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The Devils We Don't Know: Who is the Libyan Opposition?
Hi. You don't know me. See that big guy over at the bar? I'm going to pick a fight with him. Wanna back me up?
That's what we, the American people, are being asked to do in Libya. We're not picking sides. Picking sides implies that we know what's going on. We don't.
Give George W. Bush this: he respected us enough to lie us into war. Obama wants us sign a blank check, no questions asked.
"We do not have any information about specific individuals from any organization that are part of this [war]," Hillary Clinton said on Meet the Press. "But, of course, we are still getting to know the people [rebels] leading the Transitional National Council [TNC]."
"Of course."
This was over a week into the war.
I don't know what's more frightening. That Secretary of State Clinton expects us to believe that the U.S. government is fighting, spending, killing--and soon, inevitably, dying--for a cause it doesn't know anything about? Or that she may be telling the truth.
For all we know the Libyan TNC, also known as the National Conference of the Libyan Opposition, is composed of and led by noble, well-intentioned, freedom-minded people everyone can get behind. But that's the point: we don't know.
Obama's defenders say he's different than Bush. Look! No cowboy talk! He got an international coalition! Even the French are on board!
Big deal. Hitler had a coalition too. Which also included the French. Remember how, after 9/11, we got a history lesson about Afghanistan? Remember "blowback"? Remember how Al Qaeda came out of the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s? How, if it hadn't been for the U.S. and its CIA, Osama bin Laden would today be working for his dad's real estate development business in Saudi Arabia? The last thing U.S. policymakers should want to do now is replicate the 1990s, when they had to tramp through the Hindu Kush, buying back Stinger missiles from the Taliban. Incredibly, in Libya today, the U.S. may be crawling back into bed with a bunch of crazy Islamists.
Who are the Libyan opposition? We have few clues. From what we can tell, the TNC is apparently a peculiar alliance of convenience between monarchists and Islamists. One TNC leader is the pretender to the throne. The TNC uses the flag of the former kingdom deposed by Kadafi.
Western media outlets ridiculed the Libyan dictator for blaming unrest on Al Qaeda. On February 25th CNN's Paul Cruickshank reflected this official line: "Militant Islamists have played almost no role in the uprisings in Libya."
How much changes in a month.
As bombs were raining down on Tripoli, military officials began to concede an open secret: eastern Libya has long been a hotbed for Muslim extremism. "Al Qaeda in that part of the country is obviously an issue," a senior Obama official told the New York Times on condition of anonymity. NATO military commander Admiral James Stavridis admitted to a Senate hearing that there were "flickers" of foreign fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda and Hezbollah presence among anti-Kadafi insurgents.
Constitutionalists to return to the Founders' original intent. They say Congress, not the president, ought to decide whether or not to go to unleash the military. Obama didn't even bother to get the usual congressional rubber stamp for this latest invasion.
But never mind Congress. War should be voted upon by the citizenry. After all, we--not Congress--bear the costs. If a president can't be bothered to explain why we should kill and be killed and spend billions of dollars on a conflict, too bad for him and his pet defense contractors.
Starting with Obama's carefully calculated conflation of civilians and insurgents, everything about Obama's Libyan war stinks. The U.N. has authorized military operations to protect "civilians." How, no matter how likeable they are, do Libyan rebels armed with anti-aircraft guns qualify as civilians?
So reminiscent of Bush during the run-up to the 2003 attack on Iraq, this current fear-mongering campaign employed the obvious tropes. What if there are massacres? But there weren't any. What's next--WMDs? Hillary cites Kadafi's "history and the potential for the disruption and instability" as casus belli. Funny, Moammar's history didn't bother her in 2009 or 2010--when her State Department had full diplomatic relations with his regime. As for the "potential" of "disruption and instability"--aw, hell, that could happen anywhere. Even here. "If Jeffersonian Democrats take over in Libya, he's a hero," Robert Borosage of the Campaign for America's Future said of Obama. "If he gets stuck in an ongoing civil war, then it could be enormously costly to the country, and to him politically."
Which outcome would you bet on?
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Show AllGetting to know the devil you didn't know was bedeviling the devil you did know....might take way longer than any of the mopes in the CIA/DIA/ONI/ Homeland Security Conspiracy Crony Complex could have imagined. It's time to pull the plug on funding for the black ops frat boys. Of course, the last time a President even mentioned dismantling the CIA, we had a coup d'etat with a low, but still world-altering, body count. Civilian control of the military was a noble goal, but the "civilians" have turned out to be corporations. Looking for a few hundred billion good dollars.
If you don't know, then nobody knows.
Paranoid Pessimist
I am not sure if I heard it correctly, from either BBC radio or Aljazeera. I was too busy deleting and copying files on my laptop and need to pay attention. From my scatter memory, the leader of the opposition in the Libya, was a former Qaddafi's crony returned from overseas to overthrow Qaddafi. The interviewee warned the crony has hijacked the rebellion and will turn it into another Saddam Hussein. For the first time I was thinking, pity the Libyans and the peaceful revolutions in the Middle East. I suspect the invisible hands of the CIA or whatever. I also strongly suspect invisible hands from both the US and Mossad to topple the Syrian President. The Golan Height would be a wonderful gift to the Israel.
As I've been writing for days, only the radicals on the "left" and "right" remain skeptical of the U.S. Imperium-led military intervention in Libya.
The mushy moderate middle, especially liberals and progressives, is far too captivated and enthralled by the old "humanitarian imperative" song to become mired in picky questions like the exact nature of the internal conflict or the "mission creep" that is plainly metastasizing daily.
Skeptics are rebuffed with either a priori arguments-- Kadafi is a bad, bad man who is way overdue for a richly deserved comeuppance! Thank God Obama won't stand by and allow another dictatorial government to perpetrate wanton slaugher upon a hapless and innocent people!-- or appeals to authority: "Juan Cole said it; I agree with it; that settles it!"
"Counterpunch", among other sites, has provided a steady stream of informed articles that complement and examine exactly the problems cited by Rall with a comprehensive range of reporting and analysis that punctures the fatuous "Good Guys to the Rescue!" meme-- and makes a solid case that the Libya fiasco is still another pig in a poke. Caveat emptor!
Here are two good examples:
"Libya and the Holy Triumvirate" by William Blum*
"On Libya, Who Does Obama Think He is Fooling?" by Andrew Levine**
* http://www.counterpunch.org/blum03302011.html
** http://www.counterpunch.org/levine03292011.html
That's a good piece by Mr. Levine... but the poor word liberal just can't seem to get a break. Such a great word (check the dictionary) reduced to a slur at a time when true liberals (by the classic definition of the word) are needed more than ever.
The people on the left who support the "intervention" in Libya are not liberals, from what I've seen they appear to be centrist intellectual elitists more than anything.
We do know a bit about one of the devils...
According to anti-imperialist scholar Vijay Peashad, one of the rebel leaders, until recently, lived in Vienna, Virginia for 20 years, employer uncertain. Vienna, of course, is the DC suburb, convienient to Langley, where CIA employees who can't quite afford a home in leafier and tonier Falls Church or McLean live.
Yep. And guess who we will put in charge if his side wins? Wars are not meant to be won. They are meant to transfer our wealth to the MICC. Scahill has an excellent article here and only 2 comments. Read it. I keep checking to see y'all's responses
what's it matter who they are?
they wanna buy guns!!!
I see that there is plenty wrong but don't know if there are any "good guys" anywhere over there. There certainly aren't in the U.S. government here.
As one of those caucasian know-it-alls who insist on posting here, I thank you for the information. It's good to have your input even if being told to "go back to where I came from" comes along with it.
I'm sure there must be some good guys somewhere in the world other than South America, or maybe there are none anywhere in positions of power and authority. I'm no expert on good guys.
I'm working on it. Is moving to the Philippines OK?
I don't trust heads of state. I think they're all bad news but some are way worse than others. If you say Chsvez is OK, I would give your opinion weight.
As a fellow joker who isn't creating any meaningful changes, I hope the world hangs together long enough for me to get to the third world where families really look out for each other. They're pretty car dependent, though. They will have a hard time if gas goes away.
I'm sure they'll be able to pay in oil if they win. Billions and billions in oil . . . which of course won't be used to pay for the weapons at all, but will flow instead into the pockets of multinational oil corporations. Which is probably, when you think of it, the plan.
Well, it could be worse. We could be force-fed a steady diet of frigging Juan "Is that my head in my anus?" Cole.
Drone, I think Juan Cole is a very smart man and often brings unappreciated perspective to the table. It disturbs me that he is for this action. It makes me look harder at it. But I think Rall's paragraph here fleshes that out. Whose side are we on? DO we know? Since America never does anything not in its own interest, what's the pay off? (Easy--protection of petro access.)
Far more disturbing to me is questions like how should we help? since America of late knows no other way to apply international pressure other than through war and guns, every answer is framed in that paradigm.
And that's the real shame.
Every time a people anywhere questions the right to imprison, to torture, to feed upon the people for profit--all questions Americans should be so _engaged_ as to ask--they threaten an existing power structure that America buys into and WE THE PEOPLE should be encouraging and engaging that discussion.
Hard to have that discussion once the guns and bombs start in.
So I will keep reading Juan Cole but no one here, that I've seen, has all of the answers.
Cole initially supported the invasion of Iraq through refusing to condemn it. He even assured servicemen's parents on the honourableness of their sacrifice, later to maintain that he wouldn't have fought to bring down Saddam and certainly wouldn't have allowed his son to do so. In supporting this act of aggression in Libya, he certainly hasn't learned from his very costly mistakes.
Mr. Rall asks some important questions here, and we deserve answers. It is a sad day when we place Americans at risk without a clear mission and end point in mind.
We have been placing Americans at risk without a clear mission and end point in mind for a long time. I wish we had the clout to get the answers we deserve. I keep remembering Dick Cheney's "So?" when he was told the American people were against the war. The Obanoids in Washington are smoother and less blatant, but the answer is the same.
Good Morning, Paranoid Pessimist -- You're right on the mark. Sadly, our clout as citizens has been eroded over the past 100-plus years as we've strayed from our constitutional roots and toward an overly potent federal government.
It seems to me that we can only reclaim our rightful clout by reinstating the rights of individuals and autonomy of the states. That won't happen in my lifetime, or even that of my kids, but I hope it happens at some point.
Of course, such changes will not come without a lot of pain.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Council on Foreign Relations study of 1997, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives
... America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single [other] power comes to control this geopolitical space [Central Asia] and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it... Eurasia accounts for 60% of the world's GNP and three-fourths of the world's known energy resources.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Gore_Vidal/Dreaming_War.html
They're the Bengazi Mafia, aka New Libya's Founding Fathers.
"These guys" are CIA and Al-Qaeda terrorists.
It does not matter which side is picked.
Oil, military power, and western government ticked,
ensures that every middle east leader
is by choice and natural selection a people bleeder,
readily brutal, crazy, defensive and repressive, not nice,
wealth and power repay, whatever aspect is the price
Ultimate power and wealth all bargains do make,
Losers must do with whatever they can take.
Western godfathers battle to own their souls.
and keep control of their oily roles.
What rights do Gaddafi supporters have? What if such folks haven't been watching CNN and don't know that G. "has lost all legitimacy" as Sec. Clinton and Pres. Obama declared recently.
The model for this kind of operation appears to be Vietnam although, with the absence of the Soviet and Red Chinese hostility of the earlier era, the USA may have a much freer hand to get ugly in a hurry ... indeed, the shock and awe of the first few days demonstrates that. The rebound in G.'s forces suggests nevertheless that arms, advice, training, battlefield leadership and eventual invasion are not off the table. (Is anything, ever?) The defoliation will be unnecessary but the pollution of agent orange can be replaced with depleted uranium. I would expect every stage to be reached and passed on an accelerated schedule. The dying of the victims will, of course, take its usual allotment of time.
Then there is the unknown role of the CIA at the beginning and now with its man in Benghazi, formerly a resident of Vienna, VA. near Langley. Hmmmm?
I still say the game plan is to get rid of Gaddafi who we can't control and put in someone we can. The US Gov't doesn't care about rebels whoever they are. Look at Libya's location on the Mediterranean. Looks pretty strategic esp based on Zbigniew Brzezinski's statement. Besides-- IT's ALWAYS about OIL!
l have complete faith in it when Obama Binlyin says he won't put boots on the ground , he won't put boots on the ground . Look he promised he would roll back Bush's tax breaks for the rich and l am certain in 2012 he will review that promise.
He'll put sneakers on the ground. Or another kind of footwear, and say he didn't lie.
My guess is "flip-flops". They're certainly Obama's footwear of choice, probably because they fit comfortably over cloven hooves.
Ted Rall makes a good point: Just who is the Libyan opposition? We do seem to have thrust ourselves into another foreign intervention, which is the fallback for any President, regardless of party, to deflect attention from other, usually domestic, concerns. Apart from the usual attacks from the right, I'm not sure what Obama is ducking currently that is especially ripe for distraction. But regardless of the excuse/reason, there is definitely the potential for blowback by jumping into military action in Libya. One need not look further, as Rall suggests, than backing the mujahidden in 1980s, or even tacitly supporting Iraq's Saddam Hussein during that decade's Iran-Iraq war (let alone trying to sell TOW missiles to the *Iranians*!), for similar examples.
But Rall makes a couple of dicey comments in his article. One is this: "As bombs were raining down on Tripoli, military officials began to concede an open secret: eastern Libya has long been a hotbed for Muslim extremism." This is sourced to a senior Obama administration official speaking anonymously to the New York Times. As Robert Fisk and many other journalists have pointed out, any time a government official speaks without attribution, it is often to advance the official position without having to provide justification for it. There might be a legitimate reason for anonymity, whether it's a matter of national security, or fear of retribution against the individual should that individual be named. However, considering that this appears to be shaping up as the *stated rationale* for intervention--why be secretive? Unless there *isn't* any evidence to support the conclusion, and the government hasn't had time to fabricate any (cf. "yellowcake uranium" in the 2002-03 run-up to the Iraq invasion). Rall wants to buttress his argument about questioning support for the rebels, but he appears to have fallen into the trap of using unnamed attribution as support. (And given the general distrust of covert ops displayed both by Rall and some of the commenters, recall that the CIA's "mighty Wurlitzer," its apparatus of disseminating disinformation through mainstream news sources, has long used the NY Times, wittingly or unwittingly, as a conduit.) By contrast, BBC reporter John Simpson, "embedded" with the rebels in eastern Libya for the last month, alleges that he has seen "very little sign of Islamic fundamentalism among [the rebels]." < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12901820>
Rall's other dicey comment has to do with his referring to this military action thus far as our "latest invasion." Huh? What "invasion"? Did I miss a breaking news story? So far, US and NATO actions have amounted to air support for the rebels, which doesn't spell "invasion" in my book. There, it's spelled as actually landing military personnel (yes, those "boots on the ground") on foreign soil. My point is that there is ample reason to oppose, or at least question, the latest military action against Libya without having to state the situation inaccurately and thus undercutting the validity of the argument.
Elsewhere, and getting further afield from the main point of Rall's article, Rall's grasp of history seems confusing. Yes, Hitler's Nazi Germany was indeed part of a coalition--it was called the Axis--but to include France is a little misleading. Is Rall referring to Vichy France? Vichy indeed supported the occupying Germans--but to regard that as emblematic of all of France is an insult to the exiled Free French forces under De Gaulle as well as the indigenous Resistance movement. And while I can see Rall's point that "Al Qaeda came out of the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s," leading to the assertion that "if it hadn't been for the U.S. and its CIA, Osama bin Laden would today be working for his dad's real estate development business in Saudi Arabia," this too is a little misleading.
Bin Laden organized the Afghan-Arabs to support the mujahidden in the 1980s. This is indeed the "anti-Soviet jihad," and it was indeed co-terminus with the CIA's largest-ever covert operation in Afghanistan in the 1980s. However, despite allegations, I haven't seen conclusive evidence that Bin Laden worked with, let alone was a creation of, the CIA during this time. This I think starts to fall into the "CIA runs the world" mentality because it appears that Bin Laden's Afghan-Arabs and CIA support for the mujahidden overlapped but did not stem from the same source. (US covert activity in Afghanistan *before* the Soviets invaded in 1979, which Steven Galster explored in Covert Action Quarterly magazine years ago, is an interesting subject but outside the scope here.) Thus, it is inaccurate to blame the CIA as the root cause of Bin Laden and al Qaeda. Moreover, Bin Laden has plainly stated that his jihad against the US, which culminated in 9/11, stemmed from the stationing of US and coalition forces in Saudi Arabia during the mobilization for the re-invasion of Kuwait to oust Iraqis forces in 1991: This, he argued, was an invasion of Islamic holy land by infidels, and he was determined to strike at the source--the US. (This thinking, by the way, is perfectly in line with his rationale for supporting the Afghan mujahidden against the Soviets: the invasion of a Muslim country by an infidel power.)
Ted Rall asks a very important question, but he undercuts it with dubious sourcing, sloppy reasoning, and misleading assertions.
DDTfromOC, you persuasively highlight weaknesses in Rall's article. However, what I think redeems Rall is this: "The U.N. has authorized military operations to protect 'civilians.' How, no matter how likeable they are, do Libyan rebels armed with anti-aircraft guns qualify as civilians?"
Never, ever, would the MSM put that question to Obama, Gates, Clinton, et al. Yet it's so obviously to the point.
...
It is NOT in our national interests to be involved in wars on many fronts,,,,
The U.S. military is now broken and totally overextended.
President Obama stop this military adventuring,,,,,,,,bring our troops home.
Declare war on poverty. Create jobs and develope production enterprises.
These delusions of power and empire have bankrupted the United States of America. President Eisenhower was the last Chief Executive who know how to govern !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
//
I got you, babe...
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY
Chavez is a good leader, but how long until a bad one takes his place?
Direct democracy is well worth looking at: https://votep2.us/login.php
read, could you actually post a comment that doesn't include "gringo". I know you think it is a clever pejoritive, but us gringo's are finding it boring and repetitive.
Why don't you try something else, like 'Racist Yankee Imperialist Swine" or "scum sucking denizens of north of the Rio Grande and south of the forty-eighth". Just a suggestion. .
"Racist Yankee Imperialist Swine" is tempting, but that is not a name, but a description, and the description is all too often wrong. Of course not every one of them is racist, not everyone is imperial and not everyone swine. A name is required. Definitely "American" wont do, because most Americans live outside the USA. "Mercans" is another contender, but that is really just short for American. Is there something you dont like about "gringo"?
naw, gringo doesn't really bother me. :)....Just find it somewhat boring and sounding like something out of a timewarp cira 1966...like "groovy"...Got to be something better....My neighbor is an american of cambodian descent. Is she a "gringo" too? How about some white guy who moves from "gringo land" to Mexico and learns spanish-does he stop being a gringo or is it something that he is stuck with no matter what he does?
I think I need further clarification.
Just about everyone here has a pet phrase they use all the time - ptb, elite, banksters, corporatists, etc. All of those serve the purpose of separating the ruling class people at the top from the "middle class" palace guard, the house slaves in service of the ruling class. No one objects to repetitive use of those. At the same time many people here continually attack the working class people calling them stupid, lazy, and ignorant, and no one objects to that. That serves the purpose of setting up a dividing line on the other side, so that people can carve out an identity for themselves - they are nothing at all like the ruling class on the one hand, and have nothing in common with the working class, either. That is the position of the people carrying water for the ruling class, defending and promoting the system, the existing social arrangements and conventions, while keeping the rest of the working class in their place. None of that is politically neutral, despite the attempts by people to portray their positions as neutral, and neither is the term "gringo," they just reflect opposite positions. People who object to one and not the other are inadvertently revealing where their sympathizes lie.
"Gringo," like "white." is about what a person thinks, says, and does. People choose to be offended by that. That is especially obvious here, where no one would no that a person was white until they themselves make that painfully clear by what they say. On the other hand, the racist smears, slurs, hints and dog whistles that are posted here every day are destructive and are meant to keep people in their place and preserve white supremacy. "Reverse racism" is a lie because the two are not equivalent. One is associated with power, with oppression and genocide, the other is not.
If "white" or "gringo" bother a person, they might want to examine what they are thinking, saying and doing. Or not. It is their loss if they don't. There is much to gain for the few with the courage to do that.
Some whites will say "hey what about MY heritage??" You have no "heritage." You long since traded that away to be "middle class," to be a "winner," to be associated with and benefit from power. At the same time, the traditional cultures from Europe have been systematically and brutally ripped away from the poor and working class people, all for the glorification of this abomination and nightmare euphemistically called "middle class."
Some whites will say "hey, I am not doing so good, and a lot of whites are poor and suffering!" There never was a time when you could not find at least one white person somewhere who was doing worse than some person of color somewhere. So what? Whites do not suffer because they are white. What they claim as suffering and persecution is actually the discomfort they experience from having their dominance challenged, and the cognitive dissonance caused by the contradictory ideas inherent in racist thinking. Think about that - most whites think that racism is merely a matter of being made a little uncomfortable because they had their ideas challenged. They think that what people of color experience is no more than that. That is itself a racist assumption.
Some whites will say "it is about class, not race!" Yes, it is about class, and racism is one of the main ways that working class people are tricked into supporting the ruling class agenda.
I say "whites" here, and it is true that these ideas are found overwhelmingly among people of European ancestry, but again it is attitudes, ideas, and behavior that we are talking about, and occasionally you will find a person of color spouting these ideas (white people love that.) and occasionally you will fiod a white person challenging these ideas. But both of those are very rare.
Yeah, if they aren't doing things our way, then they are certain to have things go bad. In fact, we will undermine and sabotage them, or bomb them or invade them to make SURE that things go wrong. Because only our way is permitted. All others we have in our sites, and they had better watch their step.
"Direct democracy is well worth looking at?" Yep that's what US intellectuals do - "look at" things. I would say that it is worth fighting and dying for, and that the fight is already going on while US intellectuals "look at things" and develop their individual personal belief systems.
"the TNC is apparently a peculiar alliance of convenience between monarchists and Islamists."
Keep this sentence in mind the next time you see a self-proclaimed "progressive" supporting Libya's rebels!
dogs sleeping with cats, checks beating bills to the mailbox, me agreeing with Ted Rall...wow.
"Who is the Libyan Opposition?"
What I'd really like to know is who the guy in the White House is -- and what the hell he did with the guy I voted for.
The guy in the white house is the same guy you voted for if you ever bothered to look past the soaring rhetoric about hope and change and yes we can, and actually saw what his voting record was as Senator - pro corpoorate, pro militarism.
20% of the foreign fighters that entered Iraq to fight US troops came from Libya. Some of them no doubt have returned to Libya and are members of the opposition.
In 1989 it was reported that the US and Israel had set up a series of bases in Chad and other neighboring countries to train 2000 Libyan rebels captured by the Chad army. The group was called The National Front for the Salvation of Libya and based in Chad.
Funding for the secret war against Libya also came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Israel and Iraq (in the days Saddam was our buddy).
The FNSL held its national congress in the USA in 2007 and is organizing resistance and military attacks from both inside and outside Libya.
The other opposition group is the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, LIFG. The LIFG was founded in 1995 by a group of mujahideen veterans who had fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. We also know them as Al Qaeda, although most of them are probably focused on toppling Gaddafi (except for those who went to Iraq).
.
In 2004 George Tenet testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee and named the LIFG as a small Sunni extremist group that benefited from Al Qaeda links.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a Congressional hearing that the Libyan opposition is probably more anti-American than Muammar Gaddhafi. This is earily similar to the partnership with Al Qaeda in Kosovo, Bosnia and Chechnya that led to 9/11.
Today they are our partners, tommorow they will be our enemy and nobody will remember that they were our ally (like with Saddam). Tis an Orwellian world.
I told Obama supporters a couple of years ago who were against Bush war mongering that Obama will be no different in the end. They both march to the same drummer, as do all Presidents nowadays. Every President has to deliver a war to feed the MIC. Not pretty when you stand in their way. JFK got in their way in Cuba and intended to do so over Vietnam, Nixon opened the door to relations with China and ended the Vietnam War, both left office early.
Carter gave birth to Al Qaeda and allowed the Shah to be deposed by the Ayatollah who set up his own terrorist groups. Reagan got us in Lebanon, Nicaragua and Grenada. Bush I gave us Iraq I. Clinton gave us the Balkans and bombing of Iraq, Bush II gave us Iraq II and Afghanistan, and Obama is starting with Libya, but there is more to come.
Nicely summarized. It is so insane. It's surreal.
"Which outcome would you bet on?"
None of the above ...
The author wrote: "Remember how Al Qaeda came out of the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s?"
--There is no such thing as Al-Qaeda. Never was. Only people who believe in Santa and the egg-laying bunny would believe such nonsense.
Actually, there is an Al-Qaida. It's just not the big, bad boogy-man some people would have you believe. The Taliban... they're sort of like an analogy to the vigilante or posse-commitatus groups you might find in back-country America.
No "side" has been picked not because they don't know "what's going on", but because they only ever support one side, that of the global-power-elite and corporations. They simply use the participants in conflict as pawns to achieve their goals.
The notion of "picking sides" in these conflicts is disingenuous... the "sides" were picked long ago and they don't change. Bush made it very clear… "You're either with us or against us". The real question needs to be, who is "us"?
"War should be voted upon by the citizenry."
So should everything else. Maybe Amy Goodman can change the name of her show to "Direct Democracy Now!".
If war was paid for by tax increases that had to be submitted to the citizenry as a referendum and could not be financed by borrowing the citizenry would end war. The borrowing allows for a comfortable denial in an apathetic citizenry with no current out of pocket cash needed. We have a $14 trillion national debt, with a current interest payment of $600 billion a year on that debt. And we're still borrowing $1.5 trillion a year. What could we do with an extra $600 billion a year? The borrowing for warfare has to stop. It's nuts.
I can't say I see this article as inaccurate, but it seems something of a side issue. Does the 0 administration care who the rebels are? What distinctions would they care to make?
It seems a pity to address this at all without reframing the questions to address the myth that the US may just sort of somehow possibly consider walking into Libya with some idea of establishing democracy. The idea that this somehow a possibility is so endemic in the United States that even journalists who do seem to know better do not seem to manage to frame their discussions without this assumption, at least as a controversy of some sort.
It would be far more revealing and far more useful to discuss what is really happening. The US imperial potentate does not care deeply who the Libyan rebels are because it has no intention of passing much of any control of much of anything to Libyan rebels. It is willing to arm them and bomb Ghaddafi's troops or positions because it wishes to terminate Ghaddafi's employment.
Ghaddafi has not cooperated much with Washington over the years. He has passed a lot of his trade through Europe instead of the US. Washington wants to be able to curtail shipments of oil from Libya to Europe in the event of war, most particularly with China, but also likely with Russia. Curtailing shipments of oil to Europe could be a coercive device to involve Europe in the conflict, either directly or indirectly, or to coerce other kinds of behaviour -- accepting US GM foodstuffs, for example, or cooperating with a ban on Cuban cigars or dropping protective tariffs.
Are 0 and Clinton really supposed to care about whether these guys are "religious radicals"? The only group that they might really want to avoid would be someone genuinely interested in democracy --- and they might consider that as good as Ghaddafi in a pinch, at least pro tempore.