"Doing the right thing ...?"

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Ok, there is a crazed and power hungry dictator in the Middle East who is determined to crush a popular uprising by massacring the civilians in towns where the rebellion broke out. So, what will we do about this?

I mean, we could send in an airstrike or two to smash the dictators tank columns before the reach the threatened cities - couldn't we?

No, we can't. Because we never went to help Barain or Dafur, so it would be wrong to go help the Libyans. So saith the Lefties.

Well, I dunno. Sure we should have helped Dafur and Barain as well, but we never did. But this time the civilians are actually *asking* us to intervene. So the International Community said " let there be airstikes - and a no fly zone too, while we are at it".
And there were Airstrikes, and a no fly zone, and there was great rejoicing among the Libyans, but not so among the left wing saddos who just hate to see the Western Powers do something right for once.

And the airstikes went in and Gaddaffi's forces retreated in disarray. But the undeclared civil war in Libya drags on, people are fighting and dying. The Rebels drove Gaddaffi back, but cannot finish him off. And the Libyans turned again to the International Community and said "Arm us , pease, for they have long range heavy weapons that we cannot match".

And minto grubb, together with several professional pundits in the british media said -
" if we give them weapons, are they trained to fire them? Do they have the military training and discipline and leadership to go up against Gaddafis trained mercenaries in open battle and win? can they put together a co ordinated battle plan and execute the manouvers that will procure victory?"

And the answers proved to be 'No!' in every case.

Yet the Beeb did say that Gaddaffi's right hand man had defected to britain , that he was here already and that the Western powers were urging Gaddafi's other followers to give up and desert him.

So, members and voters in the International Community
Should we arm the rebels? I think not, for stated reasons.
If Libyans ask, should we send in ground troops?
Should we put gaddafi and his cronies on trail if they get captured?

We call it a 'police action '. Well, the cops, in seeking a guy like Al capone or any other ' Mister Big', will do a deal, even with the 'hitmen' who have committed murder, if they will testify against the gang boss who ordered the hit.

Is it worth it to do a deal with the men who did the Lockerbie job in order to get the fighting ended? should gaddafi get a guaruantee that he woon't go before an international court, if he will leave quietly and go live in Uganda, a country that has already offered him a safe haven?

Let me say this :-
I was appalled at the deaths that resulted from the airstrikes. i took no delight in seeing the carnage that resulted. Yet, if I were the PM , if I were an RAF pilot, I would still have given the orders and still pushed the button that detroyedGaddafi's forces.

Yet I don't think I would be as ready to just let Gaddaffi go. maybe I am not the best person to be a politician or a national leader - but i wonder what the rest of this community thinks we ought to do, or have done about gaddaffi?
Should we 'do a deal' with his henchmen and even himself for an agreement to step down ?
If we continue to intervene in this crisis , how should we do it - or should we just fall back and leave the Libyans to their fate?

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The answer to all of the above is twofold:

"No."

And

"See, you're doing exactly what we warned you'd do. Mission Creep, Mission Seep."

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Does it make any difference? If they ask us to do stuff, is that not a justification in itself/
As I said, the Libyans are *asking * us for arms, and I think we ough to say "No, that ain't gonna work for you guys".

So what do we do instead of wasting all that money?
Ask the African and Arab nations to send in a peacekeeping force?
I mean , could these guys, if they worked together, organise aa barbie on the beach if we gave them the matches? I think not.

So, should western nations let Gaddaffi go to Uganda , or what ?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, it is not.

Yes, the Arabs and Africans can fight wars if they have to, Minto. White people aren't needed to solve other peoples' problems.

And perhaps we should. We didn't exactly make a great deal of effort to hunt down all those war criminals who fled to South America, we left that to the Israelis (one of the few things I consider entirely justified for any state to have done, and a service to the human race). Why is Gadafi, who was batshit nuts 20 years ago, so evil now we have to go to war to stop him?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

I think we have to make up our minds here - either we should have gone into Barain , Dafur, and so many other places, or we just let Gaddafi go on murdering civilians - which is it, plz?

White people aren't needed to solve other peoples' problems.

So, how many jets did the Arab League send in to enforce the no fly zone that the Libyans wanted? How exactly did the Arab League protect the people of Barain , and how are they assisting in Dafur at present?

Not blaming them for being black, brown or whatever, just sticking to practical considerations. I mean , Libyans want a No Fly Zone - so who did they ask to provide it? Who did provide it?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

False dichotomy. If we intervene in Libya on humanitarian grounds, we should intervene in Bahrain and Darfur too also on that grounds. If we wage Operation Not-A-War with Libya while ignoring simultaneous events in Bahrain then the UN collectively has gotten the US disease of disguising realpolitik with moralism.

Not *all* Libyans do. It's a tribal civil war there, many tribes against Gadafi, some for him.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Libya gave the US and the UK justification long ago by purposefully organizing an attack on them.

Any action has to be clear and direct. No proxies or secondhand fighting.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

He payed the UK and US back in reparations for that is why we didn't kablotz him a long time ago when we started bombing him before.

[capthek.livejournal.com]

so say the lefties? Obama isn't a leftie? Well I am and although I feel like I understand my friends who are against this action, I do support it as do many of my leftie friends. My fear is that it will expand beyond our current mission there, and on this my friends may end up being correct. If it does expand, my support for Obama may contract sadly.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

That's how I feel too.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Obama isn't a leftie?
Well, in America he may be, but over here he isn't. Like, if you own a million in America, that is only just over half in Sterling, so you are not a millionaire in the UK.

Likewise, you just have to be just right of centre in the USA and they call you a Commie. Over here, he would not even be considered a Liberal.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It already is. We were going to go in there just to impose a No-Fly Zone. Then it was to launch air strikes to help the rebels. Now it's arming them. The exact sequence certain members of this community derided at the time predicted......

[capthek.livejournal.com]

I am watching and getting worried, but I don't mind arming them, I don't mind even having a small number of our people on the ground, but if that number moves past say 1000 and the amount of money we spend on this passed 10 billion I will then openly oppose this. I know we disagree, but those are around my personal limits. If we had similar limits in Afghanistan and Iraq, ect... our nation would not be swimming in this war debt and bodies, that is my two cents.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

This is the problem, in for a penny, in for a pound. Both Iraq and Afghanistan were supposed to be quick and easy and were underestimated.

[capthek.livejournal.com]

Eh, the Bush administration never suggested we would not commit huge numbers or troops and resources. Perhaps some wished they said it would be minimal, but who believed them? I for one was part of huge demonstrations pointing out that the logic on Iraq was idiotic, and our current president appears to be much more with it.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

^What he said. In fact, the USA in Afghanistan did in a matter of months what the Soviets had never done in a matter of about a decade of wasting money and lives there: gained a friendly regime in Afghanistan with minimal loss of lives and treasure. Unfortunately we then pissed it all away in one of Bush's first big mistakes.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Depending on how much of a literal genie you want to be, Iraq *was* an easy conventional war. When the Iraqis started using guerrilla tactics, *then* it turned out that whoops, the generals were right and Rumsfeld was wrong.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, we *did* fight one war like that with Iraq, in 1991. I swear at the rate Bush II and Obama are going, Bush I will have become the only statesman in US history since the 1970s because they seem on track to make him look better by default. O.X

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

Word.

[qnetter]

And was it right for Europe to have intervened on behalf of the Southern states in the Civil War?

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

If we continue to intervene in this crisis , how should we do it - or should we just fall back and leave the Libyans to their fate?
We should intervene in a manner that is not intervention, but we should most definitely not take out Gadaffi's regime while trying to take out Gadaffi's regime. That would make it look like we intervened. So, what we need to do is send them letters and become pen-pals, and some of those letters may or may not contain deadly poison, and some of those letter may or may not take out government officials, but the important thing here is that we wouldn't know and no one could say we had anything to do with it.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

[mybodymycoffin.livejournal.com]

You have just attained the rank of Dao master.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

You're getting way to good at this.

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

[dwer.livejournal.com]

most of the objections to this particular intervention have been that the US doesn't have the resources either in manpower or dollars to lead this, which is why command of the situation was turned over to NATO this morning, and the US is departing the theatre.

So, the "we" you speak of needs to be Europe.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Yup.
And as Libya is right on our European Doorstep, the EU have as much right to go in as the AL or AU, I reckon.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Ok, there is a crazed and power hungry dictator in the Middle East who is determined to crush a popular uprising by massacring the civilians in towns where the rebellion broke out. So, what will we do about this?

Nothing, is what we should do.

But this time the civilians are actually *asking* us to intervene.

That doesn't really matter. It's their fight, not ours.

It's the same situation as the American Revolution against Britain. France was helpful, but did not directly fight against Britain on behalf of the colonists.

It's the same situation as the American Civil War. We wouldn't have wanted Britain or France or Germany helping out the CSA.

Countries should not be involved in civil wars as far as direct military action goes.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

In fact, given the British built some blockade runners for the Confederacy, as well as some commerce raiders the USA actually sued the British Empire for damages caused by those ships.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

Is it worth it to do a deal with the men who did the Lockerbie job in order to get the fighting ended? should gaddafi get a guaruantee that he woon't go before an international court, if he will leave quietly and go live in Uganda, a country that has already offered him a safe haven?

Regardless of whether or not we should have intervened / continue to intervene, the answer to both these questions is yes.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

"So, members and voters in the International Community
Should we arm the rebels? I think not, for stated reasons.
If Libyans ask, should we send in ground troops?
Should we put gaddafi and his cronies on trail if they get captured?"

It's almost all but too late to have any answer but, "yes" at this point. Not because I want it, or other people want it, but becasue from the word "Go!" we became 'investors' in a certain outcome, while simultaneously being a participant in the eventual outcome. It would be shocking if mission creep did *not* inexorably take us down these paths.

Being just a 'little bit at war' is like being just a 'little pregnant'.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Btw what happened to Greenman? :)

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

He does not have a paid account , and thus gets bugged by commercials.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Commercials ain't that much of a pain once you get used to it.

[debergerac.livejournal.com]

they're the price of freedom.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

google chrome + adblock. doot doot

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Preshishely.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

We needed a whole bunch of things for anything like this to work. The reason we did anything at all was because to let him go would be to show all the other autocrats and despots that all you gotta do if you got rebels is blow the f**k out of a few hundred of them and they'll STFU. But we needed a guy who was high-profile; we needed a guy who was easy to whoop up on; we needed a guy whose rebellion weren't actually creepier than he is, I'm looking at you Bahrain, and it didn't hurt that he was also a guy who blew up a planeload of our citizens a while back. Quagmire I dunno, Libya =/= Afghanistan.