Hooray, we won the non-war against what’s his name, our ally in North Africa, Gadaffi Joe. Everybody feel better? TEN DAYS OF HISTORY.
According to Canadian factcheckers at the Associated Press, Obama’s speech was “full o’ baloney” because non-U.S. NATO forces have hardly taken over the whatever-it-is in Libya. Also, the mission he says is the mission is not actually the mission. He also violated the Constitution by not consulting Congress. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Read More:
- Here's Your Live Video of Obama's 'Peace Through War' Afghanistan Thing
- Oh Yeah, America's In Another War Somewhere (Libya?)
- Hope & Change, Inc.: Obama Denies Libya War Is 'War,' While Escalating It
- Libya and the Decline of American Military Power
- 80-Year-Old 'Pentagon Papers' Hero Arrested At White House For Protesting U.S Torture of Bradley Manning
{ 116 comments }
Needs moar flags!
Sarah Palin would have had an Israeli flag.
Never Forget.
August 6, 2010
Quoth Benjamin Frisch:
Now that Basil is just another big wig, who will stand up against America’s #1 enemy, gold-fringed flags?
If only all those flags were on his lapel. Once again, god damn America.
Carrying on in the fine tradition of the pigfucking Bush regime with all the multiple Murka freedom flags.
Keep on fuckin' that bloody pig, Barry!!!
The justification I read today in America's McDonald's of Newspapers, USA Today was pretty good. Something along the lines of "Well those billion dollars worth of munitions were going to be obsoleted soon anyway, so it was all free!"
It's kind of like when I smashed my co-worker's iPad repeatedly over his head and said, "Well, it was obsoleted by the new iPad 2, so I did you a favor."
Yeah, for Raytheon (the sole source of TLAMs ( non-nuke cruise missiles to those not in the military-industrial complex), life is very, very good!
And Texas Instruments (the makers of the Paveway laser-guided bomb) these are salad days, too.
Jobs jobs jobs!!!!
Hey, they have to kill someone, right?
What's the good of a shiney new army if you can't use it?
What's that? The army's all fubared in Iraqistan?
Send in the Air Force, them be the pretty boys! They do the tit work, no heavy lifting, just the finger tips!
That's right. For $350M a plane, you HAVE to use them, right? It'd be a shame NOT to bomb some Arabs.
Hell, we're doing the taxpayer a FAVOR, amirite?!?!
Who is going to give the Democratic response to Obama's speech?
~
Kenneth the Page reprise (fingers crossed).
Best.
You know something is wrong, when McCain supports Barry
http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAct...
a broken clock is right twice a day
Kucinich, if he can get his tongue out of Liz.
(Did you know when you google 'Dennis Kucinich' it goes straight to 'Dennis Kucinich wife'?)
Barry is president of jingoistic symbolism.
Mr. Bojingo.
I don't know, Bush was a pretty good president of that. You know, with the aircraft carriers and flight suits and "mission accomplished" banners and dropping "terrorism" and "freedom" every other word of his speeches. Barry drops all of the right words in speeches, too, but, you know, he actually likes to try to explain shit and talk to folks like their adults.
There is only about 5% of us that get it though
Was Bobby McFerrin singing in the background, Don't worry be happy?
"Don't Worry Be Happy" was only the rough draft of that Bobby McFerin song. He finally settled on "Don't Worry Just Kill Yourself".
Then Homer's driving song must have been a tweener.
I was actually expecting Qaddafy or Gaddafi or Khadafy in the background singing:
…Ooh na na, what’s my name
Obama, what’s my name, what’s my name?…
Don't Worry and Love The Bomb.
Slim Pickens wins for that relate.
No matter what you call it, a war is a war.
No, this is a humanitarian war. Just like that other one…c'mon… you know which one…I can't think of it right now…dag, that one we were in before…
Looks like a screen grab from "The Distinguished Gentleman."
Or "Head of State."
Yo yo wassup I'm Osama Bin Laden. I hate America but I love Bryan Lewis.
Here's a fun bit of trivia: the last time someone on the *right* accused a president of violating the constitution by not seeking congressional go-ahead for war? Why that would be 2000, vis a vis Kosovo. And, also too, Nader's position back then, as well as Gore's and also most of the rest of us lefty libtards, was that the humanitarian crisis was necessary and sufficient cause to intervene. I sometimes wonder (but not much) who's experienced more ideological drift here.
Quit making sense.
Kucinich/? 2012!
Wait until Obama offers to cut Social Security, the Republicans respond "That's not enough!", and everybody finally agrees to cut it even more in a Dave Broderian orgy.
Then the drift should be clear, mumbly joe.
~
Ugh, don't get me started on Obama's "meet them halfway" approach to core Democratic economic policy issues. I do think some of the spinelessness proceeds from liberals' innate view that opposition parties are an important element of democracy, a view that apparently transcends the fact that the current opposition party has nakedly abandoned any real policy goal other than undermining the governing party politically. We *should* be ignoring, if not punishing, them- not only because they'd do the same if the situation were reversed (as clearly evidenced in a number of states right now) but also because they are literally doing everything in *their* power to make governance impossible right now, even.
But, economics also isn't my point right now. I think there *are* some important pragmatic arguments in that vein against intervention in Libya, but I also think all of those arguments are actually stronger arguments for fully wrapping-up our involvement in Iraqistan than they are for non-intervention here. And *when* it comes to our view of intervention, it seems pretty clear that we believed, in 2000, that humanitarian causes were adequate basis for intervening, with our without Congressional approval, and with or without other compelling interests. You can look up the 2000 candidates' positions there, it's pretty obvious. Really, I can only assume that the whole Iraq thing completely spoiled peoples' view of this sort of thing, but there are literally innumerable reasons why this ire is badly misdirected at Obama and this intervention.
Holy shit, thank you. I understand that people are very frustrated with President Obama and their assorted Democratic legislators these days. I am too. Libya is not that thing, though.
And I also understand that people are fed up with Iraq and Afghanistan. Those are both awful wars that we shouldn't be in (understatement). Neither of them has anything to do with Libya, except inasmuch as they are tying up military, human, and economic resources that we could use to pursue actually worthwhile goals at home and abroad, like Libya.
Everyone please go and be mad about what is actually making you mad.
He was acting to enforce a UN mandate, just like certain other presidents.
I really hope you're talking about Clinton, because the only sense in which Bush "acted to enforce a UN mandate" was that all the weapons inspectors left Iraq when it was clear that America was about to invade no matter what anybody said.
If the cops are tailing a suspect, you don't set up a roadblock to trip them up, just so that *you* can hunt down that suspect and shoot him (and a few dozen bystanders who get caught int he crossfire) to death, and then call that "justice".
IIRC, an actual genocide was actually happening in Kosovo in 1993, which we were obliged by treaty obligations to do something about. To the best of my knowledge, Qaddafi wasn't engaging in or even threatening genocide before we started cold droppin' bombs on his mercenaries.
Is it too early to give Herman Cain his Nobel Peace Prize?
Peace-za Peace-za.
This time, the banner should read "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED (ONE BIG FUCKING DEAL)"
People will ask "where were you when…?", and I'll always be able to say "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!"
I thought that was spelled FCUK?
"And to those who would say that there are many places in the world with brutal dictators who oppress and even murder their own people, let me say this: 'Life's a bitch if you don't have oil.'"
Just ask the Rwandans and the Sudanese and the Timorese and the Cambodians and the Burmese and…
"Canadian factcheckers"???
Take off, hosers.
they had to tear themselves away from the poutine.
Snark off: I gotta give Obama credit for being consistent. R. Maddow showed a clip of a portion of his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, and he pretty much said then (2 years ago) exactly what he said tonight: When a humanitarian crisis occurs and other nations join in, it's an acceptable use of force. But it's not our job to go it alone.
Oh for fuck's sake.
There's almost never a situation for which that comment is not perfect. I therefore agree with you.
Barry, just let me know: Did we win? Did we kick ass? Mission Accomplished?
I need to know.
Relax, this is just the "Known Unknowns" phase.
i would totally have not consulted congress they are assholes.
There's a dude in my town that spends his days preaching hellfire and damnation to passing trucks. I would sooner consult him than Congress.
Rick Santorum lives in your town?
Nobody wants santorum anywhere around them.
Do you live in Walterboro, SC?
I would have.just said "You better back off baby, it's a black thing."
T'Pau has put the foreign relation skills he learned in Gritty South St. Paul by whining that Barry is naive on Libya and Syria.
Meanwhile, Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore – remember him? – is putting together a Preznitial exploratory committee.
Maybe it really is the End O' Days, except instead of riding a pale horse, Death will be riding a cream-colored Rascal.
Roy Moore? That's awesome, however brief. That jackanapes can't go anywhere without lugging his 20,000 pound Ten Commandments monument around with him — so the baggage fare alone will bankrupt his campaign by around mid-April.
HE who sits in the heavens laughs them to scorn." Psalm 2
The Four Hoverounds of the Apocalypse?
So, now Obama can pass all of his domestic agenda, amirite? Just like Bush?
Ken, ban me if you must. But grow up. He's done everything, building a real coalition, repecting the UN, etc., etc., etc., et fucking cetera, and for what? He's got my support and I guaranfuckingtee you I'm a bigger liberal than you'll ever imagine being. You live in claifuckingfornia for fucks sake. Yeah… It's tough to be a liberal there. Try doing it in Arkansas like me and Owls and others. You, not the fucking wingtards that one would expect, forgot or ignored, or willfulfilly ignored the most important line from his ignaugural address: It's time to put away childish things.
I reckon I'm banned. ChernobylSoup/ApplesauceRobot out. Peace.
Ken has thicker skin than that. Stop being dramatic.
Plus, there's this. Barry has sold out so often, that when he plunges us into something like this, with no clear exit strategy, it is very hard to support. He may have a vision of this coming out fine. It may come to pass. But we have already spent how much on this, while Barry goes along with cuts to hungry children, tax cuts for the wealthy, no taxes for big corporations, silence on union support, etc. The guy has double crossed his base so often, my head is spinning. These days one needs a reason to believe he is NOT fucking up when he does something like this. The trust, the confidence in his reasons for making a given decision, is all gone.
Yeah, I'm sort of feeling the same way.
I wish he would bring similar gravitas of a prime time speech with the economy or the budget.
I'm not an America Firster, but I am sort of like an America, you know, At Some Point-er.
Yep. What's even more frustrating is trying to say President Huckabee or President Romney without puking ever so slightly. We're sort of stuck unless Jeff Bridges runs on dem ticket.
You're not banned. And I don't dispute the humanitarian nature of this conflict. But the U.S. doesn't do shit unless it's in the interest of the defense contractors and the oil companies, that's all. Otherwise, we'd be rebuilding Haiti instead of leaving that very nearby island in ruins and misery 15 months after an earthquake demolished it.
As for your "surrounded by wingnut" credentials, I live in California's Arkansas District, so I do not weep too many tears for you.
The US "rebuilt" Haiti for about 30 years, early 20th century. So far as I can tell, they weren't better off.
And St. Paul was a fascist goddamned apologist for slavery and oppressor of women.
/and there were no authentic Pauline epistles, just a lot of 2nd Century sects writing in the name of a semi-legendary 1st century evangelist.
Worse still, he lent his name to the hometown of Tim Pawlenty.
Before you know it, the Morlocks of America will be cutting up Libyans for souvenirs, too.
Iraq and Afgahnistan are supposedly humanitarian too. In fact, all our wars are about our vanity and our blood-lust.
Honestly, the reason there was no big liberal shitstorm about Afghanistan at the time was that a lot of us on the left *had* been making the case that humanitarian conditions there called for intervention, going back a couple of years before 9/11. The outrage over the destruction of historic landmarks, and converting the stadium into an execution grounds, and so forth, that was largely an outcry from liberals.
Now, the decision to shift attention and resources and troops to a war of aggression in Iraq, just as we were on the verge of accomplishing our actual objectives there, allowing it to languish for another five years and become an unwinnable quagmire? Completely shitty. The decision not to use an effective peace-keeping and nation-building force that had learned formative lessons in '98 Kosovo inthose capacities, opting for a collateral-damage-heavy "shock and awe" approach, while also subtly blaming Clinton with "the army you have, not the army you want" jabs? Absolutely moronic.
But those are different issues. Iraq was ill-founded *and* poorly executed, but the main problems with Afghanistan, before 2003 or so, were entirely in the execution, not the basis for stepping in in the first place.
George the Conqueror wanted to fix the wall Alexander had supposedlybuilt keep out Gog and Magog, and confused the Indian Caucasus withthe more familiar Turkish Caucasus.More seriously, how anyone can think that shrapnel and napalm willimprove anyone's life is beyond me. Too many people playing videogames, I guess.Zhu Bajie
Hey Ken. Thank you for the response. I respect and appreciate it. You are and will always be the best in the world.
suck up, teachers pet, appeaser, liberal, fair weather bitcher.
My guess is that Ken likes a little push back, shows we are actually engaged and give a damn.
Truth is spherical: you can never see more than half, what you see depends on where you stand, everyone can see a bit of it.
Zen out
Better safe than sorry, I aways say.
Here's how to do insurgency, bitches!
that costs 11 million pounds?
From the halls of Montezeuma to the shores of Tripoli… MEXICO, you're next.
I wouldn't put it beyond the cartels to stock up on RPGs and Stingers from Arizona gun shows.
No, Montezuma is too vengeful.
I'm just glad old Europe is helping. Frankly I'm sick of Libya one week in and would rather hear news about Japan.
Lockerbie vs liberty. Dictator vs. freedom seekers. Hope vs. cynicism.
Call me naive, but I agree with Obama on this one. Time will tell, but I think it's good to assist those that truly want to assert their self-determination.
Well, why not help everyone?
Did I mention Lockerbie?
Yeah, but let;s not get carried away here. I remember Ronnie calling the Taliban "Freedom Fighters", and our media talking about Khomeini like he was the answer to our prayers while he was in exile in England and the Shah was in power. What do we get if G-Money goes down?
What happens if we just leave the rebels hanging and they get slaughtered?Then it takes another 5-10 years to oust Kadhaffi. What kind of reactionary despots would succeed Khadaffi (hint, see Iran/Afghanistan)?
Now this is really gonna sound naive, but, I think pureness of intentions really shine through. And I think Obama is trying to do the right thing with no ulterior motives. And, I think the Libyan people will be able to tell.
I remember Paul Sweezy, editor Monthly Review, talking about how Iran gonna be the new people's republic, led by a good marxist working class revolution.
This here ferign policey is getting to sound a lot like the quantum mechanical zen I had to study in fizz-chem skool. 'Scusies while I start hitting the single malt hard to try and make some sense of it.
This here ferign policey thing is starting to sound a lot like the quantum mechanical zen I had to learn way back in fizz-chem skool. The mission is now NATO's except when it is not. Guhdaffy must be removed, but not by us, and not by force, except when he can be removed by farce. 'Scusies while I start hitting the single malt hard as it is starting to sound like Omar Mukhtar's cat, or maybe Omar hizself, is both dead and alive. Barry has fed Schrodinger's foreign policy cat to Bo.
You can assertain location or velocity, but not both, you gotta chose.
The world is an uncertain place, huh?
Fizz-chem is hard.
I thought the speech put into words what many of us had been trying to say for weeks. The difference between Libya and say, Yemen or any of the others, is that the world went in to stop an advancing military under explicit orders to punish Benghazi, and the nation we're helping in question actually explicity asked for our help, and G'Daff was goddamned foolish enough to threaten a massacre during what has been an awesome democratic uprising in the Maghreb and Middle East. He made the case, as far as I'm concerned, about what triggers military intervention and what doesn't.
He also made the point that I'd made days ago that much of the opposition to this is offering false choices, and that just because we haven't always done things correctly, or because we can't know 100% of the players or do everything doesn't mean that we can't and shouldn't do anything when we are met with something like what had begun to unfold on the ground in Libya.
Never been much a fan of Barry, but I can't say I disagree with anything he's done, on net, here. If he'd have allowed the massacre, the bleeding hearts would be all fucking pissy about that, too.
So, Barry, go on with your bad self. If Libya ain't a textbook case of how to appropriately and effectively use one's unique military capabilities I don't know what the hell is. If Libya ain't deserving of having their call answered, than who in the hell will be? I mean, Barry crossed every T and dotted every I, or so much as one can when you have to do things as quickly as he had to.
I'm sorry, I had to work today. How was Michele Bachmann's response where she stared vacantly out into space and told us how God wanted us to get rid of the government so that we can use the money to kill brown people?
Right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsQtE5tI0jg&fe...
Faptaculous!
Must read about Libya and tonight's speech (even with Wonkettish title):
http://www.juancole.com/2011/03/obama-on-libya-vs...
An excellent opinion. And this "Obama is on the side of al-Qaida" meme really got around quick in the last couple of days. Rand Paul mentions it in his response to President Obama's speech too — he helpfully says it came from the Telegraph.
Edit: Here's the original story, and what a lame-ass excuse for hysteria. Some guy recruited 25 soldiers, some of whom fought as jihadists in Iraq. Also, one guy fought against Libyan soldiers and the organization he was associated with more than a decade ago is now reportedly closer than it was to al-Qaeda. Scared yet?
Juan Cole BEST EVAR!
He got his street cred when Dershowitz black balled his appointment to Harvard, 'cause he wasn't "balanced" about Israel.
"If only the Führer knew?"
He does?
Oh never mind.
I would like to buy humanitarian intervention as a non-imperialist use of force in the global south. Gaddafi is as purely evil as a man can be–a North African Slobodan Milosevic and the streets of Benghazi would have been an abattoir for a while. The application of the "Responsibility to Protect" is so selective and discriminating that it just doesn't ring true.
Right now, for example, Ivory Coast is in what many knowledgeable Africa watchers call a "pre-genocidal" phase. Laurent Gbagbo, the defeated but unwilling to leave President has mobilized and armed thousands of young men, held all night rallies to whip them up and has already targeted intellectuals, civic leaders and elected officials who support his opponent.
It is clear they are preparing for a genocidal attack on those who support Alassane Ouattara who defeated Gbagbo. This is Africa south of the Sahara genocide–think of Rwanda in 1994, Uganda in 2008, Zaire/DRC throughout the 1990s. Hundreds of thousand dead, millions displaced.
In Ivory Coast there are already one million refugees and this is before the serious killing has started.
Blah, blah, blah–sorry about all that but humanitarian intervention is a misnomer.
That's a red herring, to try and draw this as purely humanitarian. Obama didn't even try to do that, so why is everyone else? Everyone this side of sanity has said there is no way that we can police every murderous dictator with our military; it's not physically nor strategically possible to do that. I think the president did a pretty good job of explaining "why Libya, why now?" The situation with Libya is that you've got a democratic movement sweeping the region in which it lies. In fact, you have two nations directly on either side of it with fragile transitions. You've got a barely tolerated dictator within striking distance of Europe that ordered a military assault to crush a city of over half-a-million. And, most important, you have an international community which initiated this at the UN before we had to be begged to join and the formal request by the Libyan opposition for a no-fly zone. It's really that simple.
Guess what? This ain't the Oprah show. Not everyone gets a new car when they want it.
You are probably right, that Obama and NATO mean what they say–his speech tonite was Obama at his best–analytical, calm but passionate about what he is doing. Libya is part of a democratic movement sweeping the Maghreb and Gaddafi should be removed.
We should take what we can get. Libya, unlike Bahrain, isn't an ally of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are trying to flex some regional muscle in Syria, telling Assad today to stand firm against the foreigners that he has identified as behind the uprising in the south of his country.
Politics is the art of the possible and Libyan intervention is possible for the U.S. and Western Europe.
Bingo. I wish we could do every dictator in with little or no risk to us. I wish we could fucking set The Congo on fire and start it all over. I wish Cuba would set free every one of its political prisoners. I wish China would tell NK and Burma to knock it the fuck off, and transition them to something more sustainable. I wish Mahmoud Immadinnerjacket wasn't such a little bitch.
But, we've got to do what we can, where we can, when we can. All I can say is thank god for France for giving us an in.
Ah, the mythical Canadian factcheckers! Long have we heard tales of their greatness in the Great White North!
As I read it, they didn't exactly say Barry violated the Constitution by not consulting Congress. What they did was play "gotcha" by pointing out that in 2007 Barry said in an interview that a president does not have "the 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." Which is true. However the War Powers Act gives the president the authority to send the military into action when time is of the essence as long as he officially informs Congress within 60 days. Which he did by sending Congress a letter last week. Whether he violated the WPA somehow is a separate issue from saying he violated the Constitution.
The Canadians' argument on the Constitution question also turned on the idea of military action being justified by a clear and imminent threat to national security and discuss Barry's belief (stated in the speech) that Libya was unleashing a refugee crisis on Egypt and Tunisia at a time when neither country was prepared for it. Given how fragile those two places might be right now with their emerging democracies, preventing such a crisis might buy us some long-term goodwill in the region, which is obviously a positive for our national security.
It's also true that non-U.S. NATO forces haven't taken over yet, but as the Canadians point out, this is partly because U.S. forces make up such a huge percentage of NATO's military capabilities. The U.S. military is always going to be highly involved in any NATO military operation. The overall reasons for saying NATO instead of "U.S. military" are the same as last week: legitimizes the action in the eyes of the world, allows other countries to have a stake, buys goodwill in the Arab world by indicating that this is a security mission by concerned nations and not one more land grab by the arrogant Americans, and probably a few more.
Fucking Christ, we can't STOP engaging with the world altogether despite our problems at home, so if we're going to stay engaged this is a pretty good way to do it.
And I don't see why going to war to enrich military contractors AND perform a valuable and even noble humanitarian mission have to be mutually exclusive. Yeah, Raytheon makes a pile of money. On the other hand, Ghadaffi doesn't get to bomb a city of 700,000 people to smithereens. It sucks we have to have one to get the other, but like one of the Marines said in Aliens, what are we supposed to use, harsh language?
Man, if only harsh language worked. The Pentagon would be offering me millions for a clone-worthy sample of my DNA.
You are probably right, that Obama and NATO mean what they say–his speech tonite was Obama at his best–analytical, calm but passionate about what he is doing. Libya is part of a democratic movement sweeping the Maghreb and Gaddafi should be removed.
We should take what we can get. Libya, unlike Bahrain, isn't an ally of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are trying to flex some regional muscle in Syria, telling Assad today to stand firm against the foreigners that he has identified as behind the uprising in the south of his country.
Politics is the art of the possible and Libyan intervention is possible for the U.S. and Western Europe.
Mission? I got a mission to be squishin' in a missionary position. Dang, don't nobody suspect the Spanish Inquisition…
Memo to the President:
Please stop sounding like that annoying, self-centered civics high school teacher who thinks he knows everything and seems to be trying out for a part in "Mr. Holland's Opus".
You're coming off as smug and condescending.
Signed
The Voters
I'm with Mumbly. Obama sounds like Bush, only in that Bush co-opted and perverted the language of just war on humanitarian grounds to defend his adventure in top-down regime change in Iraq. Obama sounds like Bush, but Obama's actually right. He's fostering a nascent bottom-up democracy movement across the region, not just in Libya. He's signaling that massive violent repression will not stand, and Arabs now get that if they push hard enough, even the worst regime will fall (because those regimes cannot use the full tools of state repression, a la Ghadafi). If ghadafi had been allowed to execute a massacre in Benghazi, Syria would also be a friggin BLOOD BATH right now. So yeah, Obama's improvising along the way and reacting to events outside his control, but this is the moment of history that will solve so many of our problems in the middle east (including Israel-Palestine) if the end result is democratization across the region.
Maybe, but I'll believe it if he also stands up to King Fahd.
Bingo. It really kind of sucks that Bush has made even legitimate intervention, any intervention, look bad, but that's not Obama's problem.
Doing the right thing frightens Americans. They are used to everything being some kind of trick, with lying, deceit and bombast. Its just "not presidential" to do things honorably and with international consensus.
This is a cold war. You better know what you're fighting for. -Janelle Monae
WLS-TV in Chicago interrupted his speech to run a Comcast ad. Just sayin'
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