Deadly Libya Violence Pushes Country Toward 'Failed State'

NBC ^ | 7/31/14 | Alastair Jamieson

[ScottinVA]

There was plenty of warning about the need to follow up, once the U.S. had stuck its clumsy self into that mess in Libya.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8716386/Libya-Overthrowing-Gaddafi-will-be-just-the-beginning.html

Turns out Ghadaffi was correct in predicting a terrorist takeover in Northern Africa:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/01/25/before-he-was-overthrown-and-killed-libyan-dictator-muammar-gaddafi-warned-jihadists-would-conquer-northern-africa/

[EQAndyBuzz]

Look, squirrel.

[Rennes Templar]

NBC and the other MSM’s have a very difficult job: Report deteriorating world and national conditions, without portraying the man responsible as being anyway involved or in any negative light. Show some mercy for the exhausted writers!

[Army Air Corps]

Obama, the King Midas of Poo - everything he touches turns to...

[dfwgator]

Par for the course in that part of the world.

[smokingfrog]

I wonder whatever happened to his Amazonian Guards?

[McGruff]

Sen. John McCain called for the world to provide greater support to Libya's rebels amid fears of a military stalemate with Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, after the Arizona Republican arrived in the opposition stronghold of Benghazi Friday.

“They are my heroes,” McCain said of the rebels as he walked out of a local hotel in Benghazi. He was traveling in an armored Mercedes jeep and had a security detail.

McCain, one of the strongest proponents in Congress of the U.S. military intervention in Libya, said he planned to meet with the rebel National Transition Council, the de-facto government in the eastern half of the country.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42715776/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/mccain-calls-greater-help-libya-rebels/

[cloudmountain]

Par for the course in that part of the world.

True enough.
There's been war over there forever, fighting over the SAME OLE STUFF: water, land and power.

Thus the human condition.

[Jack Hammer]

Probably joined a convent.

[spetznaz]

At times - scratch that, most times - I mull on whether bringing 'freedom and democracy' to some places is the right thing. While it seems like a good thing at the beginning, it quickly deteriorates into hell on earth for the people there.

It is my belief that involvement in such conflicts should only be based on a direct and significant national interest. Direct (directly affecting the US) and significant (e.g. while the oil in Saudi Arabia or the oil sands in Canada are significant/important, the waxy limited supplies in Uganda are not and would merely add to a rounding error). However, if a situation doesn't have a direct and significant national interest to the US, then there is no way to go and spread (real) democracy and/or (merely feel-good) 'democracy' there. It only leads to excessive pain and suffering for the people there.

Sure, Libya and Syria were not gardens of Eden under Qaddafi and Assad, but things are definitely far worse now for the people. Libya is not a failed state ...it is a series of failed states that are still called Libya in aggregate. Syria on the other hand has become the birthplace for the most competent Qaeda offshoot so far - ISIS - and the rebel controlled areas have become veritable hells on earth. Egypt managed to go from Mubarak into the hands of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, something that was amazingly cheered at first - but the real colors of the MB came through, and Morsi's attempt at being the next Pharoah backfired and ...amazingly ....now we have a younger version of Mubarak. Another army chap, but now several decades younger than Mubarak.

Anyways, I am not knocking democracy. However, the larger picture needs to be taken into consideration. Removing monsters only to give place to far greater and more vicious monstrosities is not proper. It is wrong. Especially when there is no direct and significant national interest to the US.

By the way this is why I have left Iraq - another country that is currently more of a mess than it was under Saddam Hussein - from my list above. Sure, Saddam was a monster, and his sons had certain habits that were not pleasurable to anyone who had a daughter, was part of the national soccer team, or happened to be an ethnic Kurd. However, the situation currently for your average Iraqi is far worse - probably the only people who are better off are the ethnic Kurds, who have come together to form their own defacto state, and are protected by their (effective) Pershmarga militia. However, the saving grace is that the US had a direct and significant national interest, which is a case that is not applicable to Libya/Syria et al.

Democracy, and even 'democracy', is ok when there is a direct and significant national interest. However, doing it for the sake of it, or because a country's leader is a bad, bad man, is not proper ...especially when it leads to more bloodshed in two years than was caused by the bad, bad man in over a decade.

[yawningotter]

Soon, if someone wants the oil there, they will have to have a mercinary army to protect the facilities. Screw the rest of the country, and just set up Exxon zones.