Why no thread on the French military intervention in Mali?

[MichaeltheGreat]

I see a pattern here. Asking you for evidence to back up your claims is too hard for your aged mental facalties to cope with, I'm sorry for asking too much of you.

I haven't seen a wholesale oil or oil futures price yet that has a specific price component for each specific dead arab leader. You like to ask for stats for things like buckets of steam. Sorry, Grasshopper.

The Domino Theory worked out so well for the US in SE Asia.

It wasn't the domino theory per se. It was which ****holes we included in our bag of dominoes, and which leaders and factions we backed.

[DinoDoc]

I haven't seen a wholesale oil or oil futures price yet that has a specific price component for each specific dead arab leader. You like to ask for stats for things like buckets of steam. Sorry, Grasshopper..

I'm simply asking you to come up with a cogent argument to back up the stream of BS you've been spewing which is encapsulated in this post:

Guess your truck is up on blocks, then? Ever heard of a thing called the "global economy?" It might not affect the price of possum stew, but oil affects most of the rest of the economy.

You seem to like making definative statements as if they were the word of God yet scurry away like a frightend rabbit to provide even the tiniest bit of support for the statements you make.

[MichaeltheGreat]

You mean like your argument that the US has no security interest in Libya? Maybe you could demonstrate how long term instability in an OPEC member adjacent to other OPEC members has no effect on the global economy? The US security interest is so blindingly obvious you seem to be the only one who denies it. And you're not dumb, so I just assume you're trolling.

You want a cogent argument? Study oil price movements as they correlate to positive or negative news out of the ME? You could go all the way back to '73 if you'd like.

[MichaeltheGreat]

You seem to like making definative statements as if they were the word of God yet scurry away like a frightend rabbit to provide even the tiniest bit of support for the statements you make.

And they are, my son, they are.

[DinoDoc]

Maybe you could demonstrate how long term instability in an OPEC member adjacent to other OPEC members has no effect on the global economy?

Maybe you could demonstrate how the intervention actually improved the long term stability of the area rather than simply installing a weak and ineffectual government without the ability to control its own territory?

[BlackCat]

I'm saying that there was no signifigant US security interest in Qaddafi living or dieing.

Uhmn, do you really think that anyone cares about US security interests ? Except yanks ?

[Traianvs]

Pity there is so much francophobia around, the French do interventions all the time, and do them well, we might learn something, they learned from their mistakes in Algeria and Vietnam. This could be one to watch.

One thing they are good at is economy of force and knowing when to get in and get out, even to cut their losses, both things Anglo-led forces aren't good at, too much d*ckswinging gets in the way maybe. A french officer wrote one of the seminal texts on counter-insurgency and there is an excellent French film about the Algerian war.

Also African Union forces have done some good interventions in recent years, countries like Ghana and Nigeria deployed useful missions in Sierra Leone, Angola, Congo, Liberia, Ethiopia and even Somalia, not perfect but another neglected model, which seems to be coming into play in North Africa with these AQ idiots in the Mahgreb and elsewhere like the horn of Africa.

You forgot Ivory Coast, where they helped to oust Gbagbo. The French have been doing a lot of ops in Africa over the past years, but they tend to be limited in scope, without too much media attention. And they have done rather well like you said. The big difference here is that it's with islamist forces, which adds value to media outlets, and that the islamists decided to march on the capital Bamako. If they hadn't done that, the military mission would've unfolded quietly in the course of 2013, and few people would take notice.

Just because you're geopolitically uninformed doesn't mean I'm incorrect. I know indoor plumbing is a recent innovation where you are, do you have cars yet? Libya (a) has this stuff called oil, though not much of it, enough to **** with the market when the global economy gets to a high demand level again, and (b) has nice porous borders, lots of places to hide, both of which can be useful to destabilize lots of interesting places. Mali (a) doesn't have oil, and (b) has a lot fewer useful places from which any place interesting can be destabilized. First Mali, then Burkina Faso isn't really high on many people's list of concerns.

Mali reportedly has oil in the north, but it hasn't been extracted yet.

Actually, there aren't many of them among the Tuareg at this point, as they figured out AQIM was using them for its own ends and they were going to be even more screwed. If you could resolve the core issue with Mali (maybe an autonomous region within the country and some central representation), they'd probably be excellent anti al Qaeda mercenaries in their area. Keeping them reined in would be tough, unless their ops were confined to their own region.

I am following this quite closely for work related purposes, and from what I can gather addressing the Tuareg autonomy issue is the best route towards a political solution. Make no mistake, this whole mess can't be solved militarily, as usual. One of the main causes is a mostly corrupt and inept regime in Bamako that can't seem to keep out the drug trafficking (coming from Latin-America through Guinea-Bissau and going to Europe through Mali), destabilizing the north and providing islamists with funding.

Another is the oppression of the Tuareg, a problem which goes back to the colonial area, when the French carved up the Tuareg territory (Azawad) and favored black Malinese to hold power of the area now called Mali (but that's mainly the southern area).

[Alexander's Horse]

the awful truth is there are large parts of the world that go to hell in a hand basket and it doesn't matter much

[Hauldren Collider]

Africa and Central Asia tend to get ignored.

[DaShi]

I'm just glad that Oerdin is here to correct HC.

[Traianvs]

the awful truth is there are large parts of the world that go to hell in a hand basket and it doesn't matter much

Oh but Mali does matter, in fact, very much to the French. Most of the uranium used in France's 59 nuclear reactors comes from Mali. France is heavily dependent on nuclear power.

Yet another reason to get rid of nuclear power

Oh + the gold and other resources are good for a buck or two as well

[Alexander's Horse]

the other difference is some of the AQ affiliates wants to take the fight to western capitals

[Hauldren Collider]

Nuclear power is awesome. Clean and safe And if you think either of those are false, you're an ignoramus. Even the disaster in Japan was a vindication of their safety.

[MichaeltheGreat]

The disaster in Japan could have been totally avoided, but TEPCO decided to save a few bucks.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Maybe you could demonstrate how the intervention actually improved the long term stability of the area rather than simply installing a weak and ineffectual government without the ability to control its own territory?

Qaddafi had weak control of his own territory in the south. There hasn't been a long term yet. There were two choices - intervene and then try to manage the situation, or fail to intervene, and maybe instead of Qaddafi you get an even more unstable, weaker government. Or you get Qaddafi so busy trying to retake the lost territory so much that his control over the southern desert region became even weaker. His need to bring in African mercenaries indicate the operations capability of his own military. Either way, you'd have no US engagement and no potential for the US to have any influence on the outcome. None of which is relevant to your prior stated contention that there was no US security interest in Libya.