Barack Obama is secretly pro-Gadaffi - or he's a *****.

[Cort Haus]

Perfectly in this case, Neville!

So why weren't opposers of the war on Iraq appeasers? An evil dictator with a track record of slaughtering civilians, and anti-war pussies standing idly by, while muscular heroes promised to go into Iraq and sort out the bad man in time to stop another potential genocide of the Kurds at some point etc. Also, people genuinely thought he had WMD. Of course he didn't, but he might have done, and he would have wanted them. WMD can slaughter a lot of civilians. Something must be done.

Except, in Iraq, it didn't turn out that sorting the bad man out would be a good solution, despite the naysayers being accused of standing idly by.

[MOBIUS]

They had the opportunity to finish the job in 1991. But they didn't.

The only people that thought he had WMDs were the people that wanted to invade in 2003.

[Arrian]

You had emotional reaction to a bad man doing bad things and somehow think that's different than Tony Blair having an emotional reaction to a different bad man who did/was doing/would do again bad things (hence your total failure to address Cort Haus' argument. You cannot, because there is no difference). You're a neocon, accept it.

Then, when the facts of the case don't quite add up and when the consequences of picking sides in a civil war start to become clear, you whine and cry about it. Pathetic.

THAT'S what you signed up for, Arrian, I hope some small part of your conscience where there's blood still flowing to your brain, allows you to feel shame for wanting to let thousands of civilians die...

This framing is absolutely juvenile. Who the **** appointed you (safe in Wales) to be the White Knight of the world? When are you joining up to do your part in resisting massacres by authoritarians the world over? Oh, right, you're not. You're just going to advocate for wars from the safety of your keyboard and then self-righteously accuse others of moral depravity because they disagree with you.

And I've got news for you: civilians are going to die in this civil war, Moby, as they have died in every war ever fought. They're gonna get killed by NATOs bombs, Gman's forces, rebels, or indirectly because of the fighting. They will die differently and perhaps in different numbers than what would have been absent intervention. There might be fewer civilian casualties. There might, actually, be more (if it turns into a prolonged civil war). As those are counterfactuals, it's really not possible to know. Oh, yes, we know that YOU are sure. The self-righteous crusader always is.

-Arrian

[MOBIUS]

I'm not the one who's being emotional here...

I think you need your meds, as you've clearly gone off the deep end with the guilt of thinking about all those thousands of innocent civilians you were happy to let get massacred in Benghazi. Poor unhinged Arrian...

[DinoDoc]

Meanwhile back on the topic of the rebels being a **** military force: Pro-Qaddafi Forces Push Rebels Into Chaotic Retreat

[C0ckney]

mobius, arrian is right on the money here. you're just making yourself look silly.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

mobius, arrian is right on the money here. you're just making yourself look silly.

The real point is that one of the most likely outcomes is a protracted conflict with ever increasing levels of violence against the civilians. Making the averted genocide childs play in comparison to the likely misery of a half assed approach. One only need look at Iraq, Bosnia, Serbia, etc. for examples of civilian casualties as a consequence of half measures.

[C0ckney]

well i agree as far as that goes.

however, we all know that if it had been openly said "we are going to intervene in the libyan civil war on the side of the rebels and remove gaddafi" then the UN would never have backed the action, nor would the arab league. instead we are in a situation where we are now involved in the civil war in a somewhat half-arsed way and looking increasingly like we are backing a stalemate, under the guise of protecting civilians.

i think it's a very bad situation for us to be in and it makes an exit strategy very difficult. i see that the US administration is now not ruling out arming the rebels, soon we may well see military advisers there to train them and so on. it's a quagmire which we have walked straight into.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

No arguement. Unless there is political will to see the issue fully resolved. (Akin to Powells's infamous statement you broke it you bought it.) It is folly and more often the case likely to cause increased harm and misery. Not to mention ongoing angst and generational resentment of the west for ever increasing meddling.

[Arrian]

Lifted from Outside the Beltway:

...the R2pers use their own sense of moral superiority and self-righteousness to hide a bitter reality; that their doctrine is far from being the grand paean to universal human rights that they like to pretend that it is. For one thing, it’s fairly clear that not every act of genocide will be addressed by the international community... Libya was picked mostly because it was an easy target, and because Muammar Gaddafi has no real friends left in the world, a fact brought home by the fact that neither Russia nor China did anything to stop UNSCR 1973. Everyone dislikes Gaddafi, which, combined with the geography of Libya itself, makes him an easy target. The “Responsibility To Protect” Doctrine, therefore, seems more like an excuse for Europeans and Americans on the left to support intervention not because it protects the vital interests of the nations they live in, but because it makes them feel good.

There’s another similarity between the R2P crowd and the neo-cons, of course. In both cases, there is an absolute sense of certainty that causes people to ignore the facts on the ground. For the neo-cons, the certainty that we’d be greeted as liberators by the people of Iraq and Afghanistan caused them to discount the necessity for any kind of post-war planning, and to believe that merely introducing “democratic” institutions into nations that had never known democracy would lead to an immediate transformation that took decades, if not centuries, in the West. For the R2P’ers, it’s absolutely certainty that merely being guided by the desire to “help” people is sufficient to accomplish their goals, meaning that there’s no need to worry about the fact that the rebels you’re protecting are allied with a terrorist group, or that the conflict your’re intervening in may be more tribal than political. Finally, for both the neo-con and the R2Per there is the overwhelming certainty that they are better judges of the future of a nation than the people who actually live there.

There is some serious baseline level of arrogance necessary for this sort of thing.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

The real point is that one of the most likely outcomes is a protracted conflict with ever increasing levels of violence against the civilians. Making the averted genocide childs play in comparison to the likely misery of a half assed approach. One only need look at Iraq, Bosnia, Serbia, etc. for examples of civilian casualties as a consequence of half measures.

Am I reading this right that you think Iraq (or Bosnia/Kosovo) would have worked well if we'd only avoided "half measures?" I hope I'm misreading you here. Hopefully, you're saying that Iraq might have turned out less-****ty if we had committed more troops at the get-go and had a serious plan for post-Saddam reconstruction. I think I could agree with that, not that it makes a valid case for the war.

It makes sense to me that if you're going to be an interventionist, freaking own it. Go all-in. Don't half-ass it with "oh they'll greet us with flowers so we don't need an occupation plan" or somesuch. Oh we're just going to protect the civilians (via a bombing campaign), not remove the nasty dictator. Oh, wait, maybe we will remove him. Err, well, we'll help the valiant freedom fighters remove him. How exactly, well, erm, we're working on the parameters of that...

-Arrian

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Am I reading this right that you think Iraq (or Bosnia/Kosovo) would have worked well if we'd only avoided "half measures?"

No. Firstly it never was my position to endorse or not endorse the actions taken for any of these conlficts. Merely to show that when attempting to pull punches the conflicts grind on in slow meat grinder fashion for extended periods of time with little to no progress in ending the conflict. In fact my refrence to Iraq was circa 91-92 wherein we allowed the establishment of a no-fly zone that ultimately allowed for mass killings of Sadaam's own. A reference to Moby's point that the job wasn't finished. A point all agree upon in this thread, I presume, thus validating the idea that half measures suck.

I hope I'm misreading you here. Hopefully, you're saying that Iraq might have turned out less-****ty if we had committed more troops at the get-go and had a serious plan for post-Saddam reconstruction. I think I could agree with that, not that it makes a valid case for the war.

Again not talking the case for war. However once the trigger is pulled as it were, then yes that was in effect the thrust of the Powell/McCain bent of thinking. So if and when the decision is made for military intervention then it is morally right to end it as quickly as possible and stablize as much as possible with an overwhelming preponderence of force. Obviously not the case then and certainly not the case now.

It makes sense to me that if you're going to be an interventionist, freaking own it. Go all-in. Don't half-ass it with "oh they'll greet us with flowers so we don't need an occupation plan" or somesuch. Oh we're just going to protect the civilians (via a bombing campaign), not remove the nasty dictator. Oh, wait, maybe we will remove him. Err, well, we'll help the valiant freedom fighters remove him. How exactly, well, erm, we're working on the parameters of that...

-Arrian

Precisely.

[Barnabas]

Why don't you let the Lybians have their own civil war?

And why is there no taboo about intervention but there is a taboo about dividing lybia in 2? Something like the old provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica

[Whoha]

Meanwhile back on the topic of the rebels being a **** military force: Pro-Qaddafi Forces Push Rebels Into Chaotic Retreat

We're going to have to put American boots on the ground if we want to force Kadaffi to pick a single spelling for his name.

[Wezil]

We're going to have to put American boots on the ground if we want to force Kadaffi to pick a single spelling for his name.

Finally. A reason I can get behind.