Soxbadger

And so far no one has provided a shred of evidence that the UN wants to act differently in the Ivory Coast, but that the US is preventing it. (For the sake of argument Im just going to assume that the UN would not have acted without US approval.) So b**** about the UN all you want (I personally think thats a legitimate argument), but the US cant be responsible for making every tough decision. So far not once has the UN said they wanted more assistance in the Ivory Coast from the US, so to say that it wants it, is entirely speculation unsupported by fact.

Its not inconsistencies of the US, its inconsistencies of the UN. I hate to break it to you, but the US was not the one pushing for action in Libya, it was the French and English. The US army is merely a tool of the UN when it comes to UN enforcement. All of these articles that attack the US, should be attacking the UN. (edit) And if you really arent advocating more intervention in Ivory Coast, you are just using a cynical hollow argument.

If the UN asks for more US military assets, I would be gung ho about it. But so far I have not seen 1 article that suggests the UN has asked for more US support in the Ivory Coast, and that we have refused to give it. Im not sure why the UN has asked the US to be more involved in Libya than Ivory Coast, my guess is that Gaddafi had far superior military capabilities and felt that because of that the US needed to be more involved. But the argument still doesnt make sense. On one hand you want the US to be more active in Ivory Coast, even though the UN has not requested it, and on the other you want the US to be less active in Libya, when the UN requests it. How does that make any sense? This isnt unilateral US action.

Who cares if McCain met Gaddafi. For all we know McCain was trying to convince Gaddafi to step down. Its not like McCain said "Gaddafi, great guy with great ideas, I wish Obama was more like him." Gaddafi is a bad cruel guy, he always has been, but plenty of leaders in history have met with far worse people. Im pretty sure FDR met Stalin a few times.

Actually its not the same thing at all. Many people who were isolationists had absolutely no idea what was occurring in Germany. In fact the US govt was very weary of showing pictures of the Holocaust because they believed that the pictures would be considered unbelievable and actually erode support for the war. I dont see where anyone has equated someone to a Nazi supporter, Im not sure that anyone has taken the position that they want to promote genocide. Merely standing on the sidelines and allowing murder to happen, does not make you a murderer, it just means you didnt want to get involved. So no its not the same thing, words have meaning. Isolationist does not equal Nazi supporter, but if you are going to promote Isolationism, you better be able to answer real questions about when if ever you would intervene. That is an entirely legitimate question. As for the Ivory Coast argument, its just wrong. The UN is intervening in the Ivory Coast, you are arguing against intervention in Libya, because you want MORE intervention in Ivory Coast. Thats a very peculiar point of view. As for the heavy weaponry part, that was merely about the ridiculous argument of why are we acting 1 way in Libya and another in Ivory Coast. In Libya you can destroy heavy armor with airplanes and not be directly involved on the ground. In the Ivory Coast it is the opposite. So to argue that there should be no bombings in Libya because there have been none in the Ivory Coast, is bizarre at best. Legitimate argument and one that doesnt distort the facts. Im of the opposite belief. If we get involved in crises that do not immediately give us or our allies gain, it provides us legitimacy (imo). It shows that we are a country that not only cares about ourselves, but cares about the rest of the world. Not every American agrees with that, and I respect the difference of opinion. The people who infuriate me are the ones who say that they want to help, but make up nonsensical excuses about why we cant help due to other wars or that we havent helped everyone equally. Nothing is ever equal, we do the best that we can, and quite frankly there are plenty of people who would prefer we do nothing.

I think the reason that people think you should give him the benefit of the doubt is "Hes done nothing". We are all Sox fans, we all want the Sox to win, regardless of how realistic or foolish that expectation may be. I remember years pre-2005 when we were excited about guys who never even had close to the reputation that Humber once did. Ill go back to parts unknown, but its preseason now is the time to hope for the best. Youll have alll year to knock Humber if he sucks.

Its apples and oranges, a DUI and caught smoking arent really comparable. Im no ND backer, but it seems like Floyd is getting a significant punishment and Im not sure that would have happened at many other schools.

Digby makes the following statements: Once again this is simple construction. Digby does not mention the US in this argument. In fact Digby specifically points out "the complaint I'm getting" is getting complaints from the US or Obama? I wouldnt believe that they are dignifying a blogger who wouldnt intervene to save the lives of millions of Jews, so my guess is that the complaint is from people on the internet. So when Digby says "YOU" he is not referring to Obama or the US, he is referring to people like ME. So of course Im going to blast the ridiculous argument. If Digby meant the US or Obama, it wouldnt say "YOU". Distorts the truth about UN intervention in Ivory Coast. If you read that article, specifically the bolded part: The questions implies that we (whoever we is as you should never use undefined terms) are not intervening in Ivory Coast, because if we were intervening in the Ivory Coast, you couldnt ask the question "Why arent we intervening?" the real question would be "Why arent we doing MORE in the Ivory Coast?" This is a very insidious journalistic technique, where you basically trick the reader into coming to a conclusion that is not the actual question. When asked: "Why cant we intervene?" The only answers are: We cant for X reason, or we can for Y reason. The question completely removes the actual answer "SHOULD WE INTERVENE MORE?" and makes the reader come to the incorrect conclusion "We are not intervening in Ivory Coast." Furthermore, Digby covers itself by linking an article that directly answers the actual question "Should we intervene more?" Well imagine that, exactly like Libya, if Gbago starts to use HEAVY WEAPONRY, the UN will take FURTHER ACTION. You mean that you cant use a No Fly Zone against small arms in densely populated areas? You mean that a No Fly Zone and aircraft work best against large weapons that can be targeted in non-populated areas? So you mean if Gbago starts using heavy weaponry the UN may ask for a No Fly Zone or UN involvement to destroy the weapons? How again does this prove Digby's distorted premises that we are not involved in the Ivory Coast? I can name 5 personalities off the top of my head who are pretty well regarded and I wouldnt trust a word they said. I dont care if Digby was Locke combined with Mill, a bad argument is a bad argument.

His statement does say that he would have intervened against Hitler, but only if the following criteria were met, and even then it was only "reluctantly". This is simple sentence construction, Digby uses "and" that means that all 3 criteria had to be met before he would have "RELUCTANTLY" be in support of removing Hitler. So if Hilter had only killed the Jews and swept across Europe, but did not declare his intention to to take over the world it would not have been enough to intervene. If Hitler only killed the Jews and only expressed his intention to take over the world, but did not sweep across Europe it would not have been enough to intervene. And certainly like I said, if Hitler merely killed all of the Jews, but did not sweep across Europe and did not declare his intention to to take over the world it would not have been enough to intervene. (If anyone thought this sounded familiar, I felt it would be appropriate to do it in the style of "Dayenu" as Passover is coming and the basic message of Passover is that we will never truly be free, until everyone in the world is free, even our enemies.) This is the only way to interpret the statement. Had Digby meant that just killing Jews alone was enough to intervene the word AND would have been OR. And even if we change it to OR, it is still a disgusting statement that it would only be RELUCTANTLY. Digby was RELUCTANT to interfere in a situation where millions of innocent people were exterminated because they had different religious beliefs. That is messed up, anyone who is reluctant about stopping a Holocaust is a sick individual that I want no part of. You can agree all you want, but its a bad argument. How exactly am I opportunistic because I support Libya? Does Gaddafi falling give me any advantage? No. So how in the world is my support opportunistic? What opportunity am I gaining? What self interest do I have in this? What could I possibly gain from this? I cant be opportunistic if there is nothing to gain. So if the US put 7k troops in Libya instead of doing a No Fly Zone, you would say that is doing nothing and they are just standing around? They are both UN action, both involve the US. I dont know who that person Digby is, but what they said in that article is truly sickening and in many cases they completely distorted the truth to take advantage of people that do not do their own research and fact finding.

Sorry I cant keep up with all of the nonsensical articles that people are posting, Id prefer if you guys just wrote your own instead of me having to responding to people that will never get the chance to argue with me, but oh well, I cant help myself. Ridiculous. Based on this statement he would not have intervened if Hitler merely killed all of the Jews. Sorry Mr. Digby, but that is an unacceptable position in my view. Oh what is that you say, you didnt really mean that he had to do all three, you are just creating hyperbole to devalue the entire argument. And saying that you cant help everyone isnt being an opportunist, its being a realist. Its like saying a Dr who only saved 2 out of 3 patients was an opportunist, because he couldnt save them all. Or that when you give $1,000 to the Red Cross, you are an opportunist just because you couldnt give $10,000 to the Red Cross, or $20,000 to Amnesty International. Its not people who are realists that cheapen humanitarian effort, its people like Digby, who attack people who are doing the best that they can to try and help, but are realists when it comes to the fact that you can not help anyone. He then goes on to use the same moral equivalence argument pointing to Ivory Coast? Dear Mr. Digby, Has the UN authorized humanitarian intervention in the Ivory Coast? Oh wait the UN is giving aid to the Ivory Coast, based on Digby's article who could have imagined that. http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?s.../1962%282010%29 Oh damn it turns out the UN is actually giving the Ivory Coast troops, which is far beyond what the UN has done in Libya. Its just sad when people have to resort to completely distorting the facts to try and persuade people to believe in their articles. I beg of people to think with their own mind, do their own research, dont rely on bloggers who are the real opportunists here. As for Greenwald he uses a lot of words so my response will be brief: Anyone who doesnt accept the reality of war is living in a fantasy world. Innocent people were going to die regardless of the action taken, but you have to weigh the costs. Lets go back to a more simpler time, World War II. In World War II there were significant civilian casualties, these are not thousands, these are millions. When the US invaded Germany, many Germany civilians were killed. But what should the US have done? Just left Hitler alone because we didnt want to risk killing innocent German civilians? His article is pretty bad because it misconstrues facts to try and prove his point: Because the Iraq war was not pitched as saving the people of Iraq to begin, the Iraq war was sold as a war to protect America from Saddam's WMD. If this war was about stopping Gaddafi and WMD, I would be absolutely opposed to it, the same way as I was opposed to Iraq. Had the Iraq invasion been entirely for humanitarian purposes it would have been different. Had the people of Iraq revolted against Saddam and asked for our assistance, it would have been different. To the people of Libya and those American's who dream that one day govts will do the right thing because its the right thing, not for some end gain, we can only hope. But if we let people beat us down and tell us that things will never change, that no govt can be good, that no one can ever help some one else just to help, we will lose the good in humanity. We are not all this way, and that is why it is so important for the minority to stand up together, to make sure that we can do whatever we can. Just because we cant save everyone, doesnt mean we shouldnt try and save as many as we can. Just because our previous intervention may have been a mistake or ended poorly, does not mean we cant do better in the future.

I didnt see any definitive statement on time, so I dont see a broken promise, as there was never any promise made to be broken. But just to completely discredit the author and show that he is doing nothing more than yellow journalism, lets pick apart the quotes: 1) Expectation is not a promise, in fact it is completely speculative. 2) Damn once again anticipation is not a promise, its speculative. 3) This is actually the worst statement, but can only be used against the Rhodes if a few weeks pass and the change has not occurred. Furthermore the fact that they use "days" and "weeks" is really meaningless as they never actually pinpoint a definitive date in time, ie this will be accomplished in 7 days. Technically weeks are made up of days, so if I wanted to be completely biased like this article, I could legitimately argue that the administration has completely stuck to their time line. But unlike this journalist, Im fair and try to be unbiased. I have no doubt that the US had hoped that they would be able to transfer over leadership in as little time as possible. Unfortunately it turns out that the rest of the International Community has decided to completely change their position after the UN voted, and now they arent so sure about the things they pressed the UN to do. At this point the US has to keep control because they did not anticipate half of the countries going back on positions that they took so strongly last week. So the reason they are not giving a definitive time table, is because no one is sure how long its going to take for the rest of these countries to stop backtracking on positions that they took. Its unfortunate that the state of our media today is that you cant even trust anything thats printed, because most headlines seem to be flat out misleading.

For some lighter news: http://blogs.aljazeera.net/live/africa/liv...-libya-march-22 12:49am Fox News reports that Gaddafi's regime has used journalists as human shields. The US broadcaster said an attack on Gaddafi's compound on Sunday had to be curtailed because of journalists nearby. "British sources confirmed that seven Storm Shadow missiles were ready to be fired from a British aircraft, but the strikes had to be curtailed due to crews from CNN, Reuters and other organizations nearby. Officials from Libya's Ministry of Information brought those journalists to the area to show them damage from the initial attack and to effectively use them as human shields" 2:33am CNN correspondent Nic Robertson dismisses a report by Fox News that journalists in Libya were used by Gaddafi's forces as human shields. He says the allegation is "outrageous and it's absolutely hypocritical". "When you come to somewhere like Libya, you expect lies and deceit from the dictatorship here. You don't expect it from the other journalists." Im not even sure what to make of this, sounds like Fox news is helping Obama by trying to make Gaddafi sound worse.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Mar 21, 2011 -> 06:24 PM) Why do you guys hate the innocent civilians in Congo and Yemen? Where is your outrage to have the US help them? As ive said numerous times, I do not get into moral equivalences argument. Just because you did something one time, does not mean that you are precluded from acting a different way the next time, no more than it forces you to act the same way. Yemen and Congo are different situations, and even if they were the exact same situation as Libya, we cant help everyone. That is just the sad reality of our existence. I cant give money to every charity, I cant give to every homeless person, but because I cant give them all something, does not mean that I shoudlnt give what I can. Whether it be luck, fate, destiny or whatever else you want to call it, some people are going to get help when others do not. But I dont accept that because I cant help everyone, I shouldnt help anyone, that is unacceptable to me. Now further to the point neither the Congo nor Yemen have asked for UN assistance. The day that they do, we may have a different discussion. But those are explosives that we have already paid for, there is no evidence that they would be used otherwise, and so far no one has provided any evidence that we are actually replacing every singe weapon we use with the exact same make and model. Almost all weapons become obsolete, Id rather that we use them for a good cause. Im willing to concede that money will be spent on this campaign, but you cant put a price on saving people from execution.

Actually its entirely unproven. Until Obama asks Congress for additional funds to cover the cost of Libya, wouldnt the expenditures be entirely within the already established budget? You may be right that we will have to spend more money, but it hasnt happened yet, and may never happen.

If we cut the Defense budget Id be the first one in line to agree. But since we are spending the money anyways, we might as well do some good with it.

This is actually untrue. In the absence of a ruling to the contrary, any action taken by the President, Congress, etc would be Constitutional until proven otherwise. For example, mandatory insurance law was passed, it was immediately constitutional, until a judge ruled otherwise. There is no debate on this, the Supreme Court does not make rulings to confirm Constitutionality, if something is absolutely constitutional they will not even take the case. I dont think the war in Iraq is at all comparable to Libya. The war in Iraq was entirely fabricated on the idea of WMD and the threat Iraq posed to the US. That was untrue. Obama's interpretation of War Powers, Iraq and Libya are not at all contradictory. Iraq, based on untrue threat towards US, no UN backing. Libya, based on potential humanitarian crisis, UN backing. Its like comparing isolationism in World War I and World War II and arguing that if you were against fighting in World War I you had to be against it in World War II. Its just absurd.

Balta, You are 100% correct that they took up arms against Gaddafi. And you would be 100% correct if you limited your argument to: "We arent sure who to believe, so perhaps we should not believe anyone." I agree with that completely. I cant say that the people of Benghazi are good or bad people, I can only go by the facts. The UN first asked for a cease fire. Gaddafi stated that he would comply. If Gaddafi complied with the cease fire and the revolutionaries continued to attack, I would pause and consider what is going on. But what happened made the UN act how it did. Gaddafi on one hand said he would comply with a ceasefire, at the same time he was saying that if he got to Benghazi he would kill them all, while at the same time his troops were still attacking civilian targets. Maybe the revolutionaries arent the best, but there is absolutely no way I can trust Gaddafi or anything that is coming from his camp. Because he has proven to be a liar, it gives credibility to his adversaries. This was why it was so important to let Gaddafi hang himself with his own rope, so it became apparent to the world that he could not be trusted. As for choosing sides in a Civil War, maybe that is what we have done. But we only did it because Gaddafi forced the international communities hand. If you really wanted to make a great argument youd have pointed out General Sherman in the South, when he clearly was targeting civilians and whether that should have allowed other nations to interfere on behalf of the South (unfortunately that goes back to my might makes right argument).

You mean Gaddafi troops who were going to kill civilians were massacred after they were ordered by the UN to impose a cease fire? After Gaddafi stated there was a cease fire and kept his troops marching? I dont call that a massacre, I call that saving innocent civilians from a massacre.

haha probably

Oh okay, so whenever some one is asked a very specific question, it actually should be interpreted as broadly as possibly, completely ignoring the specifics of the question. At least I finally understand that it just doesnt matter what has been said, or what the actual truth is, all that matters is how you perceive it. Just so you know, currently Obama is within the rules http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RL32267.html#_1_29 Im sure as you are aware, Clinton's actions were not found unconstitutional. So you are comparing apples and oranges.

It must get tiring going out of your way to try and discredit Obama by not putting his quotes in context. The statement you quoted is first of all parsed and second of all taken out of context. The context of the question was: So lets see how many differences we can point out in 1 second: 1) This isnt Iran 2) This is UN action 3) This does not involve suspected nuclear strikes 4) This involved a potential civilian massacre that could have occurred before Congress could have voted 5) This is UN mandated action 6) The question does not ask "If the UN authorizes force, does the President have to seek congressional approval before using force under UN guidelines?" So since the question was in no way shape or form related to question 6, its kind of silly to hold Obama to a quote that is clearly a distinguishable situation. And Im not a huge Obama fan (you can find numerous things where I disagree with him) but at least when I disagree with him, I give him the courtesy of using his actual standpoint, not creating an absurd standpoint and then attacking him for the absurd standpoint that I created.

French actually fired the first strikes from their aircraft that destroyed tanks.

I didnt miss anything, it was a horrible argument and I wanted to show you that I could make an equally horrible argument about spending using pick and choose numbers. Because that is what they said they will do. Now, I do not know what will happen. There is always the chance that whoever comes next could be worse. But Ill take saving people today, over maybe killing people in the future any day of the week. Gaddafi was going to massacre people (imo), that needed to be stopped. In Vietnam we took the side of the current govt. And as Balta mentioned arguably we are taking the side on most Saudi things (Bahrain). But I hope that we change, I hope that we take the side of Yemen and Bahrain if those people are seeking freedom and equality. Freedom shouldnt be only for the rich and powerful to enjoy. Unfortunately we are limited in what we can do. But just because we cant save everyone, doesnt mean we should save no one.

You know the council of Benghazi are the ones who applied to the UN for a No Fly Zone, and specifically asked that there be no ground troops. Who cares what one poster says, when the actual group who is allegedly representing the revolutionaries asked for a No Fly Zone. If I put a poster outside of my balcony that says: "China please take over the US" Does that have more sway than Obama or officials who actually represent the country? http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/1...tes-no-fly-zone Not sure where you are getting your facts, but the Benghazi council was begging the UN to intervene.

Youre 100% correct, the French were self-serving, which is why this campaign for the people of Libya is far more virtuous. As for bankrupting France, spending money on the US revolution didnt help, but their real fiscal problems occurred during the 7 years war (1756-1763) and previous periods. Not to mention the amount of money they were spending on their own colonies, which eventually became to costly to keep (Louisiana Purchase). So if the US is to go bankrupt, its not going to be over the money we spent in Libya, its going to be over the numerous other things that we spent money on years ago. And there is nothing to hash out, Im never going to be a proponent of sitting on the sidelines in the face of a civilian massacre.