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Re: Allied Forces act over Libya
Axlin08 wrote:'Cause it certaintly ain't humanitarian aid, that's for goddamn sure.
fuck me.
the object is to protect civilians; create space for the opposition to topple gaddafi & form a provisional govenment leading to a democratically elected government. the mere fact that Benhgazi has been saved thus far is evidence of the legitimate & true aim of this intervention.& ftr, lybia produces LESS than 2% of the worlds oil - LESS than the UK.
What he said.
Sometimes one don't have to look to the horizon to find an answer that is basically about to ram up ones own ass.
Re: Allied Forces act over Libya
Libya might produce that number, but they have buyers just like anyone else.
Even a shot glass full of crude is valuable.
If you want to believe that Libya was picked because of the current conflict, go right ahead, there's far worse going on elsewhere in the world, and Libya was picked to be the one to save, simply because the Libyans are just such bitchin' folks. Yeah, sure.
And by the way, Democracy is just another word for 'Capitalism'. Only countries that money is to be made on them, are the ones chosen for 'salvation'.
Re: Allied Forces act over Libya
Hey DCK...you ever hear of Rwanda? Could you please explain to me why western civilization didn't intervene there? You know, besides the fact they don't have any oil...Or how about North Korea? Hasn't China had civilians beg for help to overthrow the government?
Re: Allied Forces act over Libya
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/bl … s-20110321
POSTED: March 21, 1:32 PM ET | By Tim Dickinson
U.S. Bombs Libya, Helps... Jihadists?!
America is now at war to protect a Libyan province that's been an epicenter of anti-American jihad.
In recent years, at mosques throughout eastern Libya, radical imams have been "urging worshippers to support jihad in Iraq and elsewhere," according to WikiLeaked cables. More troubling: The city of Derna, east of Benghazi, was a "wellspring" of suicide bombers that targeted U.S. troops in Iraq.
By imposing a no-fly zone over Eastern Libya, the U.S. and its coalition partners have effectively embraced the breakaway republic of Cyrenaica. As you can see on the map above, Libya is a mashup of three historically distinct provinces. As recently as the 1940s, Cyrenaica was an independent emirate, with its capital in Benghazi.
The emnity between Cyrenaica and Tripolitania runs deep. The Emir of Cyrenaica awkwardly cobbled together modern Libya and ruled as its monarch. This is the same king that Qaddafi deposed in his coup of 1969. And the Qaddafi regime has seen the former king's homeland as a threat ever since, as this Wikileaked cable from our Tripoli embassy explains:
Eastern Libya had suffered ... from a lack of investment and government resources, part of a campaign by the al-Qadhafi regime to keep the area poor and, theoretically, less likely to develop as a viable alternative locus of power to Tripoli.
Another cable reports that the disrespect is mutual:
Residents of eastern Libya ... view the al-Qadhafa clan [Qaddafi's tribe] as uneducated, uncouth interlopers from an inconsequential part of the country who have "stolen" the right to rule in Libya.
That's the background. Flash forward to 2008: A West Point analysis of a cache of al Qaeda records discovered that nearly 20 percent of foreign fighters in Iraq were Libyans, and that on a per-capita basis Libya nearly doubled Saudi Arabia as the top source of foreign fighters.
The word "fighter" here is misleading. For the most part, Libyans didn't go to Iraq to fight; they went to blow themselves up — along with American G.I.'s. (Among those whose "work" was detailed in the al Qaeda records, 85 percent of the Libyans were listed as suicide bombers.) Overwhelmingly, these militants came "from cities in North‐East Libya, an area long known for Jihadi‐linked militancy." [UPDATE: West Point's Combatting Terrorism Center refused to comment on its own report.]
A WikiLeaked cable from 2008 explained that Cyrenaicans were waging jihad against U.S. troops as "a last act of defiance against the Qadhafi regime." After the U.S. normalized relations with Qaddaffi in 2006, Cyrenacians believed they no longer had any shot at toppling him:
Many easterners feared the U.S. would not allow Qadhafi's regime to fall and therefore viewed direct confrontation with the GOL [Government of Libya] in the near-term as a fool's errand.... Fighting against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq represented a way for frustrated young radicals to strike a blow against both Qadhafi and against his perceived American backers.
The epicenter of Libyan jihadism is the city of Derna — the hometown of more than half of Libya's foreign fighters, according the West Point analysis. The city of 80,000 has a history of violent resistance to occupying powers — including Americans, who captured the city in the First Barbary War.
A surprisingly readable cable titled "Die Hard in Derna" makes clear that the city "takes great pride" in having sent so many of its sons to kill American soldiers in Iraq, quoting one resident as saying: "It's jihad — it's our duty, and you're talking about people who don't have much else to be proud of."
Re: Allied Forces act over Libya
Hey DCK...you ever hear of Rwanda? Could you please explain to me why western civilization didn't intervene there? You know, besides the fact they don't have any oil...Or how about North Korea? Hasn't China had civilians beg for help to overthrow the government?
Why should I bother? You won't agree to any of it anyway. You have your ways, and I have mine.
Only an extremely...(well..something...) person would even put China on the table. The repercussions of a no-fly-zone over China would be so drastic and serious not even Donald Duck would do it.
So, I really see no point in doing this argument with long and well done arguments for the sake of doing it. Like I said, you won't agree to any of it.
Rwanda..well..a lot can be said there. Somalia..well...there was something going down there as well which wasn't working quite well either.
But be my guest. It's all about the oil, if that's what you want to believe. It's a good explenation which makes everything easy.
Politicians knows it's never that's easy. That's why they are politicians.
Re: Allied Forces act over Libya
Hey DCK...you ever hear of Rwanda? Could you please explain to me why western civilization didn't intervene there?
I agree that some sort of action was needed there. Having said that, other countries would have balked and it would have been a case of the US "going it alone". Rwanda is not like Iraq or other countries where you can bomb them for weeks/months and then have US ground troops dance across the border to see what awaits.
A war scenario there would have been "pin prick" strikes(not enough infrastructure to bomb) and probably around 100-200k US ground troops invading to confiscate weapons and attempt to figure out who to kill. Add more troops to feed everybody and you're looking at a major quagmire.
The Powell question regarding all potential US conflicts, "what's the exit strategy?" would have been asked and no one would have been able to answer it.
Only way a Rwandan invasion would have worked is if every major power would have united to fight the conflict(Desert Storm style but with troops and not air strikes), and that itself presents problems and we still have to deal with an exit strategy and there wasn't one. Bog yourself down in Rwanda and it could become a chain reaction of entering bordering nations to deal with similar issues. No chance of WWIII in a conflict on that continent at the time, but a Vietnam type fiasco almost a certainty and would have been worse due to the fact it started spreading. The Rwandan genocide spread into neighboring countries and pressure would have mounted for the US to intervene there too.
So a "simple" intervention into Rwanda could have quickly turned into the US occupying these countries within days/weeks of going in...
Uganda
Congo
Sudan
These are not small countries by the way.
More US forces would have been needed, and when you take into account the Kosovo war of 1999, the 9/11 attacks two years after that, and the invasion of Iraq two years after that, we would have needed to withdraw from Africa to deal with those more important hot spots. You thought Rwanda and the other civil wars raging in Africa were bad before we got there? Imagine them when they see an immediate US withdrawal to deal with other hot spots and realize we are not coming back. Such a move by the US, while necessary, would have made us look bad.
Also take into account other African nations may have seen US intervention on their soil as a strategy for the US to establish a permanent presence there, and there would have been no fan clubs being established over that possibility.
While I am not the president, Secretary of Defense, or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I wouldn't have authorized sending that many US forces into that region either. Maybe special ops missions to eliminate key figures in that region, but I wouldn't have put hundreds of thousands of American lives at risk to occupy countries that do not want us there, even when we are there to feed them and not kill them. Most of Africa is a cesspool and you are walking through the gates of hell if you decide to go in.
When that Rwandan shit was going down and we heard about the atrocities on TV I was appalled and like many others, was pissed at the inaction. Years later I can see why it wasn't attempted even though it may have been the right thing to do.
So to those advocating a Rwanda conflict, what's your exit strategy?
- Randall Flagg
- Rep: 139
Re: Allied Forces act over Libya
Fuck Rwanda and fuck Iraq, Iran, Syria or whatever country that has no bearing on the United States. Why should I care if some people in a distant country are killing their own? I don't. And no where in my contract or anyone else's does it mention risking my life and deploying to remote parts of the world to defend foreigners from their own government.
Anytime the US or any other nation comes storming in to another country's affairs unasked and unwanted, it ends badly. Vietnam was a cluster fuck for the US (and France). Afghanistan was a cluster fuck for the Soviets (and arguably is for the US).
The only example of success you can mention is Iraq, and how many billions of dollars and lives did we have to sacrifice and take to maybe get a stable situation. And even if you call it stable, the Iraqis don't really like us. Some may tolerate us to a certain extent, but they're not reacting like the French were when we liberated them in WW2.
Now if Iran and Syria shake hands and start crossing borders and threatening other allied nations in Europe, then maybe we can talk about US involvement. But outside of that, who gives a damn. Even if you want to make an argument about economics and supporting the American way of life (something I could in theory get behind) these countries aren't the ones that mean dick to us. We don't get our oil from any of these nations (nor do we need to). They have no real impact on our domestic affairs and are so weak they pose virtually no threat to us short of sending some civilians on hijacked 747s or into the NYC tranist system. They don't fucking matter. We virtually have nothing in common with them culturally and without our technology (or technology stolen or copied by other nations from the US) they'd still be in the stone age. This part of the world hasn't done dick in over 2k years, so who the hell cares.
If you want to join the peace corps or go there as a civilian protester (I knew a lady who went to Iraq that way before the war) more power to you. Just don't ask hundreds of thousands of american to suit up and kill people you really don't care about either, while forcing us to go deeper in debt.
IMHO, America needs to shut the fuck up and sit down. Worry about fixing itself and restablishing itself as the premier economic super power. Let all these hangeron nations send their children to fight the moral causes. Bottom line is this, if America isn't involved, no other country will do shit. Libya drives that point right home. Let some of these other countries that consider themselves America's equal start leading and making something more than token contributions for a while.
