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uwindsurf
Joined: 18 Aug 2012
Posts: 968
Location: Classified
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 Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 8:49 am Post subject: |
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| nw30 wrote: | | youwindsurf wrote: |
So what should be done there? The Steven Bard signature bombing? Or perhaps the NW30 boots on the ground combat?
You can fund another off the books war with your tax money. I prefer that mine stay at home for health care, education and infrastructure.
You can't have it both ways - foreign wars and an economic recovery. Take your pick. |
For review, BHO ran on getting all the troops out of Iran, fine, we all know that, the problem is that first you win a war and then you keep the peace, preserve the victory, you don't just drop your weapons, giving them to the survivors and then just pull out. BHO must have missed that class, and nobody gave him their notes so he could understand that most important point, instead he banked on most of the voting public missing that class as well.
So this is where we are, too many voting people also missed the class about preserving the peace after winning a war.................... All for nothing, all those lives of our fighting heroes lost, for what, a promise? Pfffft.
I'll take some pot holes in my street, and a school that needs a paint job over loosing the peace any day. Those lives lost have to be worth something greater than that.
P.S. And Maliki is a puss, BHO could have gotten anything he wanted, but he uses Maliki's stubbornness as a convenient excuse to keep his lame promise to his lame voters. |
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mrgybe
Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 9:04 am Post subject: |
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| youwindsurf wrote: | | Obama-Hate is your agenda. |
The President, and many members of his Administration, have publicly condemned ISIS atrocities in the exact manner that I have. I think you are confused.
| youwindsurf wrote: | | Do support the Iraqi atrocities as reported? Or is it OK because they are the "good guys"? |
So tiresome. If you can find any words of mine that suggest I support atrocities of any kind, please let us all see them. Of course you won't, so don't be silly. Since you seem to have a rather child like grasp of foreign policy, let me explain to you that every Administration has, on occasion, to align themselves with governments that they find unpalatable, but the lesser of two evils. They are not the "good guys" you watch on your Saturday morning cartoons, just the less bad guys. |
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uwindsurf
Joined: 18 Aug 2012
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 9:21 am Post subject: |
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Edit.
Last edited by uwindsurf on Tue Aug 26, 2014 9:22 am; edited 1 time in total |
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uwindsurf
Joined: 18 Aug 2012
Posts: 968
Location: Classified
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 9:22 am Post subject: |
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| mrgybe wrote: | | youwindsurf wrote: | | Obama-Hate is your agenda. |
The President, and many members of his Administration, have publicly condemned ISIS atrocities in the exact manner that I have. I think you are confused.
| youwindsurf wrote: | | Do support the Iraqi atrocities as reported? Or is it OK because they are the "good guys"? |
So tiresome. If you can find any words of mine that suggest I support atrocities of any kind, please let us all see them. Of course you won't, so don't be silly. Since you seem to have a rather child like grasp of foreign policy, let me explain to you that every Administration has, on occasion, to align themselves with governments that they find unpalatable, but the lesser of two evils. They are not the "good guys" you watch on your Saturday morning cartoons, just the less bad guys. |
I love you too Master Gybe. Your condescension hurts so good. What shall we use for our safe word? "Isobars"? |
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mrgybe
Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 9:28 am Post subject: |
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| youwindsurf wrote: | | So what should be done there? |
I would have done what the President said..........
"...the United States, together with the international community, is committed to the Libyan people. You have won your revolution. And now we will be a partner as you forge a future that provides dignity, freedom, and opportunity.”
We didn't do that. We destroyed the infrastructure and mechanisms of government, patted ourselves on the back and then left them to it. Just like Iraq. Created a vacuum for the most aggressive actors to fill. As NW30 says, we missed the bit about preserving the peace.......in both Libya and Iraq. We left residual forces in Germany, Japan , South Korea and Kuwait to enable stability. We should have stuck with that strategy rather than fulfilling unwise campaign promises. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 10:02 am Post subject: |
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Now here is a post that inspires with its accuracy and insight:
| Quote: | | For review, BHO ran on getting all the troops out of Iran |
I will note that after the righties complained about my tone, they have been utterly silent on the continuing nastiness of the gybster, who has now turned his condescension on yousurf. Makes for very persuasive arguments. Silence on the right. Unless it is to defend a white man who killed a black man--always well before all the facts are in. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 10:56 am Post subject: |
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There is a certain desperation on the right to paint Obama as equal to Bush in ineptness in dealing with the Middle East. It starts with a kernel of truth, as here:
| Quote: | | We didn't do that. We destroyed the infrastructure and mechanisms of government, patted ourselves on the back and then left them to it. Just like Iraq. Created a vacuum for the most aggressive actors to fill. As NW30 says, we missed the bit about preserving the peace.......in both Libya and Iraq. |
and then proceeds to see violence as the only appropriate tool, and to see Obama as the only one to blame.
It is hard for me to agree that participation in a NATO bombing campaign equates to "destroying the infrastructure and mechanisms of government" particularly given the comparison to Iraq. There was, of course, a revolt by tribal militias going on, and NATO had good reasons to want Kadaffi out. Naivete about the implications of trying to pick the winners in a tribal dispute, or hope for long term friendship is a more reasonable critique. Certainly neither NATO nor Obama did anything in Libya akin to the de-Bathification of the Iraq society that led to destruction of the mechanisms of the government and fueled both the insurrection and much of the force now known as ISIS.
My great aunt spent her career in the Foreign Service, much of it in the Middle East. I certainly can't claim her understanding; she died before I was in high school. But she always displayed a humility about what she had learned that would be refreshing coming from those who claim to have the answers in the Middle East. She always spoke of the Middle East--and she was stationed for many years in many different countries--as a place where what appeared to be true often was not.
More dispassionate analysts agree that the United States should have approached Libya after the bombing differently. See for example: http://voiceofrussia.com/uk/news/2014_07_29/Escalating-Libya-turmoil-Is-the-country-falling-apart-3033/
In particular:
| Quote: | Change in Libya started so optimistically. Three years ago, the United States and its NATO allies used air power to propel the Libyan rebels to a sweeping victory over Muammar al-Gaddafi.
But the West ignored what kind of civil conflict there would be once Gaddafi was overthrown. That's the view of George Joffé, who is a research Fellow and Affiliate Lecturer at the Centre for International Studies, at the University of Cambridge.
"The real problem is that the West did not focus on the implications of the civil war in Libya three years ago, they tried intervention-lite by using NATO's airborne forces and they refused to accept the consequences after the war was won," he told VoR.
Relentless factional fighting in Tripoli and in the eastern city of Benghazi has left dozens of people dead. |
Of course, the US was deeply involved in Libya after the bombing stopped with a well thought of diplomat and a large CIA effort. Even with that level of on-the-ground intelligence, the attack on the Benghazi embassy came largely as a surprise. The lessons here are not entirely clear to me. Nor, I think to Republicans, who have treated the Middle East as part of a continuing Presidential campaign, rather than as an opportunity, or a clarion call, to sit down and review the lessons learned and make necessary changes.
I remain unconvinced, based on the advice of my great aunt and the simplistic solutions of those like mrgybe, that we can ever be fully competent in our understanding of the Middle East (I know, I've used examples outside the technical Middle East. So perhaps we should say "oil producing countries that we depend on and their unruly neighbors?").
This doesn't mean that I think it would be wrong to intervene militarily against ISIS. I simply don't know at this point. Such an admission is not, as some would have it, an admission of weakness. The lessons here are difficult--beyond shouting points.
Perhaps we should turn to analysis from Africa for some more reasoned understanding of the challenges Libya faced and the need for those to be answered from within the country rather than imposed by the United States with a military force:
| Quote: | Finally, in support of its economic reform and reconstruction
efforts, Libya will need to create a system of law and accountability that serves its citizens equitably and provides clear guidelines for its economy.
Strictly speaking, the re-construction of the institutions of the former Libya will not be necessary. Rather, Libya will need to create for the first time,
the kinds of rules, mutual obligations, and checks and balances that mark modern states and modern economies.
In light of Libya’s traditional distrust between different tribal groups and between the different provinces, and due to the absence of necessary
frameworks and institutions to resolve differences, governance challenges in the post-conflict period will prove enormous. |
http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/Brocure%20Anglais%20Lybie_North%20Africa%20Quaterly%20Analytical.pdf From the African Development Bank |
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swchandler
Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588
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| Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 1:39 pm Post subject: |
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| NW30, what did we do in Viet Nam when we left? |
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uwindsurf
Joined: 18 Aug 2012
Posts: 968
Location: Classified
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| Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:37 am Post subject: |
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http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/26/opinion/clark-u-s-syria-isis/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
The U.S. has learned the hard way that Western armies inflame extremists and serve as recruiting magnets for terrorists. Instead, other nations, and particularly Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states, must put their soldiers forward, and bear the brunt of the fighting.
The U.S. can use diplomacy and economic assistance, and it can strike using airpower, or special forces, to reinforce the efforts of our allies, but we cannot fight a religious war as proxies for our Islamic friends in the region. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2014 10:49 am Post subject: |
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Thanks, good posting. I would note that one of the reasons that Obama was reluctant to support rebels in Syria was a concern about the radical nature of some of the ascending rebels--ie, those who have now consolidated as ISIS.
Just to jog the memory of the low information voters--especially those who think Romney would have been a better choice (and reveal themselves frequently as sore losers):
| Quote: | MESA, Ariz. - US Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich on Wednesday lent their support to the idea of arming the Syrian opposition in its fight to topple President Bashar Assad.
Speaking at a CNN debate in Mesa, Arizona, Romney said the United States needed to team up with allies to help the rebels |
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