U.S. launches airstrikes on Libya

[StrangeSox]

I'll offer up another version of the effectiveness of airpower...our current air/drone attack campaign in Pakistan. If you want to argue that strategically it is working and effectively damaging the Taliban, you might be right, I don't know. But there has been a hell of a lot of civilian "collateral damage" associated with that campaign.

 

Does the Taliban operate in the same way that a standing national army does?

 

Really, Balta, stop with the bad comparisons to Afghanistan and Iraq. They are completely different situations.

[Balta1701]

Does the Taliban operate in the same way that a standing national army does?

Fighting in an urban area? Absolutely.

[StrangeSox]

No, Balta. The correct answer is that the Libyan army is nothing like the Taliban.

[Balta1701]

No, Balta. The correct answer is that the Libyan army is nothing like the Taliban.

They're much better equipped and have a much more densely populated city to fight in with vastly more civilian targets around them.

 

You're right. It's much worse.

[Balta1701]

Yeah, clearly, air strikes in Tripoli = totally hitting battlefield targets. You guys are right. No hitting of targets associated with the regime, just military forces in the field.

[Texsox]

Another blank check. We can't afford health care for the people in America but we can burn a few more billion in military aid.

[ptatc]

Another blank check. We can't afford health care for the people in America but we can burn a few more billion in military aid.

 

Healthcare doesn't provide jobs or bring money into the economy. War does. We need to replace the Tomahawk missiles we fired and the government will pay American companies to build.

 

I'm not saying it's right or wrong just that it will keep jobs and money rolling.

 

[Texsox]

Healthcare doesn't provide jobs or bring money into the economy. War does. We need to replace the Tomahawk missiles we fired and the government will pay American companies to build.

 

I'm not saying it's right or wrong just that it will keep jobs and money rolling.

 

It seems like healthcare provides a lot of jobs for nurses, techs, doctors, and everyone working at a hospital or clinic. Toss in designing and manufacturing medical equipment, supplies, etc and you have some nice jobs and money coming into the economy.

 

But I see and agree with your point as well.

[ptatc]

It seems like healthcare provides a lot of jobs for nurses, techs, doctors, and everyone working at a hospital or clinic. Toss in designing and manufacturing medical equipment, supplies, etc and you have some nice jobs and money coming into the economy.

 

But I see and agree with your point as well.

 

There aren't enough doctors nurses and such now. All you will do is overwork the current ones unless you want to lower the standard and decrease the quality. It will increase the market for drugs however and it will help that industry alot.

 

[Texsox]

There aren't enough doctors nurses and such now. All you will do is overwork the current ones unless you want to lower the standard and decrease the quality. It will increase the market for drugs however and it will help that industry alot.

 

It's the chicken and egg argument. Without someone paying for the treatments we will never have enough. With more money into the system, there can be more nurses, PAs, and technicians. And yes, probably doctors. I'd rather see an increase in care being performed by nurses and PAs.

 

Now back to death and destruction in the name of saving lives.

[Soxbadger]

The problem with the argument that you dont accept killing Libyan people to stop the killing, is that there is no other solution. The US, the UN, etc asked Gaddafi to step down. They asked him to accept a cease fire so that the killing stopped on both sides.

 

Gaddafi continued to advance and threatened to massacre the people of Benghazi.

 

In terms of money spent, can you put a price on doing the right thing? Those weapons were already built. If they dont use it, eventually it will need to be replaced by a newer better version, might as well use the weapons to do some good in the world and justify the price the US already paid.

[DukeNukeEm]

The U.S. can't intervene because it doesn't want to start a NATO led war against Libya, which is what a no-fly zone entails.

Heh.

[DukeNukeEm]

A fairly famous 2002 speech by a relatively gifted orator...with a handful of words changed.

 

Qadaffi is, IIRC, the longest serving head of state in the world other than Fidel. Hardly an apt comparison.

[DukeNukeEm]

The problem with the argument that you dont accept killing Libyan people to stop the killing, is that there is no other solution. The US, the UN, etc asked Gaddafi to step down. They asked him to accept a cease fire so that the killing stopped on both sides.

 

Gaddafi continued to advance and threatened to massacre the people of Benghazi.

 

In terms of money spent, can you put a price on doing the right thing? Those weapons were already built. If they dont use it, eventually it will need to be replaced by a newer better version, might as well use the weapons to do some good in the world and justify the price the US already paid.

Pretty much this. Keep in mind when enforcing a UNSC binding resolution, the UN typically picks up the tab on the cost. Even if we fund 30% of their budget its still nice to see it spread around.

[Texsox]

The problem with the argument that you dont accept killing Libyan people to stop the killing, is that there is no other solution. The US, the UN, etc asked Gaddafi to step down. They asked him to accept a cease fire so that the killing stopped on both sides.

 

Gaddafi continued to advance and threatened to massacre the people of Benghazi.

 

In terms of money spent, can you put a price on doing the right thing? Those weapons were already built. If they dont use it, eventually it will need to be replaced by a newer better version, might as well use the weapons to do some good in the world and justify the price the US already paid.

 

Yes, you can put a price on doing the right thing. We have with our neighbor Mexico. We are so panicked that Mexican Nationals will bankrupt this country by coming here to work, we are building a wall to keep us protected. Yet we have hundreds of billions of dollars to fight battles against Muslims. It's curious we have not had to fight any battles against English speaking countries or Christians in the past 100 years.

 

I guess it comes down to who gets to decide who lives and dies. The current government in Libya or someone else.

 

Could you image some country using Kent State or Ruby Ridge as justification to attack the US? Texas and many other states have sent thousands of criminals to death, how is that different than other countries doing the same?

[southsider2k5]

Yes, you can put a price on doing the right thing. We have with our neighbor Mexico. We are so panicked that Mexican Nationals will bankrupt this country by coming here to work, we are building a wall to keep us protected. Yet we have hundreds of billions of dollars to fight battles against Muslims. It's curious we have not had to fight any battles against English speaking countries or Christians in the past 100 years.

 

I guess it comes down to who gets to decide who lives and dies. The current government in Libya or someone else.

 

Could you image some country using Kent State or Ruby Ridge as justification to attack the US? Texas and many other states have sent thousands of criminals to death, how is that different than other countries doing the same?

 

The last line is a huge exaggeration. More accurate would have been using the civil war, or more accurately, something like Sherman's march to the sea.

[Texsox]

The last line is a huge exaggeration. More accurate would have been using the civil war, or more accurately, something like Sherman's march to the sea.

 

Death penalty either way. But ok. It is an exaggeration. How many civil wars has the US stayed out of? What makes this one different? How many military coupes have we sat out?

[Soxbadger]

Yes, you can put a price on doing the right thing. We have with our neighbor Mexico. We are so panicked that Mexican Nationals will bankrupt this country by coming here to work, we are building a wall to keep us protected. Yet we have hundreds of billions of dollars to fight battles against Muslims. It's curious we have not had to fight any battles against English speaking countries or Christians in the past 100 years.

 

Well I dont agree with this, my standpoint on immigration has been clear on this board, anyone who wants to come here, should legally be allowed to. No immigration quotas, we do not have a monopoly on freedom or the "American dream."

 

Could you image some country using Kent State or Ruby Ridge as justification to attack the US?

 

Bit of hyperbole, but its a great point. If you look earlier in this thread and much more in the Iraq threads years ago, you will see my arguments against intervening on sovereign soil. The comparison I used was Japanese internment camps and that being used as a pretext to attack the US. At some point might does make right, if China was doing something like Gaddafi our ability to help would be severely restricted because China can fight back.

 

But ok. It is an exaggeration. How many civil wars has the US stayed out of? What makes this one different? How many military coupes have we sat out?

 

I dont get into moral equivalences. Just because we didnt do the right thing in the past, should not preclude us from doing the right thing today. Furthermore the difference is that in this case the UN has approved the action. This is not unilateral US intervention, this is a UN security mandate that the US is enforcing. That is a huge difference, even though it may be entirely superficial.

 

What makes this different is that the international community is the one who said that there needed to be intervention. The US is merely the tool that will be utilized to intervene.

 

 

[Balta1701]

It's interesting how the politics of this play...when a Republican is in office, the DOD and military establishment couldn't be more gung-ho about military action. When a Democrat is in office, it's the humanitarians/internationalists who support military action, and the military establishment urges caution.

Only the day before, Mrs. Clinton — along with her boss, President Obama — was a skeptic on whether the United States should take military action in Libya. But that night, with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces turning back the rebellion that threatened his rule, Mrs. Clinton changed course, forming an unlikely alliance with a handful of top administration aides who had been arguing for intervention.

 

Within hours, Mrs. Clinton and the aides had convinced Mr. Obama that the United States had to act, and the president ordered up military plans, which Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hand-delivered to the White House the next day. On Thursday, during an hour-and-a -half meeting, Mr. Obama signed off on allowing American pilots to join Europeans and Arabs in military strikes against the Libyan government.

 

...

The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has called his biggest regret.

 

Now, the three women were pushing for American intervention to stop a looming humanitarian catastrophe in Libya.

 

...

In joining Ms. Rice and Ms. Power, Mrs. Clinton made an unusual break with Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who, along with the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and the counterterrorism chief, John O. Brennan, had urged caution. Libya was not vital to American national security interests, the men argued, and Mr. Brennan worried that the Libyan rebels remained largely unknown to American officials, and could have ties to Al Qaeda.

NYT

[Balta1701]

Indiana, I'm gonna really be annoyed with you if this man gets teabagged in the primary.

It doesn't make sense, he said, for the U.S. to help Libyan civilians when the citizens of countries like Bahrain, Yemen and Syria are also being oppressed.

 

"We had better get this straight from the beginning," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation," "or there’s going to be a situation where war lingers on, country after country, situation after situation, all of them on a humane basis, saving people."

 

Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has helped broker key nuclear weapons reductions with former Soviet Union countries, is one of the few Republicans who's spoken against using force in Libya. He said Sunday the success of the airstrikes against Moammar Qadhafi's air defenses hasn't convinced him that getting involved there is a good idea.

 

Lugar warned that the U.S. is investing huge sums of money in a foreign endeavor at a time when the domestic economy is still struggling."It’s a strange time," he said. "Almost all of our congressional days are spent on budget deficits, outrageous problems. Yet, at the same time, all of this passes, which is a very expensive operation."

 

He cautioned that President Barack Obama has authorized airstrikes without understanding whom the strikes might empower in Libya.

 

"We really have not discovered who it is in Libya that we are trying to support," Lugar said.

[Soxbadger]

Lugar is losing all legitimacy with that statement. He supported the war in Iraq, where there was clearly no imminent humanitarian crisis and yet opposes trying to help the people of Libya escape genocide because the US needs to watch its money better?

 

We arent supporting anyone in Libya, we are trying to prevent Gaddafi from massacring civilians.

 

Once again he uses the horrible argument that since we cant help everyone, we should help no one.

 

If you really believe that, fine. But otherwise dont use the argument because its just nonsensical. Its like arguing that I dont have the follow the law because the US doesnt prosecute every criminal. I wonder how far that would get me in court...

 

Oh yeah the first thing that they teach you about the law is that they cant catch everyone and non-prosecution of another crime does not mean that you can use it as a defense.

 

That argument infuriates me.

Edited March 20, 2011 by Soxbadger

[Balta1701]

We arent supporting anyone in Libya, we are trying to prevent Gaddafi from massacring civilians.

Can you actually type that with a straight face?

[Balta1701]

He supported the war in Iraq, where there was clearly no imminent humanitarian crisis and yet opposes trying to help the people of Libya escape genocide because the US needs to watch its money better?

....

 

Oh yeah the first thing that they teach you about the law is that they cant catch everyone and non-prosecution of another crime does not mean that you can use it as a defense.

Compare...statement a and statement b....

[Soxbadger]

1) I can say the first statement with a straight face because that is absolutely what is going to happen. I dont even think that the new Libyan regime knows who is going to run it. All they know is that they cant stay under Gaddafi after he threatened to kill them all.

 

2) I dont know what you are talking about in that quote. The pretext for the Iraq war was not to stop Saddam from killing Kurds or to stop him from killing peaceful protesters. The pretext for the Iraq war was that Saddam had WMD that posed a threat to the US. That was false and I stated from the beginning it was false.

 

Now if the UN was attacking Gaddafi because his military posed a threat, Id be arguing against it, the same way I argued against Iraq.

 

But the difference is the UN is attacking Gaddafi's forces because he continues to threaten civilians and stated that he would massacre the people of Benghazi.

 

If a leader threatens genocide, I will advocate intervention. I know that its not the same for most people, but I do not accept genocide.

 

[Balta1701]

You don't get the fact that "non-persecution of another crime doesn't mean you can use it as a defense" and attacking Lugar for being blatantly wrong about the Iraq war are related statements?

 

So...even the "new Libyan Regime" doesn't know who the new Libyan regime would be, yet we're not supporting anyone?

 

Personally, I'm still a subscriber to the Powell doctrine. No, not the "If a Republican President tells me to do something I say 'yes sir' and sell out my credibility before the U.N., but if a Democrat tells me to do something I start leaking to the press how wrong he is" doctrine. The version he defined circa the gulf war. If you're going to launch a military action in the modern world, here are the questions:

 

1. Is a vital national security interest threatened?

2. Do we have a clear attainable objective?

3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?

4. Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?

5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?

6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?

7. Is the action supported by the American people?

8. Do we have genuine broad international support?[1]

If we apply those to Afghanistan...we went wrong by not having a plausible exit strategy. If we apply to Iraq, we didn't have a vital national security interest, clear attainable objective, analyzed risks and costs, an exit strategy, broad international support, or an understanding of the consequences.

 

Here, which ones of those do we have? A vital national security interest? Maybe at best. A clear attainable objective? I'm not sure what that is. If it's "preventing genocide", we don't...that's fundamentally unclear and difficult to attain via airstrikes. If it's a new regime, possibly that's a clear goal, but we certainly don't have the force levels to do that without ground forces. You admit yourself you don't know what is going to happen as a result of these strikes. An analysis of the risks and costs? Not even close. A plausible exit strategy? No. Consequences fully considered? No. Action supported by the American people? Barely at best. Genuine international support? Check.

 

The additional corollary, that if you're going in you need to employ full and overwhelming force, similarly hasn't been achieved here.