we clear the path for the Lybian rebels, who then march into Tripoli, then we're "helping" instead of "dictating".
It was going to be France, UK and Italy, but for some reason the US did not want to miss the party.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
Oh BS. People like you whine when no one goes in to protect civilians and also whine when someone does.
...knock over a ruthless dictator...
We got a plate full of ruthless dictators.. Like my mother said, "Pick the one closest to you".. Is that how it goes? Once again, just like before, you are believing the lies... Incredible... Get it through your head.. We aren't wanted there...
We pull our destroyer up to the dock, "mind if we park here for a few minutes?"
You are deluded as ever if you believe for a second we are helping anybody but the money changers..
I am dismayed and shocked.. You illustrate how little hope there is.. War is the solution to everything for you people. Horrible
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
the rest of the UN nations are doing what exactly to support this? Sure the security council nations have the highest obligation but there's no reason Italy, Netherlands, Greece, South Africa, and a multitude of other nations can't get involved.
Italy is providing naval and air bases as staging points for NATO operations. I think some Canadian and other nation's jets are beginning to be staged out of southern Sicily.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Well, Italy is letting the UN forces use their ports and airbases, Denmark and Norway have both sent fighters.
Not to mention that the first planes that went into Libyan airspace were French and British. Oh, and various shared NATO resources, and the french have the Charles de Gaulle parked off the Libyan coast and...
Oh sorry, you wanted to rant about how Amurka(!) is always called upon to play the world police only to be bashed by the world community. Feel free to continue.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
That's because the decision to protect or not protect civilians is essentially 100% correlated with either oil or some sort of important political motive. Humanitarianism is not a factor in the equation -- if it were, we'd invade Africa.
We surely did not give a flying crap before.
And if we look at how we are doing NOTHING when it is happening in Bahrain or Yemen, it simply makes us hypocrits. Same was with Egypt.
Maybe in Bahrain or in Yemen's case, we were unsure who might come out on top and we did not want to spoil our good relations with the local despots.
Hell in Haiti we even supported the rebels against a democratically elected government with arms and when the rebels took over, we helped them take away everyone's weapons again. (would not want our new puppet Government to fall again)
Fact is, we don't care who is in charge of a country as long as we get what we want.
We aren't wanted there? Ask the protesters. They want us there.
What, we aren't wanted there by the Libyan government? The leader who has said he has no problem killing as many people as it takes to retain control over his country? The government that has been gunning down peaceful protests with machine guns (sure, the protests aren't very peaceful now, but that's why)? The government that was sending fighter jets against chants and flags?
When innocent people are being murder by the hundreds and thousands for doing nothing more than speaking their minds...we have a responsibility as human beings to take action to help them. I can agree that military action is not always the best choice. If you have some alternative proposal, I may agree with you 100% after hearing it. But at the moment, I see no other option.
On a related note, it could be said that France wasn't wanted in the American Revolution either. But they got involved. And without their involvement, it is quite likely that the US would not exist as a nation.
US: bankrupt ...
UK: bankrupt
France: close to bankrupt, just not so well known
Belgium: bankrupt country without a government goes to war
Growing economies don't participate in this stupid war.
Germany - No, Brasil - No, India - No, China - No...
You got your history turned upside down. The UN agreed with the Afghanistan war in 2001 mission as there was a proper reason for it. Only when Bush extended it to Iraq in 2003 for no reason at all against the will of every country other than the UK (prime minister only, the population was against the war too) and a few paid off votes did the global opinion turn around.
And opening a second front in Iraq and splitting the forces is one of the main reason why Afghanistan turned into the quagmire it is now, so there's no surprise in countries like Spain and Germany wanting to pull out from there after the US fucked that one up.
> Humanitarianism is not a factor in the equation
Have you ever actually met UN prosecutors? Or policymakers? There are a lot of bottom-dwellers on the world stage, yes, and a lot of really self-involved people in power throughout the world. But there are also a lot of really good people involved in the work, and a lot of really competent people who believe in what they're doing, and there are people who--though they are self-involved--genuinely care about whether or not other people are dying.
Humanitarianism is a factor in the equation. It's just not the only factor. Wars cost a lost of money and lives, and UN intervention is sometimes good and sometimes bad. If you think they don't care whether their presence helps or hurts, you don't know them at all.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
War is the solution to everything for you people. Horrible
No, but sometimes the use of force is the only way to stop someone like Gaddafi from continuing to use force as he slaughters his own people. I realize that you think he should just stop doing so because several Important People have used Really Stern Language telling him that he must stop doing so. But (shockingly!) he just keeps on dropping bombs on those civilians, and using artillery to kill them. What part of that are you not actually understanding? Or when say that we're "believing lies," do you mean that the Gaddafi regime's statements about the nature of what they're doing is actually the correct body of information? That all of the international press on the ground - who are sending us video of Gaddafi's aircraft attacking people on the ground - that they're all part of the conspiracy?
And you're calling other people deluded? How much money are you getting from Gaddafi to astroturf on behalf of his regime, anyway? Do tell.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Also, if we wanted oil, they'd be called "Terrorists", not "rebels" or "freedom fighters".
Yes, except that this was a UN resolution.
Wonder what the UN thought about us going into Iraq... oh wait.
Amazingly, not all wars are created equal. In fact, not all wars in oil-rich Arab countries are created equal. I know this might be difficult for you to understand.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
We are effectively playing the role of the French in the American Revolutionary War - keeping the powerful weaponry at bay so that they can liberate themselves. In the Revolutionary War, the French helped keep the British Navy at bay, something we could not do for ourselves. Similarly here we are keeping the planes/armor that the Libyans can't deal with themselves at bay.
Bullshit. Saddam Hussein was a fucking monster who had more blood on his hands than Qaddafi has ever dreamed of.
That's beside the point - it's not a game of "who is the worst dictator?". If it was, perhaps Idi Amin - who killed hundreds of thousands of his people - would have been deposed. Oddly enough, Gaddafi gave him military support at one time, but Amin died in Saudi (I'm reading this stuff off wikipedia, naturally :)
Of course getting rid of Saddam was good in of itself; but part of the reason why it hasn't gone ... so smoothly since the actual invasion might be that the Iraqis don't feel 'liberated'. This is why the nations attacking Libya at the moment are trying to do it without landing troops. Well, except us British, who sent a diplomat with some special forces as protection, and got chucked out of the country again. Leading to the classic quote from one of the rebels "Why didn't they ask us? There is a proper way to do these things...".
The fact that the French took the lead on this says volumes about how big of a pussy Obama really is.
I really don't think the states needs to flash the size of its dick again quite so soon. If it's going to be done, it should be done right, and welllll, America doesn't exactly have the best reputation for taking charge and doing it right at the moment.
Just to note, I'm in the UK and to be honest I'd say the same for our country right now. Also, I recommend you actually read the quick analysis on the bbc website. The most important phrases in the analysis I feel are this:
Crucially it excludes any "foreign occupation force" in sweeping terms. This is a message to the Arab world - this is not another Iraq.
and this:
[] a final settlement to the crisis in Libya must be political and reached by the parties to the conflict themselves
This is not the same as what Bush did. Libya UN Resolution 1973: Text analysed
Who need's speling and grammar?
So because we didn't do anything in the past, we should never do anything in the present or future? We (the United States) are not allowed to admit we made a mistake in Iraq and try to fix that mistake by stopping our unilateral regime-change actions and instead joining a UN action against Gaddafi? That it is the French and US providing the forces does not change that it is a UN mission.
Wow. Political, military, and historical ignorance plus a gratuitous anti-French slur all in four lines! (Not counting whitespace.) You must have worked really hard to pack that much small-mindedness into such a short post. Um, congratulations, I guess.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Be careful when you tell other people they're getting their history wrong. The UN authorized force to deal with Saddam when he invaded Kuwait. He never complied with the terms of the "cease fire" that saved his skin as he pulled back from that invasion, and he continued to shoot at the allied aircraft enforcing the UN-approved no-fly zone set up to prevent his ongoing slaughter of innocents in the north and south. He never stopped fighting following his invasion of Kuwait. All the rest is beside the point, and demanded the use of force to finally stop his regime. On top of that, of course, he never complied with the UN mandates that he allow proper inspections to find out what he did with the mountains of VX gas and other goodies that UN inspectors saw on the ground.
Combine that with Saddam's ongoing construction of the long-range missiles he promised to stop building/importing, his publicly announced cash payments to suicide bombers, his smuggling operations with places like North Korea, his violation of the terms of the financial aid packages intended to feed and care for his citizens (he used the money for weapons, cash for cronies, and more palace building) and you have the conditions that led to the UN authorizing force to remove him. Don't know how you forgot that part, but apparently you did.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
We aren't wanted there? Ask the protesters. They want us there.
Depends on when you ask.
At the beginning, they didn't want us there (March 2nd). Of course, once the government started using tanks, fighters, etc. the opinions kinda changed...
the rest of the UN nations are doing what exactly to support this?
That's just what I could quickly dredge up from BBC News
Pirate Party UK
You destroy someone's tanks and fighters today. Next week you sell them new tanks and fighters. Profits and Chaos are the byproducts of the transaction.
Sorry for the flippant answer. I am sure that whoever replaced Halliburton in controlling the current administration did an analysis that showed deployment of ground troops was not necessary to generate obscene profits.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
And in favor of the even more ruthless regimes that will likely follow...
There was never a good choice. Hopefully it will turn out that this was at least the least bad option. Things are starting to get pretty hot everywhere, though. I hope Tunisia won't turn out to be the Archduke Ferdinand of our generation.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Like when he gassed his own people?
... which happened at a time when the US considered him our best buddy in the Middle East and enthusiastically supported his regime because he was fighting Big Bad Iran, yeah. Like that.
There was really one and only one point when the US and our allies had both the moral authority and the military opportunity to do in Iraq what we're currently doing (or at least starting to do) in Libya: at the end of Desert Storm, when we had the largest allied military force assembled since WW2 waiting just across the border in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and a genuine popular uprising took place against Hussein's battered but still powerful army. Instead, we stood back and let the rebels get slaughtered. As one of the people who would have been fighting that war, having just done my part in fighting the last war (you know, the one that we won) I can't decide to this day if I wish we'd gone in or not. But I have no reservations in saying that doing what we did instead -- letting the serious internal opposition get wiped out, maintaining sanctions and a no-fly zone for over a decade with the inevitable hardening of national will, and then going to war over something that had nothing to do with Iraq or Hussein at all -- was unmitigated stupidity.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
War is the solution to everything for you people. Horrible
War is the solution to nothing for you people. Delusional.
That's about 5-7 years of NPR funding right there.
While I can't really disagree with you since Egypt and Tunisia aren't major oil players it should be noted their protests were mostly without military action and wouldn't have warranted UN intervention in any case.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
For the fourth time since Vietnam, I am living through the exact same scenario as your responses show today. It is truly astounding.. Hitchcock couldn't dream this up.. Maybe some science fiction writers have, I don't know. But what I see here is getting to be spooky.
We are sticking our nose in there to ensure we have a pro western regime in place. It is why we are repressing protests in Bahrain. The protesters there are too friendly with Iran. And we need the parking space. We aren't there to help anybody but ourselves to whatever they might have.
Please, it was eight short years ago when they pulled this. Why is everybody so fast to fall for the same ruse again?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
The rebels were doing pretty well until Gaddafi brought his air force out.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
War is the solution to everything for you people. Horrible
You may not have noticed, but "we" (the West, the Arabs, everyone else) didn't start any war in Libya. A dictator was mowing down his own people. The UN getting involved isn't starting a war, it's preventing someone almost universally regarded as evil from winning. "War" is not the solution - involvement is. If the Arab League and NATO aren't welcome, the people dancing in the streets have a funny way of protesting.
Personally, I'm quite selfish and would have been perfectly content to just sit this one out. But since we're involved now, I hope that Qaddafi recognizing futility when he sees it and doesn't get his whole military killed.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It is easy to say that the US should not interfere with other countries, but: "with great power comes great responsibility".
Like it or not: the US are the world police. They have a big army and lots of fancy military equipment, and most of the time I believe they are really trying to do what is best for everybody, and prevent bloodshed etc. etc. With an army as big as theirs, they have a moral obligation to intervene when people are being killed for no apparent reason (or for "bad" reasons, whatever that means). It is however not so easy to decide when to intervene, because it is often not clear what exactly "good" and "bad" reasons are: wars and international politics are not as straightforward as movies (I wish they were. It would either make the movies more interesting or the politics easier to understand).
And yes, they will sometimes decide to intervene when it should not have been done. That is always easy to say afterwards. How many times have you made wrong decisions in your personal life (or in your MMORPG if you prefer)? Often enough, I bet. The consequences may be smaller in case of personal decisions, but should that be a reason for a country to sit back and do nothing? No.
But Libya doesn't have that much oil, only about 1% of world production. I was 100% against the invasion of Iraq, but in this case there is a home grown up rising that needs some help. If all we do is destroy Libyan military forces that are murdering civilians, but otherwise leave the revolution to the locals I support this action.
Anarchists never rule
At the beginning, they didn't want us there (March 2nd). [presstv.ir] Of course, once the government started using tanks, fighters, etc. the opinions kinda changed...
Well yea, the entire argument for us being there is based on the government using tanks, fighters, etc. to gun down innocent (and some not so innocent I suppose) people. On March 2nd, I too would have been saying that we have no business getting involved. Things have changed.
I respectfully disagree. I believe the decision is based in large part upon whether intervention stands a substantial, realistic chance to do any good. Military intervention in places like Somalia would accomplish nothing productive; it's been tried. There often is no central government oppressing and attacking people, it's dozens (or more) bands of irregulars, led by warlords working mostly from drug money, fighting each other and taking the opportunity for the occasional tribal massacre. In some cases there *is* a central government oppressing and murdering people, but the alternative would be another Somalia.
In the case of Libya, it seems clear that the citizenry wants the current regime out, and the current regime is willing to kill a substantial percentage of the population to hold onto power. It's also a fair bet that, once the smoke clears, Libyans will be willing and able to establish a new government and bring things back to some semblance of normalcy.
If the decision were based solely upon maintaining a cheap oil supply, we could just as easily help crazy-ass dictators like Gaddafi restore order and suppress the rebellion, in exchange for a few price and production promises.
Why does everybody talk shit about the French? Their military history is ancient, they were the British empire's primary enemy, and without them America would probably have been crushed during the revolution.
Remember it was US general Norman Schwarzkopf who said "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion."
Uhhh, no it wasn't, those words were spoken by Jed Babbin, a former deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration
I guess it fits better into your chauvinistic view of the world for it to come from an actual general, than one of the chickenhawks.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Maybe this is for the best, but I have a queasy feeling about how it's going to turn out.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Why does everybody talk shit about the French? Their military history is ancient, they were the British empire's primary enemy, and without them America would probably have been crushed during the revolution.
Sorry, Slashdot's HTML parser doesn't allow the <joke> tag.
I'm genuinely pleased to see so many European nations working together on this, including the French. I am a little concerned about Sarkozy's grandstanding, but truth be told, the UN resolution couldn't have been obtained without the French, and as far as I can tell, France (not the UK or USA) is the linchpin of the military coalition that's being assembled.
Pirate Party UK
The US never admits it made a mistake. Instead, it changes its plan and claims the new plan is what they meant to do all along. "They have terrible weapons of mass destruction and aided the 9/11 terrorists! Wait, we can't prove that? Err, we meant to liberate them all along, Saddam was a bad guy (even though we taught him everything he knew), yeah, go team go!"
If the US was willing to admit when it makes a policy error, the War on (some) Drugs would have ended at least 30 years ago. Or it would have never been started in the first place and we'd have never pretended that the lesson learned from Prohibition can only apply to ethanol.
I don't think the point was that we should never change our course of action when it's the prudent thing to do. I think the point was, we never seem to use foresight. We will let something build up for decades, during which time it would be a relatively small issue resolved with relative ease, until it becomes a crisis. When there is an insurrection someplace, or all-out war, or something else that's smack-you-in-the-face undeniable, then we say A CRISIS, WE MUST DO SOMETHING! in typical reactionary politician mode. If we paid half that amount of attention to the conditions that cause crises in the first place I think we'd have a McDonalds on Alpha Centauri by now.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Let the people of Libya sort this one out on their own. They outnumber their leaders several hundred thousand to one.
What are even several hundred thousand, or millions, of civilians going to do against just a few tanks and bombers? You can't defeat a bomber by dog piling it.
Isn't enough that I ruined a pony, making a gift for you?
Why are they not demanding the bombardment of Bahrain military, or better, Saudi Arabia military?
It's very important to keep in mind that this is not Iraq.
First of all, the revolution was sparked by the people, and fought by the people before the UN intervention. In the present case, the UN is in fact offering military SUPPORT, not a full-scale military intervention and is not starting anything.
Second, one major problem with Iraq is the huge amount of civilian casualties, estimated at 100k. Whether they were killed by the Taliban, lack of medicine* or American troops doesn't matter: the war killed them, without the war they would have lived, and the war was started by the USA.
In Libya, the war is already started so it's definitely not the UN's fault if people die indirectly as a result. The UN is indeed trying to reduce the damage that will occur.
*The stats actually do not include people who died indirectly from the war, such as lack of medical treatment for injuries/diseases not caused by the war or lack of food.
Third, the UN must stick to offering military support where needed and nothing else. Air strikes on military assets are efficient - they are accurate and do not require a presence on the ground. Jets and bombers can take off from nearby countries, drop bombs on very specific military assets in Libya, then go back to where they came from. No territorial occupation, no troops spending too much time among the population (which can put the population at extra risk by drawing enemy fire or causing troops to mistake civilians for enemies). On top of that, when foreign troops are on the ground the local population may feel "invaded" even if troops are on their side, so at least air strikes avoid this and the population feels like they're leading the fight.
The Libyans must be in control or else they will resent the UN and things will not get better. Basically, the UN must offer the required help but needs also to keep their involvement to a minimum. Most of all, the UN must make sure that Libyans are happy about their help. If at any point the Libyans want to UN to leave them alone, the UN must back off not matter what help the UN believes it could provide. The moment the UN takes control, we're headed for another Iraq.
Fourth: Mistakes will happen. A bomb might hit civilian assets by mistake and kill innocent people.
This is a problem in Iraq and Afghanistan because when it happens we point the finger to the USA and say "It wouldn't have happened if you hadn't started this mess".
But if the Libyans started the revolution, if they asked for the help of the UN or at least approved of it and if the UN takes extra care to avoid errors, then the UN can't be blamed for mistakes. What I'm saying here is not that the UN must cowardly put all the responsibility on someone else. But it's important that the Libyans do not come to hate the UN's involvement or else the new government will be anti-democracy and anti-Western World. It's important that the Libyans see that the Western World is a friend and the UN must be a genuine friend.
Fifth: the USA should not have gotten involved in this. The USA have a terrible image in the Middle-East, Africa and pretty much all third-world and all Islamic countries. This is unlikely to improve the image of the USA, instead it's much more likely to make Libyans think "If the USA is involved, the UN's help might be a bad thing after all". This just makes it easier for terrorists and religious fanatics to gain support from the population and take power.
I can't believe the US government was that stupid. And frankly, I'm actually wondering if the USA really are involved because they want to help the Libyans. I'm suspecting they can't be that stupid and did this on purpose to serve whatever new megalomaniac secret plan the CIA/White House/DoD came up with.
I won't say the USA should back out, it's too late anyway, the harm is done. The UN intervention has been tainted with the mark of conquest by the USA now.
Sixth: the UN must back out once their role of offering military support is done. They have to let the Libyans choose the
The "No blood for oil" mantra came from opposition to the first Gulf War (when Iraq invaded Kuwait), which had a UN resolution authorizing it.
I know that RTFA'ing is not well received around here, but in this case reading the second one would be a good thing.
First of all, the resolution only gives the different countries permission to defend civilians, not to depose Gaddafi.
Considering that the widespread and systematic attacks currently taking place in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya against the civilian population may amount to crimes against humanity... ...
Analysis: These first two highlighted sections emphasise that this is all about defending the civilian population in Libya from attacks by its own government. One of the conditions for action set out by Nato countries has been "a demonstrable need" to intervene.
1. Demands the immediate establishment of a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians;
Analysis: The overriding stated aim is to halt the fighting and to achieve a ceasefire. It does not explicitly call for the removal of Col Muammar Gaddafi though one can assume that this is what the countries promoting this resolution would like. Many of their leaders have said so quite explicitly.
Also, other countries are barred from putting in occupation forces and so on. Current attacks seem to be aimed at anti-air defenses so their forces can start enforcing a no-fly zone without having their planes shot down.
They'll probably target sites shelling other cities and so on.
And wasn't this one of Bush's rationales for invading Iraq, i.e., humanitarian?
Was there an uprising going on in Iraq when the invasion began? No, was all about the weapons of mass destruction and how they wouldn't allow the weapons inspectors access to the places where those WMDs were stored. Of course, that wasn't helped by the fact that there were no WMDs and that the "evidence" of their existence was doubted by other countries from the beginning. It turns out the French were right.
In this case, there IS a violent uprising going on. I think that it is right to go in now, and that it was right to wait and see how things would progress before taking action. If it had turned out that the popular support in Libia was enough for the military personnel to turn against their leader then having the UN come charging in would have done more damaged that it cured. It may have galvanized support for Gaddafi if people considered an outside military action to be an invasion.
What are even several hundred thousand, or millions, of civilians going to do against just a few tanks and bombers?
You obviously haven't heard of Afghanistan, huh? 9 years and counting...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
That's because the decision to protect or not protect civilians is essentially 100% correlated with either oil or some sort of important political motive
If oil were the motivation here, Western powers would be fully committed to support Gaddafi, like they do with the regime in Saudi Arabia.
The difference is that the people there are actually having a revolution there.
It may be surprising, but people can manage to live pretty well under a dictator. For many people a dictator doesn't mean that much in practice. They still go on with living their lives, and it generally works OK even without freedom of speech or justice. If you remove a dictator in a place like that a lot of people won't be sure where to go next. So chaos is near guaranteed.
Now where there is an outright civil war it's different. It's clear the people want somebody else in the ruling position and that they will fight to get there. And that they have some sort of plan for when they do that. Of course it's not a guarantee, but the chances of something good coming out of that is much higher.
We got a plate full of ruthless dictators..
But we don't have a plate full of armed uprisings. In Libya, there is one going on right now. With our air support, it may win. Without it, there will be slaughter.
If there shall be an armed uprising in Iran or DPRK, I sure as hell hope we'll do the same for them - then and there. For now, there's nothing to be done that can help (ground invasion wouldn't).
You conveniently remember Vietnam, but why do you forget Korea?
Because people stopped caring about politics. They're too busy surfing for porn or playing with their video game consoles or watching their big-screen TV's. Nowadays the masses get their politics in a can - abortion/no abortion. Gay rights/No gay rights. Don't Ask Don't Tell. Republican vs Democrat. It's become a chant, a litany, and nothing more. Actually sitting down and thinking about the world is only done by those very few of us who are much smarter than the rest. And of THAT group, a good chunk have decided to run things for themselves - with the results you see today. The rest of us see the world as an academic exercise among countless other academic exercises.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
And a shitload of empty desert that can be used to harvest solar power.
But more importantly - Libya is right smack in the middle of the shortest route for transportation of electricity from North Africa to Europe.
Electricity should start flowing from North Africa to Europe by 2020. By 2050, North African and European renewable sources should provide 100% of EU and NA power needs.
Transported by HVDC transformers like the ones Siemens built for China along the link like the one Abengoa Group will build for Brazil.
Abengoa Group will also build the Solana Generating Station in Arizona - to the tune of 2 billion dollars.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Tried this once. Remember Somalia?
Military humanitarian interventions when aligned with economic interests seem to be pragmatic in comparison.
And this is a truly internationally sanctioned intervention quite different from the (incredibly stupid) Iraq war of aggression.
The goal is to reduce Gaddafi's military capabilities and assets to a point that allows the rebels to survive and hopefully regroup.
I fully support the military action in Libya, because nothing short of that is going to stop mass murder of civilian population that is perpetrated by Gaddafi forces in rebelling parts of the country. Good for them that they've acted swiftly enough, too (one month sounds like a lot, but when it comes to world diplomacy it is remarkably fast).
However, I'm afraid that UN forces will make the same mistake that NATO did in Bosnia and especially Kosovo - acting as peacekeepers in name, but picking a side and sticking with it in reality. In Kosovo this was most prominent - when Serbs were burning down mosques, killing Albanians and driving them out into Albanian, NATO was quick to intervene. But when Serbian army and paramilitaries withdrew, and the only force remaining in the province was KLA, the latter started burning down churches, killing Serbs, and driving them out into Serbia - and KFOR stood aside and watched.
Now, if the rebels prevail, I don't think anyone is going to shed tears if the "colonel" hangs, trial or no trial. But the sides in this civil war are largely arranged around tribal identity - Qadhadfa vs the rest of them. We say that the rebels are "pro-West", but so was KLA, by their own words - which did not stop them to partake in genocide themselves when they had the upper hand. So if the rebels win, and start massacring Qadhadfa - would the West also intervene militarily to stop that? Somehow, I doubt it, which is too bad, and would discredit the whole operation. I hope I'm wrong.
You're right... it doesn't work like that... here is how it works:
Popular uprising begins in a country, popular uprising controls half the country. Dictator starts rolling over the people who have formed their own democratic government, UN drops a no fly zone over dictator and starts bombing the crap out of their military resources so the rebels can continue to free themselves.
It works a lot better like that than it did the Neo-Con way which wasted over a trillion dollars and over ten thousand lives of US service members.
I'm not sure what you're trying to tell here. Time-wise Korea and Vietnam were far closer to each other than they are away from us. And Korea is clearly a far better analogy, as it is also a UN-sanctioned military operation where many countries - not just US - participated towards a well-defined goal. The result is that 50 million people live today in a free democratic country, and not in a Stalinist dictatorship.
We got a plate full of ruthless dictators.
And Qaddafi is among the worst, or perhaps you haven't been paying attention for the last 40 years or so. The biggest difference between Qaddafi and the bulk of the other despots is that he actively wages war against his perceived enemies in the rest of world, rather than just talking about it.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
When the hell did the left pick up this crazy interventionism?
Wow, that's some nice revisionism. So a sitting Republican president has never authorized military intervention, huh? Fascinating.
Breakfast served all day!
The protesters in China did not control half the country.
At this point neither of these despotic regimes have lost whole cities that they subsequently attacked with air raids and heavy armored infantry.
On the other hand your point is well taken. These evil regimes are of strategic and paramount economic interest to the Western world. A civil war in Saudi Arabia is a sure way to bring the world economy to a screeching halt. Unfortunately the totally corrupt House of Saud shows no signs to move towards meaningful reform. At this point there is no reason to expect this to end well.
you are a fucking idiot if you can't see the difference between a colonial intervention (Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq) and a supportive intervention where the rebels want democracy, have fought hard and made huge gains on their own and with a little air support, can topple their despot on their own and get to work setting up their own government on their own terms.
Are you seriously suggesting you don't know why the US got involved there?
Pretty much can be summed up in three words: Charles de Gaulle. The entire "cheese eating surrender monkeys" is just a cheap shot and did not originate during WW2 as far as I can tell. I happened later after the cold war was underway due to policy set by France and de Gaulle. First, de Gaulle thought that NATO didn't have what it took to win the cold war and the heartless Soviets would win the day, so they withdrew from NATO and went their own way. Two, France was in a big hissy to prove that they were a world power and could do anything the US could while Britain was just a US puppet and only had importance because they rode on the US coattails. They insulted Great Britain a lot, tried to throw their weight around, and did things like unilateral nuclear testing after everybody else had agreed on a ban. All of this after the Allies had freed France and given it back to the people because it was expected that we'd all be friends. It was pretty much felt as a big betrayal, so the surrender remarks are the cheap shot that is easy to make without having to actually get into real issues.
How do you know it's indiscriminate? I mean other than from what they tell you on TV?
Firing artillery at residential city blocks is kinda indiscriminate by definition. If you want to see an example of what it looks afterwards, have a look at the photos of Grozny circa 1995 or 2000.
Last I checked, Gaddafi did not deny that he's using artillery in his attempt to take over Benghazi (and other rebel cities).
How is NATO bombing any more "discriminate"? You can't hit 112 targets and not hurt any civilians.
Yes. There is a difference between dropping a precision guided bomb at a tank and hitting one or two civilians that stood within 10 meters of it, and firing an artillery barrage that hits a bunch of apartment buildings and kills several dozen.
Of course this depends on what will actually be done. NATO was also claiming to be using precision munitions in Kosovo, but they have classified railroad bridges and TV stations as "military targets" and bombed them (in one case, hitting a civilian train as it was crossing a bridge). That kind of thing is a war crime no less than what Gaddafi is doing. So far, however, the talk has been only about 1) shooting down planes, 2) hitting individual artillery and armor units, and 3) bombing army bases and munition depots. If they stick to that plan, it's good enough, and civilian deaths would be minimal.
Why not just let Gaddafi re-establish law and order in the country?
Because he said, in a public and televised speech, that "those who do not love me do not deserve to live", and so far has been consistently implementing that. Consequently, the only "law and order" he can possibly reestablish is the kind where dissenters are massacred en masse.
you still aren't fixing the shit conditions that allow one to take power in the first place.
Absolutely! Before the UN or anybody else intervenes, there should be some clear sign that the people are ready for change! Maybe a mass uprising or something...
we got too many of our own problems to go around playing world police.
That's why we have several people, in several places, each doing their own jobs. The Department of Labor doesn't give a damn about Libya. Likewise, the Department of Defense doesn't care if you have a job right now. Government is a part of society, which is a group of people who have realized that people can work together, each doing their own jobs, to accomplish many things at once.
Do you also expect the President to not sleep tonight, because some kid in Oregon broke his leg?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Qadaffi has been a state sponsor of international terrorism for decades. Libyan-initiated terrorist attacks have claimed the lives of countless American and European civilians. Qadaffi himself has admitted as much to the United Nations. As society, Qadaffi's Libya is comparable to Hussein's Iraq or Kim Jong Il's North Korea in terms of repression and the use of intelligence forces against its own citizens. Qadaffi likes to use assassination to silence his critics. He has put down attempts at revolt using violence in the past, killing hundreds of his own people. Personally, Qadaffi is belligerent, combative, and seems to suffer from delusions of grandeur, all of which make him unlikely to respond to diplomacy.
But don't let any of that get in the way of the absolutely surreal anti-intervention narrative around here.
Breakfast served all day!
There's a lot of posters from the USA here that like to pretend they got their country on their own without French help and instead have a myth about some civilians with rusty muskets freezing in the woods and then winning a country on their own. The French (and the trained military on the US side) are the flies in the ointment of that myth so people that hold it HATE to be reminded of it and have ended up hating the French.
Also the French response to US demands on any issue (eg. don't grow hemp) is generally a rude hand gesture. There's also the "we saved your ass in WWII so bow down to us" attitude and the French respond once again with a rude hand gesture. I suppose the last thing is the experience of US tourists in France that generally go to Paris. Apparently people in Paris really hate tourists and make that very clear.
And if we look at how we are doing NOTHING when it is happening in Bahrain or Yemen, it simply makes us hypocrits
Yes, we should help no one just to be consistent. Great proposal.
the Department of Defense doesn't care if you have a job right now.
Actually the DoD has unfilled positions, go talk to a recruiter about employment possibilities.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
It will be hard to find anybody as surreal and deranged as Qaddafi.
Or a bunch of rebels trying to overthrow a standing government.
The difference between domestic terrorist and honored revolutionary? Popularity and success.
The US has their own rebels, maybe the rest of the world should overthrow the Tyrant US government?
Just to pick from your list two of the worst offenders:
Zimbabwe and Myanmar
If there was an opening to topple these regimes it'll be criminal neglect on any Western government to not pursue the opportunity.
Just because stupid US neo-cons have given humanitarian intervention a bad name doesn't mean there aren't times when they are required and successful. Just asked the people of Sarajevo how they feel about it.
Yes, that strategy worked wonders for North/South Korea, Central American wars, North/South Vietnam, Nationalist(Taiwan)/Communist China among others. You have any idea how much blood was spilled? Plus there are still unresolved conflicts in those areas with the exception of Vietnam. The way the Central American wars was finally over was with a group of neutral countries getting everybody to sit around in a table to negotiate a truce, the same way it was done in Ireland, they way the government pacified the guerrillas in the 1960s here in my country (Venezuela) as opposed to what happened in Colombia, and my point is that violence rarely stops violence when it comes to state affairs. Dialogue on the other hand is rather uncool, boring and slow, but in the end it actually gets the job done. There are two outcomes that I see happening in Lybia, either the country will be split in two or the coalition will somehow try to fetch Gadaffi to try him in court the same way they did with Milosevic.
Hahahahaha
*wipes a tear from his eyes from laughter*
Next you'll tell me Obama fulfilled his promises from 2008 and pulled out of Iraq in a year.
you obviously have no clue about the geography of the two countries. afghanistan is impossible for anyone to hold (remember the soviets going in? no, of course you don't, because dumb septics like you have no clue about history - oh but you've rushed to wikipedia now to pretend you knew all along, prick) because of its geography. you can bomb all you like but fighting guerilla wars in inhospitable mountain territory against men who know the area perfectly is basically impossible. it's like city warfare except you can't simply shell the shit out of the mountains like you can buildings.
libya, on the other hand, is relatively flat and most of the important areas and cities are right on the coast. a few hundred thousand civilians can go against tanks, and they can get wiped out.
or hey, this might penetrate your pig-fucking-thick mind. you obviously haven't heard of the somme? a few hundred thousand men going up against just a few machine guns. the final score? a few hundred thousand men: nil. machine guns: a few hundred thousand.
idiot. fuck off back to your basement and stay out of world politics because you clearly have no fucking clue what you're talking about.
Well lets see the non-neocon way just shot off a hundred BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles at US$569,000 a pop so that's working out to almost 57 million a day in ammo!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The reason the Iraqis do not feel liberated is because now they must attempt to run a country which is still fighting the same civil war started in 632 when Muhammad bit the dust. It has nothing to do with how they were liberated from Saddam, what matters is they were liberated to resume killing each other over dusty bones from a probable late stage schizophrenic who heard voices and somehow presumed it to be the arch-Angel Gabriel. Allah, being all powerful, is also all *other* and does not interact with this world. However, a little known escape hatch allows his angels to do the communication in his stead....very tidy...one might even say, predictable...and I'm not even a prophet...errr...not to my knowledge, at least not according to voices in my head....
Muhammad, being a good little petty dictator with a messiah complex (Q-Man, take note), "predicted" he was the last prophet. All very neat if you want to be known as the Big Cheese long after you've given up the ghost. And Muslims have been killing each other over his legacy ever since, which is somewhat surprising given that it is peaceful religion...as long as you are Muslim....the right kind of Muslim, that is.
The reason the West is not landing troops is because the West doesn't have the balls left to take out a ruthless dictator. It has nothing to do with somehow preserving a sense of allowing the Libyans to have their own personal revolution. One should recognize a weenie when one sees one, and Europe has been weenies for so long no one expects any more of them. So they can comfortably hide behind their years of weenieness and do nothing more than shoot a few cruise missiles and fly a few French planes around to act like they somehow have balls again. They don't have the military muscle left to do anymore than that because they've spent too long hiding behind American power. The best thing the U.S. could do is pull out of NATO and tell Europe we simply do not care anymore about their sanctimonious asses.
You do realize that both the UN and the Arab League requested the intervention, right? The Secretary of State was very clear that we wouldn't barge in without the international community's approval. And, I have yet to hear any talk directly of how this is in any way our best interest. Which wasn't the case previously.
This isn't Iraq or Vietnam, we've got a clear objective and one that is relatively straightforward to understand. When it's over we'll be able to assess whether or not it was a success, which hasn't always been the case in the past.
Gadhafi already called for a ceasefire Friday before the deadline, to talk things about with the rebels.
This isn't a peace talk. This is the West imposing their will on the Middle East again.
First Gaddafi broke his own "cease fire".
As for who is imposing their will, it appears that Gaddafi imposing his will on the African country he has ruled for 41 years. Strange that you would support a dictator. I guess you may have a case if the dictator had stayed in power by winning free and open elections for over 40 years, but that's not even the case here. It's not like the population is laying flowers down at his feet. There is an open rebellion going on over there.
So, again, it doesn't seem like it's the west imposing their will. It looks to me like the west is trying to remove the people out from under the oppressive rule of a dictator.
Go ahead and tell me where I'm wrong here.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Weapons inspectors have been Iraq up until the last war started.
To quote from wikipedia:
To compare this truly international effort with regards to Libya with the war of aggression against Iraq is nothing but convenient revisionism.
France never withdrew from NATO (only from the unified command structure). To quote wikipedia:
France remained a member of the alliance, and committed to the defence of Europe from possible Communist attack with its own forces stationed in the Federal Republic of Germany throughout the Cold War.
As a Zimbabwean I know that nobody's going to "misdirect" one of those 110 tomahawks a bit further south to sort out our problem but I do know that Mugabe considered Gadaffi an ally and has received help from Lybia. It is also clear that Bob has reacted to the situation in the middle east - i.e. he has felt the cold fear that bullies feel when they realise that they are more alone and beginning to stick out.
So from us Southern Africans to the rest of you - we don't have any aeroplanes to send but we are with you in spirit. Kick G's hairy arse as thoroughly as you can for us please. One day when we have sorted out our own home we will be able to help you like we did in WWI and WWII.
Regards,
Tim
This is all just my personal opinion.
What we will be doing (ostensibly purely as a side effect, although almost certainly by intent) is clearing the path for the rebels to do what they will. Which will almost certainly be the creation of a democracy (however flawed of one).
I've been reading the New York Times and Wall Street Journal carefully to try to figure out who the rebels are, and I can't find it.
Who are these rebels, and why does anybody think they'll create a democracy, or anything other than a dictatorship just as brutal as Ghaddafi's, if not more brutal?
Will the US now bomb Israel toï force them to comply with the hundreds of UN resolutions that Israel is in violation of?,
OFC not as the USA funds & veto's (blocks) all intervention at stopping Israel's illegal occupation, illegal constructions, genocide, torture, assassinations...
what's the difference between Yemen, Bahrain & lybia?
two of them have pro USA puppets & are allowed to murder civilians...
The Truth Is Out There:
As the adage puts it: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".
This "invasion" orchestrated by France and participated by the US, UK, Italy and Greece will be viewed by the more than 1 Billion Muslims around the world as yet another crusade against the Muslim world.
The West forgets one thing - that the Muslims still treat the West as their Enemy.
I am from a country where the majority Muslims rule, and every single day we are being bombarded with brainwashing propaganda that the West = Christian = Evil.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Yes. There is a difference between dropping a precision guided bomb at a tank and hitting one or two civilians that stood within 10 meters of it, and firing an artillery barrage that hits a bunch of apartment buildings and kills several dozen.
If you believe that, then the obvious solution is to supply Gaddafi with precision guided bombs and Predator drones so he can take out the insurgents "surgically" with collateral damage limited to just one or two civilians within 10 meters of them, well maybe a bit more if the insurgents are using human shields.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
In WW2, there were a lot of french people in Great Brittain and some have memories of wanting to pay in say a restaurant and being told "the bill has been paid" referring to the French soldiers protecting the British retreat at Dunkirk.
Now cowardly comedians who never fought for anything and would shit themselves if asked to defend their country claim the French are cowards.
But then we have taken coward actors over real heroes for a long time.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Do you? (fully, not PR version for the masses; few quick examples: first, second, third; curiously even some(!) parallels with...)
One that hath name thou can not otter
if it were, we'd invade Africa.
Libya is Africa, FYI.
Not that I disagree with you- there is a strong correlation between places that receive our attention and places with strategic resources. And I am in general reluctant to support military intervention. But this probably is the right thing to do in Libya- it'd probably be genocide if Gadaffi retook Benghazi. And seeing as he's yet another demon of our own making (we sold him weapons, we "welcomed him back into the international community"), that does give us somewhat a moral obligation not to abandon those people to their fates.
This is a UN-sanctioned action with tacit approval from China, Russia, Brazil, India, et al.- they don't exactly leap at foreign interventions in other countries' internal conflicts, and even they were convinced that intervention might be needed (even if not so convinced as to actually support the motion- lack of veto is as good as it gets from that crowd). That should tell you something about how the situation is panning out.
Gaddafi is a big enough problem that I think a blind reroll of the dice would give good odds for the next government even if it doesn't turn out to be secular.
Ah, yes, the argument from ignorance. We don't know what's going to happen, so let's do it.
Putting aside the 150,000 to 600,000 Iraqis killed, do you think anyone is better off as a result of the Iraq invasion?
The Iraqis are.
Iraq had the best health care system in the middle east. Saddam, for all his faults, sent doctors to study in England and elsewhere, and people came from around the Arab world to be treated. That's all gone now. Doctors and their families were getting kidnapped, so they left.
According to the Washington Post, the Bush Administration appointed a free-market campaign contributor from the right-to-life movement to run the health care system (replacing an administrator who had actually managed war zone hospitals for the U.N.). Bush's appointee replaced the pharmaceutical delivery system with a market-based approach. Result: The hospitals couldn't get drugs any more.
You think the Iraqis are better off without health care?
Great news everyone. The war is OVER.
Yes, it's been Godwin'ed.
From http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/110320/libya-lybia-gaddafi-war-us-nato-jets-air-nazi-hitler: ... ... ...
Muammar Gaddafi says Libyans are armed for a long war and that allied forces were "the new Nazis."
The leaders of Britain, France and the United States will "fall like Hitler... Mussolini," he said.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
The Shiites can't live in the Suni neighborhoods, and vice versa. If they don't leave, they get killed (that's why so many of the doctors left for Syria).
So people can't live in their own homes because they're the wrong religion, and they have to leave or the militia will kill them.
That's your idea of freedom.
Did it ever occur to you that some people might not want to be driven out of their homes under threat of death?