Posted on 03/22/2011 5:07:54 AM PDT by shortstop
And so we start another war.
For no reason, with no objective, with no popular support or national interest, at the whim of a president, we start another war.
And sit stunned at another misadventure begun in our name and underwritten with our blood. On the brink of insolvency, our military stretched dangerously thin, we start another fight.
Having capitulated on one, and become mired in another, we start yet a third.
Completely deaf to George Washington’s warning to avoid foreign entanglements.Over the weekend we attacked Libya.
It was supposed to be a UN operation, with us in support, on the far side of the horizon, with refueling and radar and logistical support. But when the rubble started to bounce it was us, from our ships and from the sky, pounding a country that had done us no harm, inflicted no hurt.
In the name of a no-fly zone, we attacked infantry and armor and artillery, in full fight against the Libyan military and police. Young Libyans conscripted into their military, fighting a civil war in defense of their government, fried in their tanks by our men and munitions.
And nobody knows why.
At least not in this country.
There has been no speech to the nation, no causus belli, no building of popular support or resolution of Congress, just the nod of a presidential head and we are again at war.
The peace candidate has become the war president.
And after 40 years, a Libyan dictator has suddenly become intolerable. For 20 years he was the world’s leading funder and bankroller of terrorism. In the 1980s he murdered American servicemen. Some 20 years ago he blew a civilian airliner out of the sky over Scotland.
There were a few sorties and a spanking from Reagan, but the world let him stay and we had no cause for war.
Now all of that has changed.
He has apparently done something worse.
As the wave of uprising spread across the Muslim world, people came out to protest in Libya. And the government suppressed them. Just as governments have done in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Syria and Yemen. The protesters became rebels and mysteriously armed began attacking. The government fought back and got the upper hand and pushed back, reclaiming territory it had controlled for half a century.
And while Saudi tanks rolled into Bahrain the Security Counsel decided that Libyan tanks couldn’t roll into Libya.
And the attack commenced.
We have gone to war with one more Muslim nation.
And in the inscrutable algebra of Obama-Clinton foreign policy, we have selected this one oppressive government – out of all the oppressive governments – and decided to topple it. Untold thousands and millions of black Africans have been uprooted or killed by governments and warring tribes and we have done nothing.
At the very time Libya was fighting armed rebels in a civil war, Ivory Coast was displacing and killing tens of thousands of its citizens. More people being treated worse in Ivory Coast, and yet we sent our armed forces into Libya.
If this is a humanitarian mission, then I don’t fully grasp the meaning of the word “humanitarian.”
And I don’t fully grasp the strategy at play. Tactically, it is clear the president has decided to decimate the Libyan military. But what is the strategic objective?
Has the White House forgotten the “you broke it, you bought it” principle of foreign meddling? Has it been so long since we took down Saddam Hussein that we have forgotten what can happen in the wake of the sacking of a dictator?
Have we not seen the chaotic mess that consumed Iraq? Do we think that any other fate can await a decapitated Libya? There is no organized opposition, no party or personality, just a people who have known nothing of self-government or political organization for almost half a century.
Has no one noticed that in the wake of the Muslim strongman, history has given us the rise of the Islamist? Do we really think that the organizations and leaders of militant Islam are going to hang back and do anything other than leap into the leadership vacuum? In Iran and Iraq, nearly a generation apart, it is the mullahs who have taken over. And it is likely the mullahs who will take over in Egypt and now, possibly, in Libya.
Does the president really think that the world is a safer and more stable place with both Egypt and Libya leaderless at the same time? Does he think that the world’s tenuous economy is bolstered by threats to Mediterranean commerce, African oil and Suez shipping?
And wasn’t Libya the rogue nation that rehabilitated its status by renouncing terrorism and weapons of mass destruction? Haven’t the western nations been its tacit allies for most of the last decade?
Didn’t Libya, wanting our favor, play nice with the world community?
And isn’t there a possibility now that with this war we have unleashed another hornet’s nest of terrorism? If we are going to smash this new enemy with conventional tactics, isn’t it natural to suspect that he will respond with unconventional tactics?
Does the president think that Libya has forgotten how to get bombs on airplanes? Does anyone remember that it was Libya that figured out how to wreak most of the carnage that ripped Northern Ireland for years on end? If the Libyan dictator is a psychotic who doesn’t care for the lives of his own civilians, what regard do you think he has for the lives of our civilians?
And what regard do you think our president has for the will and wishes of our people? There is no groundswell of national anger against Libya, there has been no effort by the administration to either gauge or guide public sentiment. He consulted foreign heads of state, but he did not consult Americans – either on Main Street or in the Capitol.
The people have not been consulted, the Congress has not voted, the president has just acted.
And he has taken us to war.
And like his previous effort in Afghanistan, there is no objective, there is no end game, there is just killing.
Barack Obama rose to prominence as a critic of George W. Bush’s war against Iraq. Unfortunately, he seems to remember none of the points he made then.
Or if he does, he sure isn’t applying them.
We have started another war.
For no good reason.
If I’m in two checkers games, regardless of who started them, and I start another game, how do I say that I’m the one who started the third game?
Would you have me pretend the two pre-existing games don’t exist?
McLame again. Who is John Galt.
Mr. Mod, please delete my redundant No. 17, please? Don't know quite what happened there.
There is actually only one other game. The game in Iraq is essentially over.
This administration is not about American interests; they are about destroying this country. It is intentional.
And it is not only Obama, but also the US Senators. US Senators are elected to serve the state’s interests, but in fact, once they get in to office and their 6-year terms, they represent the federal government’s interests to the states. They impose the will of the Federal government against the will of the people. They are the ones who are really answerable to no one. They are the ones who have the power to stop Obama but choose not to. The US Senators, and the Federal government are whose interest must be being served by what Obama is doing.
U.S. President Barack Obama leads a briefing on the current situation in Libya, with National Security Advisor Tom Donilon (L) aboard Air Force One, during a secure conference call on the flight from Brazil, to Santiago, Chile, in this handout photograph taken and released on March 21, 2011. REUTERS/Official White House Photo by Pet Souza/ Handout
They want a new Muslim leader,
I say, give them ours!
Solves 2 problems!
We didn’t start a war. Hussein Soetero started it with his One Worlder buddies.
Americans had nothing to do with it.
Best idea I’ve heard yet. Bar none!
Yes and yes again. To al-Qaeda, and according to Sharia law, Quaddafi is a perverse joke and an apostate. To al-Qaeda, he is a Muslim who has disgraced himself by capitulating to western governments, and by compensating the families of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing. Only al-Qaeda would have the street knowledge to fight against Quaddafi in the manner these people are doing. Does anyone really believe the Libyan people, with coaching, have become skilled in counter-terrorism and armed revolt and can, when given a signal, just walk out of their homes and bomb the government's tanks? That's giving the CIA entirely too much credit. No, Obama is knowingly supporting entrenched Islamic fundamentalism, using American dollars and the American military. It truly amazes me that after all the damage he has done to the interests of the U.S. and its allies, this man, like the Energizer rabbit, just continues to be able to beat faster and faster on that drum of his.
placemarker
The founders set up a representative republic and all the sidesteps towards democracy actually make us less free and less safe.
Even Farrakhan was dissing him. The bloom is off the rose.
Reagan did not ‘retaliate’ for Lockerbie PanAm 103.
You are thinking of the Berlin Disco bombing.
When PanAm 103 was blown to smithereens with 270 people killed, 11 on the ground, Reagan only had a month left in office. The investigation would take much longer than that to determine the cause and the blame.
The bastards have never been punished for this atrocity.
I can still see in my mind the awful scene of a mother coming into the NY airport to pick up her daughter for Christmas and then suddenly finding out on camera, live, that the plane had gone down. I will never forget that as long as I live.....................
Barack Obama has never "led" a briefing in his entire life, I'm sure.
bump
Yep. Once again John McLame is in favor of arming Muslim terrorists.
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