How Killing Libyans Became a Moral Imperative
"Who would be free themselves must strike the blow."
So wrote the poet Byron, who would himself die just days after landing in Greece to join the war for independence from the Turks.
But in that time, Americans followed the dictum of Washington, Adams and Jefferson: Stay out of foreign wars.
America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own," said John Quincy Adams in his oration of July 4, 1821.
When Greek patriots sought America's assistance, Daniel Webster took up their cause but was admonished by John Randolph. Intervention would breach every "bulwark and barrier of the Constitution."
"Let us say to those 7 million of Greeks: We defended ourselves when we were but 3 million, against a power in comparison to which the Turk is but as a lamb. Go and do thou likewise."
When Hungarian hero Louis Kossuth came to request a U.S. fleet in the Mediterranean to keep the czar's warships at bay, when Hungary sought to break free of the Habsburg Empire, Webster backed him.
But Henry Clay and John Calhoun stood against it.
"Far better is it for ourselves," said Clay, "for Hungary and for the cause of liberty that, adhering to our wise, pacific system and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning brightly on this western shore as a light to all nations than to hazard its utter extinction amid the ruins of fallen or falling republics in Europe."
When Hungarian patriots rose up against the Soviet occupation in 1956, Khrushchev sent in hundreds of tanks to drown the revolution in blood.
Hungary was behind the Iron Curtain, the Yalta-Potsdam line to which FDR and Truman had agreed. There were no U.S. troops on any Hungarian border. So Eisenhower did—nothing.
Indeed, that same month, Ike ordered British, French and Israelis to end their intervention in Sinai and Suez and get their troops out or face sanctions, including the U.S. sinking of the British pound.
Was Ike an isolationist?
Until the modern era, the idea of sending armed forces across oceans to kill and die for moral or humanitarian causes would have been seen as an insult to the Founding Fathers, an abandonment of a vital American tradition, and ruinous to the national interest.
Why are we in Libya? Why are U.S. pilots bombing and killing Libyan soldiers who have done nothing to us?
These soldiers are simply doing their sworn duty to protect their country from attack and defend the only government they have known from what they are told is an insurgency backed by al-Qaida and supported by Western powers after their country's oil.
Why did Obama launch this unconstitutional war?
Moral, humanitarian and ideological reasons. Though Robert Gates and the Pentagon had thrown ice water on the idea of intervening in a third war in the Islamic world—in a sandbox on the northern coast of Africa—Obama somersaulted and ordered the attack, for three reasons.
The Arab League gave him permission to impose a no-fly zone. He feared that Moammar Gadhafi would do to Benghazi what Scipio Africanus did to Carthage. And Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power conveyed to Obama their terrible guilt feelings about America's failure to stop what happened in Rwanda and Darfur.
This is the three sisters' war.
But why was it America's moral duty to stop the Tutsi slaughter of Hutus in Burundi in 1972 or the Hutu counter-slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994? Why was that not the duty of their closest African neighbors, Zaire (Congo), Uganda and Tanzania?
These African countries have been independent for a half-century. When are they going to man up?
The slaughter in Darfur is the work of an Arab League member, Sudan. Egypt, the largest and most powerful Arab nation, is just down the Nile. Why didn't the Egyptian army march to Khartoum, a la Kitchener, throw that miserable regime out, and stop the genocide?
Why doesn't Egypt, whose 450,000-man army has gotten billions from us, roll into Tobruk and Benghazi and protect those Arabs from being killed by fellow Arabs? Why is this America's responsibility?
When Spain had its civil war in the 1930s, in which hundreds of thousands perished, FDR declared neutrality. A million Ibos died in Nigeria's civil war from 1967-70. No one raised a finger to help them or the million Cambodians who perished in Pol Pot's killing fields.
Since Bush I, we have intervened in Panama, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya. Had Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman gotten their way, we would have been fighting Russians in Georgia and bombing Iran.
Add up all those we have killed, wounded, widowed, orphaned or uprooted, and the number runs into the millions. All these wars have helped mightily to bankrupt us.
Have they made us more secure?
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Pat Buchanan once wrote than any man who once served as a soldier is reluctant to fight a war as a national leader.
Hosni Mubarak seems to have been an example of that.
I figure it's all about power and hubris. I doubt Hussein Obama really cares about Libyans that much, but him and others like George W Bush want to be important and so stick their noses into everything. Obama couldn't very well let the EU have the humanitarian glory of stopping Gadhafi. The world is just a playground for petty tyrants like our masters.
Oh, you ought to print that "unconstitutional war" bit by PJB that came out on the 23rd...the end is astounding! The Southern patriots back in 1861 were apparently just like the rebels in Libya...though I agree that it is entirely Libya's business and "we" (meaning y.o.g.--yankee occupied government)out to but out; the analogy of Lincoln shutting down presses and blockading ports to "save" America and the subsequent "thank God there was no international community" is confusion bordering on Gabby's speeches in "Blazing Saddles." Or maybe just temporizing crap...
Pat B. writes: "This is the three sisters’ war."
"The weyward Sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the Sea and Land..."
Macbeth beware!!
Tom Sheeley ,
I agree that article should be read. In that particular essay Mr. Buchanan is addressing the hypocrisy of the Left who say things like Lincoln was a great leader saving the Union while dictators like Ghadaffi are oppressors of their own people saving their own necks.
Here is another example of the Left saying one thing and doing another:
"The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
So said constitutional scholar and Senator Barack Obama in December 2007 -- the same man who, this weekend, ordered U.S. air and missile strikes on Libya without any authorization from Congress."
It is wrong of you to insinuate Mr. Buchanan does not respect the South and their history, if that is what you were insinuating. He too pronounces house as "hoose" like the rest of the remnant of Virginians. He is not your enemy, if that is what you thought he meant.
All that PJB has said is true enough but not entirely relevant to the world in which we find ourselves. The first question always to ask is cui bono? I don't have an answer, though I suppose I could sketch out a scenario. Equally interesting is the obvious fact that if the administration and its supporters do have a set of objectives to justify these attacks, they not only are unwilling to tell us what it is but, when they do open up a bit, they say different things.
Mr. Buchanan is, again, spot-on. I saw enough waste in Vietnam, of men and money, to last the lifetimes of my children and grand children and their issue, too. Who are these elected and appointed officials in Washington, D.C. who so cavalierly toss precious lives to the wind, who spend unimaginable amounts of borrowed money in pursuit of satisfying their egos and some nebulous goal?
May God help our country and all Christendom. I no longer believe that a political solution can be conjured to clear away the stench.
I am very happy you mentioned our founding fathers (Washington, Jefferson and John Quincy Adams) they were adamantly opposed to any form of "interventionism". Today's America no longer has such a choice, the inhabitants of the Oval office always manage to find a cute way to bypass the Congress and launch some "humanitarian action" with the help of CNN and other media - another major note: we no longer have any independent media - Peter Arnett was fired, Phill Donohue was taken off the air (as a reporter), and today's TV hawks work as purveyors of war under the guise of "support our troops - otherwise, you're unpatriotic".
What troubles me most is that sending our boys to war is just a symptom - not the illness. The illness is that our society is on the brink of sociological dissolution. We will go and help save the whales, the spotted owl, the Alaskan brown bear, the Everglades, but will they return the favor and ever come to save us?
I think not.
Not that I propose any anti-environment actions - I certainly do not. I am just being cynical.
The illness I am talking about is usually contracted on January 20the shortly after the swear-in ceremonies and it gets transmitted by the carpet in the Oval office - whoever steps on that carpet on that day is guaranteed to gain partial employment as an agent for the military arms production, selling the House and the Senate on some new Bills that will deepen our deficit and increase our losses. Every so often that same individual may look to bail out a few of his wealthy friends' banks, automobile industry, cut benefits to workers, get decisions which will in turn fire rather than hire teachers, etc. etc.
That same person usually goes by the name of Mister (Mist'uh - in the deep south), and last name President. Supposedly a symbolic office from where that person would only administrate but since steps have been taken to color the water at the spring we know the outcome full well in advance. The nation is going to stay disinformed, misinformed, ill-advised, mis-directed, kept occupied by some other inoconsequential events that may dominate the "news".
In the last instance it is America that is always on the loosing side (just look at our list of shameful wars after 1945: Korea, Dominican Republic, Granada, Panama, Bay of Pigs fiasco, Viet-Nam, 1st Gulf War, 2nd Gulf War, Iraq (along with Afghanistan), and now Libya. Not one single worthy cause was ever produced (don't even think of the WMD or some "humanitarian action to bring democracy to the Bubkaville, Mauritius, Tanganyka, Uzbekistan or anywhere else.
If I were to add the overthrow of Mosadegh in Iran (resulting in Phlavi, resulting in Ayatollah Rullah Khomeini, resulting in today's Ahmadinejad) the killing of Salvador Allende (Chile), Che Guevera (Bolivia), there were dozens of light shadow wars that never took off the Pentagon's list of burning issues. I am aware that my list is very incomplete (Korea, Dominican Republic, Granada, Panama, Bay of Pigs fiasco, Viet-Nam, 1st Gulf War, 2nd Gulf War, Iraq (along with Afghanistan), and now Libya. Not one single worthy cause was ever produced). Just like Dr. Fleming commented "Cui bono"? I suppose the answer that I see is that the people seated in prime seats remain there (military suppliers, big banks, large global interests, Exxon/Mobil, etc. etc.). Books can be written on this topic - but I'll stop here - 'nuff said.
Yes, we are not secure.
My main concern about BHO was that being the intellectual lightweight that he is, he would let himself be pushed around by the likes of William Ayers and Rahm Emanuel. And the 3 sisters who loathe the military. Oh wait, those are our jets now.
J'm'en fiche.
Etienne Gervaise,
These references to the wierd sisters remind me that things don't change very much. Perhaps the magic potions have changed a little but for the most part we still conduct foreign policy with the same old witches brew as Macbeth relied upon.
First Witch
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.
Second Witch
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Third Witch
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.
ALL
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Second Witch
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
HECATE
O well done! I commend your pains;
And every one shall share i' the gains;
I am really tired of that misleading quote from John Quincy Adams. In fact, Adams was the first President to violate that by trying to arrange a congress with the Latin American countries. His father spoke of the glorious example of America to be spread over all the earth. This is one more attempt to postulate that there was such a thing as Northern "conservatives," a thing which never existed. Lincoln's Seward tried to involve the U.S. in foreign wars and the whole imperialist thrust of the late 19th century was initiated by Republicans. The Republicans bragged about conquering the Filipinos just like they had the Southern rebels. It was Calhoun and Clay, as stated, who killed off the idea of foreign interventions.
America fought on behalf of the Muslims in Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan so there is no reason not to fight on the Muslims side in Libya.
Spreading Sharia is a costly but worthwhile cause, I guess.
Robert,
I know where Pat's sensibilites regarding the South normally lie,
that is why I said "temporizing" America was not "Lincoln's" and the South was not burning down cities..
Dr. Wilson,
"His father spoke of the glorious example of America to be spread over all the earth. This is one more attempt to postulate that there was such a thing as Northern “conservatives,” a thing which never existed."
I trust your judgemnet on these matters as you won my confidence about Southern history a long time ago. But I must say as Evelyn Waugh once said, 'It shrivels my bowels within me' to hear Southern representatives like Lynsay Grahm, Newt Gingrich and Mississippi Governor Bauber go on about this "exceptional country" business. Can't a guy from the South still love his own county and state, mind his own business, admire and defend his traditions, bury his dead and pray for his living without cow-towing to every carpetbagging globalist and libertarian who comes down the pike?
I was reading the Fall of the House of Zeus the other day and wondered what the heck has happened to Southern politicians. Like the duoploy they participate in and work for, there is hardly a dimes worth of difference any more.
Robert @ 15
Newt is, I believe, a man whose origins are in Pennsylvania, although he finished school in Georgia; the other two are Southerners and are examples of how thorough Reconstruction, which did not end in 1877 but which continues to this day, has been on the Southern heart and mind. I have spent much of my adult life emancipating myself from the folly which was peddled as truth in secondary school, in college and in the popular media. Once the folly becomes the means by which one's bread is buttered as it is in the case of the gentlemen whom you mentioned, it is very difficult indeed to emancipate oneself from it, assuming that one ever arrives at the awareness of it or the will to free oneself from it.
#6,
Dr. Fleming,
Obama was chosen as the symbolic representative of the present power configuration in Washington precisely because after 8 years of Bush the Younger, the radical Left needed to be seduced back into compliance.
Consequently, the stated reasons for which Obama has taken the US to war in Libya are largely designed to keep the Leftists (and centrists) mollified. Likewise, Bush the Younger's stated reasons for going into Iraq and Afghanistan had the primary purpose of bamboozling the Rightists.
The actual reasons for this adventure likely have far more to do with staying ahead of the Arab revolt for propaganda purposes (perhaps with the hope that this rebellious wave can be directed towards Damascus and Tehran), as well as seizing an opportunity to plant military bases in an oil-rich country as part of the intensifying contest with China over Africa.
Anyone who thinks the South has been against "Yankee Imperialism" should look at the voting records of Southern Senators during the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, WW I, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, and the Iraq war.
#15
Well Mr. Peters you have certainly done a nice job of freeing yourself in the Christian and Souther sense. Just don't become a politician or I fear all of your good graces could be put placed jeopardy.I must say and this will seem strange, that for all of President Carter's short comings he still had certain Southern sensibilities that were noticable behind the leftist facade.
After losing to Reagan and feeling betrayed by the folks he tried so hard to immitate, he surely had second thoughts about betraying his own in many ways.
rcocean,
For WWII the only person who voted against the war was a woman Rep. from Montana who was a pacifist. Korea was by UN resolution, Vietnam was after the French were defeated in the 1950's and without a vote. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution was like the WMD mushroom cloud stuff of the last administration. Senator Byrd from West Virginia was about the only Democrat or Republican who had the guts to stand against the rising neo-con tide before Iraq. Southerners still have the military admiration because it is an honorable profession. It is true their politicians are so crooked they cannot sleep straight in bed, but that is because they have learned money talks and are tired of being kicked around by the professional con-men who think lieing, cheating and stealing for a good cause is what God intended for Yankees predestined to lead the exceptional nation.
Robert,
An excellent point assuming you're looking at nothing more than the declaration of wars. I was taking a more expansive view.
Jennette Rankin was the lady representative from Montana who voted against WW2. She also voted against WW1. She was one of the first women elected to congress when she voted against WW1. She was out of Conress until the 1940 election when she returned as an anti-war candidate. Of course she was defeated in the 1942 election. 1944 was an election in which Roosevelt was virtually dead but ran anyhow, and won. He just had that magic touch and bad opponents. In 1946 the voters had finely had enough and voted in the Republicans. At least that gave us the Taft Hartly Act and the 22nd Amendment. Roosevelt had turned off everyone about more than 2 terms for President.
#15 Robert. The people you mention are simply acting as Republicans are supposed to act. Once the Republican party was able to control much of the South in default from the Democrats, this was bound to happen.
#18. True, Southerners have supported wars. The Mexican War was not a foreign intervention. Until recent times, most wars could be portrayed as defending against enemies, not the same thing as as spreading the blessings of Americana around the world. True Southerners voted for most of those wars because loyalty is still a virtue with us, while in American society in general it is considered an obstacle to self-advancement. If they had not supported the wars, you people would be then and now screaming about how unpatriotic we are. In fact, there was considerable opposition to the Spanish War and World War I from traditional (unreconstructed) Southerners. See the papers from the last Abbeville Institute Scholars Conference.
I have this freshman political philosophy class that I designed (one of the cool things in academia in my neck of the woods)that focuses on axiom vs ideology; I use musical principles to illustrate various " goods" as well as follies. Talk about life imitating art. Before I left on the concert tour that I am on right now, I showed them the beginning and the end of "Liberty Valance" getting to the part where the editor rips up the real story that "Rans" just gave him and informs him: "I'm sorry, Senator Stoddard. This is the west. When the legend gets bigger than the truth, we print the legend." Leaving them with the prompt to think of a few things in history, present or past, that are examples of this, even going so far as to threaten them with this showing up on a test (they wont do anything otherwise). And bingo! Another stupid war, with all the concommitant cliches about "liberation", "international community" and other rot.
I hope the baby philistines are simply watching the news these days..
Tom @24: You wouldn't be the NAU guitar prof with the high ratings would you? If so, it's very interesting you would have the chance to design the course you mention.
In spite of Dr. Wilson's astute remark (it was indeed Calhoun and Clay who were a lot more instrumental) John Quincy Adams did oppose Jefferson's sending of our Marines to the first Barbary war. Under Monroe John Quincy Adams did betray his principles and practically co-authored "the Monroe doctrine" - that the entire Western hemisphere was exclusively in the domain of the United States, but there never was any degree of belligerency that we witness today.
#23 Dr. Wilson,
Yes, I can see your point. I don't know about you but sometimes I think we would be better off without the GOP.
The New American's website has an article about Obana's puppetmasters with regard to Libya. George Soros' name came up, naturally.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/foreign-policy/6845-the-puppetmasters-behind-the-military-action-in-libya
The whole charade to me is nothing more than one helluva ad campaign for the New World Order. Giving NATO the lead in what should be an easy operation for US forces is just the globalists getting us ready for more of this intevention crap. It is funny how the US Navy in its new recruitment commercials stresses the term "global" with references to helping out with relief efforts in global natural disasters and humanitarian missions.
Obomber will eventually call in the drones to finish off the "dead-enders". Trapped in besieged cities, many Libyans have and will die from bombs and a lack of necessities. That's called "collateral damage". Eventually, the noble rebels will fight among themselves when not busy with reprisals. That's called the "messy" business of a nascent democracy. Eventually, the noble rebels will request the US re-build the country we are destroying. That's called "you broke it, you buy it". The noble rebels will inevitably rediscover the enthusiasms of Islam and get back to killing Americans, Christians, infidels, Jews and the usual suspects. That's called "blowback". Obomber will declare before long that he has saved several million lives and that after all the Libyan Al-Qaeda in power is sort of pro-American. They named a street in Tripoli after him. That's called "Mission Accomplished". Someday...maybe...the American people will mob the streets, burn down GOP-Democrat offices and ride around jubilantly on tanks with our fed-up soldiers up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. Obomber will flee to exile in Georgetown and the nation will be saved. That's called "dreaming".
#27 Robert. Surely you jest. I have been arguing for almost a half century that the first step toward any constructive movement is to destroy the GOP.
Dr. Wilson.
Would you say there have been Northern Americans with the thinking and sensibilities of the people of the American South? I ask, in response to your statement on John Quincy Adams.
Obama is an amateur in foreign affairs. His theory that a hands-off diplomatic foreign policy was sufficient has been discredited. His real interest is in maintaining power at home and in changing the domestic landscape. There is where his Community Organizing experience is working. The Cloward-Piven strategy works at home because it is predicated on failure as a way of maintaining power.
Striking Libya came late and only after being okayed by the UN not Congress. Like Bush and Congressional leaders,Obama doesn't see jihad as a problem. The Mideast uprisings will undoubtedly end with stronger advocates of Jihad in power. Obama is not worried about that.
I'm surprised no one has responded to Dr. Fleming's important insight. I would go one step further: the U.S. Constitution as a "strict construction" has no relevance to the modern world, while as a "living document" it has no relevance to any sort of semantic reality.
NGPM @ 35
The following is a quote from a gathering of men for a pig roast at the Hughes House in Rocky Mount, Louisiana, on the evening of 26 November 1860, just one month after the election of Lincoln and a month before South Carolina was to secede:
"Whereas, we are in the midst of a revolution, and it is necessary
for the honor of the State of Louisiana and the protection of the
interests of her citizens to form military companies, we, the undersigned do hereby form ourselves into a Military Rifle Company to be called the Minute Men of Bossier Parish and adopt the following resolutions, viz: That we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, to sustain the rights of the State of Louisiana against the aggressions of the Black Republicans.."
The purpose of the gathering had been to contemplate secession and to accelerate the momentum for it in Louisiana and to immediately form a local militia to protect the interest of the people of Bossier Parish.
The resolution identifies the problem: they are in the midst of a revolution, a Jacobin resolution. Based on the scant record of comments currently available concerning that night, those men held that the union of constitutionally federated republics which had been so configured by their immediate ancestors by ratifying the Constitution was at and upon the election of Lincoln at an end. The old union had ended at the election. The Constitution as a document of strict construction was finished and in the modern world being ushered onto the American scene by the Republicans, it and the union which it articulates was over. (They would agree with you.)
You might also note that they called upon the examples given by their forebears to meet this threat: they were minute men who claimed, not the unfortunate lines in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, but the bold declaration of its closing lines.
The new reality was a Jacobin Hobbesian state; they anticipated its violence in that they formed the militia; and they knew what was at stake: their lives, their fortunes and their honor. Many of them lost their lives in the violence that the Republicans unleashed. The most of them lost their fortunes. They, however, maintained their honor, which, so it would seem, we, their descendants, are losing today.
NGPM,
I thought Dr. Fleming was stating the obvious --- The plutocracy does whatever it wants, wherever it wants, whenever it wants. I thought Pat was only stating the obvious in this article which clearly demonstrates this fact to be true for both political parties. Before the no fly zone attack on Libya, polls indicated 70% of American voters were oppossed to another intervention of this sort.
' many neoconservatives. When asked whether he agreed with the Bush Doctrine, Max Boot said he did, and that “I think [Bush is] exactly right to say we can’t sit back and wait for the next terrorist strike on Manhattan. We have to go out and stop the terrorists overseas. We have to play the role of the global policeman. . . . But I also argue that we ought to go further.”[39] Discussing the significance of the Bush Doctrine, neoconservative writer William Kristol claimed: “The world is a mess. And, I think, it’s very much to Bush’s credit that he's gotten serious about dealing with it. . . . The danger is not that we’re going to do too much. The danger is that we're going to do too little.
Robert Kaplan, tells us that "only through stealth and anxious foresight" can the United States continue to pursue the "imperial reality [that] already dominates our foreign policy", but must be disavowed in light of "our anti-imperial traditions, and... the fact that imperialism is delegitimized in public discourse"...
Gen. Tommy Franks in Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, in which Franks calls Feith "the f....ing. stupidest guy on the face of the earth," predicted after Iraq that in the future they would be creating new interventions as others were trying to understand the last one.
What's not to understand NGPM? This is no secret conspiracy, they have been open and notorious with their policy and most of them were brought in from the left under Ronald Reagan. They are simply doing what they think is best for America and since both parties seem powerless to prevent them, what is there not to like?
"The Three Sisters War". I like it. I hope it gets picked up and used in the history books and on op-ed pages. I hope it sticks to the backs of these lovely ladies as hard and as fast as does napalm. As near as I know, these three have no skin (or kin) in the game. Doesn't that break some Chicago rule? Pay to play?
I somewhat like Qadaffi. He's a hard money guy like Ron Paul. Like me, for that matter. I read that he keeps his country's gold internally at the Libyan Central Bank. Hard to have it confiscated there. Reportedly he has 700 tons of gold.
I further note that 2200 of the USMC best in South Carolina are headed for the Med. Obammy has said there are to be no boots on the ground. Meaning? There will be boots and hoots on the ground.
I predict that these 2200 lads and lassies will meet up with this 700 tons of gold bars. And together, they both will disappear into the dark night. Too bad, so sad, for the people of Libya.
Now we all can sit back and see if this happens. If this were a bet, is there anyone on this board willing to take the opposite side of this bet? (No money involved of course).
Three Sister's War?
I want to call it Sarkozy's War or the French Iraq War.
The 'Three Hags War', or the 'Three Harpies War', or 'French and Ovarian' War'.
'The War to Salve Three Crazy Hags' Warped Consciences.'
Notice there is no conscience over bombing Serbia or Iraq. Only for not bombing someone in Rwanda. Wow! What a strange system of morality they have!
Someone needs to invent a descriptive name for an evil, disgusting female leftist politician or social crusader.
The 'War of the Three Gorgons'?
Perhaps in that case I was myself stating the obvious. Still, as Dr. Peters has pointed out, any admirable classical reading of the U.S. Constitution has been a dead letter for over 150 years now. And while it is true that your ancestors (mine were not yet in the U.S. in the time of Old Abe Land) had more spine than we do, it is also true that first their attempt to resolve the struggle through legitimate political channels, and then their military resistance, were handily crushed. The constitutional cause they served is accordingly dead as a channel of legal recourse and probably not possible nor even desirable to revive in the post-guilder age social, economic and demographic reality of the United States.
Accordingly, though Mr. Buchanan and Dr. Wilson may be right on these issues (but then they are rarely wrong about these things, much less often than I am), I constate it is almost futile to appeal, in the context of this particular predicament, to antebellum isolationist and constitutional ideals. The only thing left is probably to demand answers and call for blood within these borders. On what grounds? On the grounds that since at least the end of the Cold War, the metrosexual kleptocratic class of our expiring former Great Powers is stoking up the murderous flames of Islam in the interest of exerting power that it does not have, at the cost of American, British and French blood, treasure, social tissue and geopolitical capital.
That in my mind makes their crimes far more penal than would any ideological argument.
@40: Madeleine Albright.
Yes, by definition, people who have power have power, but why this war at this time? Sarkozy I may understand, since getting tough against North African Muslims should be quite popular with his rapidly eroding base that is being cut into by the FN. Germany, backed by England, may be trying to show the world the EU is vital and increasing in strength and capacity for terror--I hope the Greeks and Irish are watching. These are just possibilities, and since our own government has not bothered to give one single justification--apart from the canard "avoid a humanitarian catastrophe--we can do nothing but speculate.
When this war brings a fresh batch of North African Muslim immigrants to France, and angers the Front National supporters even more, oh my goodness, that will be truly something!
Sarkozy may yet lose even more support.
Any more North African immigrants and Sarkozy may lose his country all together.
@45: I can't remember whether it was Anne-Marie Delcambre who said that ten years and there will be an Islamic military invasion in Europe if things keep going the way they are.
Yes, by definition, people who have power have power, but why this war at this time? Sarkozy I may understand, since getting tough against North African Muslims should be quite popular with his rapidly eroding base that is being cut into by the FN. Germany, backed by England, may be trying to show the world the EU is vital and increasing in strength and capacity for terror–I hope the Greeks and Irish are watching. These are just possibilities, and since our own government has not bothered to give one single justification–apart from the canard “avoid a humanitarian catastrophe–we can do nothing but speculate.
I don't agree with the Sarkozy hypothesis, if only for the fact that his shadowboxing gesture is not fooling *anyone* over here, including the idiots who might have been wooed by his deportation of some 3000 Roma.
(All I can say in response is, "Why only 3000??" But France has a remarkably low national average IQ for a G8 country, 94. And while it is true that much if not most of this can be explained by France's disproportionate presence of Maghrebian routiers, it is also well-documented that France's public schools have one of the most comprehensive philosophical indoctrination curricula, one of the highest allocations per student and one of the worst results in Western Europe. Even all but the explicitly traditionalist [SSPX or Ecclesia Dei--sometimes] "private" Catholic schools receive state money and are accordingly obligated to teach the state's version of everything except catechism, which the state does not fund. So I will not be so unkind as to suggest that the poor brainwashed victims who were fooled into shilling for the Hungarian back in 2007 deserve what they get.)
The Merkel hypothesis--that this is all an attempt to show muscle and power on the part of haughty powers mostly in decline--is fairly plausible, in my opinion, and probably the most likely explanations, as far as our speculations go. As you suggest, however, it is interesting that public officials seem increasingly insensitive to public opinion: Barak Obama won't even be bothered to ape the weak (and outright fabricated) sort of justifications pushed in favor of Bush's immoral bloodbath against secular Iraq. So one can only wonder...
#33. Yes. A great untold story of American history.
We have an inexplicable intervention which is not being justified to the people even on the most banal grounds, except to 'avoid a humanitarian catastrophe'.
Even idiots must be able to see that 'catastrophe' was not really in the making, despite the suffering the war was no doubt causing.
Unless there emerges some new information that's not weird conspiracy theory, then it was probably a weak willed front-man president being pressured into it by the chief Gorgon, Hillary.
However, I dont buy the notion that she had a 'guilty conscience' over not intervening in Rwanda back in the 90's. I also doubt that the other two gorgons really could have cared less about Rwanda, then or now.
This really is strange. I think they just wanted to cozy up to the 'democratic' elements in the dry sand trap, thinking they'll get brownie points they wont get, like in Bosnia and Kosovo.
The knee-jerk reaction should be that anything Bill Kristol supports must be wrong. Moreover, that Kristol is supporting a Barack Obama foreign policy initiative adds a large multiplier effect to how wrong the policy must be.
However lugubrious President Obama's tears might be for the woebegone Libyan people, his anguish for the hundreds of millions in the world suffering under the boots of tyrants seems to be selective to how much his concern favors his political interests. Barack Obama desperately wishes to be re-elected and taking down a vulnerable Colonel Qaddafi, an especially hated man in the eyes of most Americans, wins Obama points in the game of politics. But notice Obama's lack of distress for the peoples of countries as disparate as Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, Darfur, Burma or Tibet, the last three being favored misfortunates of the left. Obama doesn't even feign interest in the plight of the people of Zimbabwe, Cuba and Venezuela as he favors the regimes in power. As for the other three, lip service appears to satisfy his human rights backers.