MED: She's using a writer's technique that intends to compel others to think about these matters.

It deeply saddens me to yet again witness the sick inversion of humanitarian intervention as seen in yet another WAR of aggression... The supreme crime that is in exact violation of The Geneva Conventions.

Two wars were not enough for these empty souls... now they are doing three, and as another CD article posted today rhetorically asked, why is it that there is always money to bomb, kill, and destroy... but so little to build, to teach, and to sponsor peace initiatives?

Say it along with me, everybody, "Mars rules."

Even with Japan's open wounds, along with those of Afghanistan, and Iraq, and other zones troubled by wild climate events and/or war... these maniacs continue ON a course of naked destruction.

There is a spiritual relationship between aggressive warfare and the demise of any society, and we have crossed the rubicon in that respect.

I am re-reading "Daybreak," a massive work done by Mary Summer Rain that speaks of these times. I read it nearly 20 years ago, but today it is more compelling due to the resonance between prophetic material then stated and ACTUAL events now underway.

It is beyond shameful that US leaders are bowed before Mars the principle of war and devastation even when so much is coming apart... calling out for real help, healing, and constructive action.

There are no words that define this level of moral depravity.

You're absolutely correct. I get quite suspicious when a supposed progressive gets an opportunity to write something to help us organize against the forces of evil, and just chooses to fake the funk, to write something that has no potency, raises no new points, inspires no one, and leaves everything as they found it.

It always surprises me, for all the sheeple who know the truth. none will so much as throw a shoe. Pray all you want, the only to deal with cancer is with a knife. They'd do it to you and not miss lunch.

>^^<

Brazil is far from radiation and close to Patagonia, the Bush compound - if the sh-t really comes down. Obama and Bush work for the same Empire. They don't bother to ask Americans first, but they will do it in our name.

it goes without saying...

Of course she has a right to be an "Obama defender." The bigger and more relevant question is whether she is justified in doing so.

To some of you the following. When will you learn to grasp what is written instead of read what you want to read? I have long known where Rachel's political sympathies are and I have no problem with her disseminating these even when I disagree which is often. If she wants to convince me that President Obama's attack of Libya is very different from President Bush's attack on Libya, that is a valid topic for a serious historical debate. However, to highlight the difference of the two actions by telling me that one announced his attack from the Oval Office while the other did that from some podium in Brazil struck me as bizarre.
Show me where in my statement I tried to muzzle her!
There are even more bizarre pronouncements coming from die-hard Obama supporters such as congressman Meeks from New York who did not bat an eye during a TV interview last night when he averred that President Obama was going into Libya with a coalition whereas Bush acted alone when he invaded Iraq. Meek's proof: the French refused to go along for which we punished them by changing "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries". Frankly I now begin to understand why Congress is held in such low esteem by our nation. It seems to be filled mostly with clowns who, unfortunately and dangerously hold your and my future in their addled brains

Rachel Maddow is an Imperialist and a Capitalist.

Yes, Rachel Maddow might be a "feminist" but only in the Imperial sense. Maddow backs the Military-Empire of the United States government. Her employment at General Electric which is in the nuclear arms business says it all too.

Any true "leftist" would never and I mean NEVER WORK FOR GE!!!!

Rachel Maddoiw might mean well but she is nothing but an Imperial Feminist who will make excuses for the U.S. Military ad nauseam.

I am quite tired of all the attention Maddow bestows upon the military anyhow. Her continual attention and praise of the military speaks volumes about this lady who seems to have no real moral center other than selfish personal interests.

I'm an average, everyday USA citizen and I saw Obama's fraudulence from day one...well before the last POTUS Election. It's amazing that Maddow and so many other liberals don't see, or refuse to see that.

According to news reports on the first day of the attacks French jets destroyed pro-Gaddafi armored forces in the desert after they had somehow been, at least temporarily, repelled from Benghazi where they had attacked rebels and civilians, which by the way appear to be overlapping categories of people.

Some people have said this attack by French jets violated the UN mandate. But destroying pro-Gaddafi forces in the desert (as I understand it), forces which were intent on attacking rebels and civilians, should minimize civilian and rebel casualties.

What about attacks on military columns in the desert if and when pro-Gaddafi forces re-occupied all the cities and towns in Libya and the civil war has degenerated into a government effort to suppress a now largely ineffective insurgency?

In western Libya pro-Gaddafi armor has entered the city of Misurata and was besieging the town of Zintan.

(See “Misurata shelled as battle for Libya rages”, Al Jazeera, March 22, 2011
URL: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/03/201132292210533490.html)

The air war carried out by the United States that removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and destroyed al Qaeda bases there was in support of ground troops led by opposition warlords. At some point the United States started using cluster bombs.

As everyone knows the United States and NATO allies later committed their own ground troops in an attempt to secure and stabilize Afghanistan amidst what became an increasingly violent insurgency. And, of course, we are still there in Afghanistan (and Iraq), all these years later.

While the poorly armed rebel forces apparently include some defectors from Gaddafi’s army do you really think they can overthrow Gaddafi only with the aid of western air power? And even if they do overthrow Gaddafi with the aid of western air power and gifts of weapons and possibly armored vehicles what sort of “final” outcome do you expect?

No one here needs to say that war is almost always extremely violent and destructive. The repression of civilian protests and the civil war in Libya that was started by Gaddafi and that preceded western intervention was already very violent and destructive before U.S. involvement.

Given the violent unpredictability of war, the incredibly violent force at the disposal of the United States unleashed in Afghanistan and Iraq and Vietnam and elsewhere, the record of the United States supporting and arming dictators in the Arab world and in so many other places around the planet (sometimes dictatorships that have featured fake democracies with regular but fake elections - see Egypt), and the western economic imperative to protect and control the oil supply for western countries, can you possibly understand the skepticism and even the outrage that many people feel about United States involvement in yet another war?

A "small step" (and baby steps)--where I have I heard this before?
Ah, yes, Obamabots!

Yes, I perhaps should have put the qualifier that intervention rarely works in civil unrest situations, although, as you point out, even in WWII it might be argued that little was different. I agree that events in Libya are almost bound not to turn out well. Indeed, with Obama now hinting at regime change and the 'coalition of the willing' seemingly operating ouside of the U.N. mandate, it's all looking very depressing.

When the US invades a country it never leaves, except for Vietnam where the US lost. The US will never leave Libya. We are told there will be no "boots on the ground" we are told. That is another lie. I give it another week before "there was no other option" but to send in the marines.