I’m betting Obama, France and England thought this Libyan shell game was going to be a piece of cake. Not so much:
There, hundreds of supporters offered themselves up as human shields, cheering to newly minted dance songs about their adoration for their leader. “House by house, alley by alley,” the catchiest song went, quoting a Qaddafi speech. “Disinfect the germs from each house and each room.”
The crowd included many women and children, and some said they had family in Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. They said they had come to protect Colonel Qaddafi’s compound from bombing by volunteering to be shields. “If they want to hit Muammar Qaddafi, they must hit us because we are all Muammar Qaddafi,” said Ghazad Muftah, a 52-year-old widow of a soldier from the Warfalla tribe, who said she was there with her six grown children.
And how did this happen? Obama and pals thought they had a perfect evil enemy that they could use to quickly dispatch from the scene and then Obama’s image could be uplifted a bit. His image economically is in shreds after trying to spend his way out of a recession sending us into a ever spiraling amount of debt. Gas prices are skyrocketing and all he does is make us MORE dependent on foreign oil, instead of less. His Socialist ideas are not gaining in popularity. His approval ratings are going down.
So against this backdrop he starts this new shell game. Hey everybody, look over there, I’m gonna knock out the evil Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, but doing it wasn’t going to be that easy without looking like a “warmonger”
When Muammar el-Qaddafi first struck back against protesters, Obama hoped that tough sanctions and material support to the opposition would be enough to force the dictator from power. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned him that a “no fly zone” would be ineffective and essentially commit the country to war. By Monday night, it was clear to Obama that this policy wasn’t working. Countries like Iran were getting the wrong message. The Libyan military was selectively testing the patience of the world by striking opposition strongholds. The opposition was pinned down in the port city of Benghazi, swelled by tens of thousands of refugees. Qaddafi kept using a phrase that stuck in Obama’s head: “no mercy.” And France, smarting from seeming to abandon Egyptians during their time of trouble, along with the U.K., were champing at the bit to use force.
…Gates wanted to game out scenarios, knowing that any effective no-fly zone would necessitate a cascade of other military actions that would look a heck of a lot like an invasion, no matter how carefully it was done.
To sell this they had to bring out some phrases that should once again give you a case of deja vu:
Asked if American officials feared whether Colonel Qaddafi could open a new terrorism front, Mr. Brennan said: “Qaddafi has the penchant to do things of a very concerning nature. We have to anticipate and be prepared for things he might try to do to flout the will of the international community.”
Among the threats the United States is focusing on is Libya’s stockpile of deadly mustard gas, he said.
Support terrorism
WMD’s
Hmmmm, seems I heard these reasons before and they were not well taken by the liberal left if I recall right.
My, how the thinking has changed:
The negative comments about this operation are shocking really. My friend is a Red Cross doctor in Algeria and she told me Gaddafi’s forces wiped out a hospital treating rebels. The hospital had more than 29 sick children.
Why should the world stand back and allow a mad man murder his own people?
Murder his own people you say? Like dumping them in vats of acid? Throwing them off of buildings? Rape rooms?
Oh, that was Iraq…..my mistake.
Read the whole thread and its comments from the Kosidiots. Funny how they are now a-ok with this kind of action since they got their man in the Oval Office now.
An evil Arab dictator has been in power for decades. He personally controls his country’s vast oil wealth. A sponsor of terrorism, he has provoked the West to take military action against him in the past. Islamic fundamentalists despise him as much as the West does. When his people rise up against him, he murders them ruthlessly. The United Nations Security Council has passed resolutions condemning him. An American president, intent on promoting democracy in the Middle East, demands that the dictator abdicate. When the dictator fails to leave, the American president authorizes the use of military force. Our “allies,” including Great Britain, are asked to help. The endgame for the use of force is unclear.
Sound familiar? No, we’re not talking about Moammar Qaddafi and Barack Obama. We’re talking about Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush. The difference is this: in almost the exact same set of circumstances, Bush was called “Hitler” by the Left. Leftists wrote plays and stories and movies about killing him. Democratic Party politicians, like Sen. Dick Durbin, likened our troops to “Nazis.” Democratic Senators like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, who voted for the military action, accused the president of lying. Mass demonstrations and protests, sponsored by the communist and socialist Left, broke out in the U.S. and Great Britain. Antiwar groups like Code Pink staged demonstrations at military recruiting stations, and had to be dragged shrieking from the halls of Congress. Opponents of the war shouted that Saddam’s Iraq never attacked us, and that our military action was a violation of international law. The Left cried for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
President Obama has just committed American forces to engage in acts of war against Moammar Qaddafi. Where are the protesters? Where are the accusations that Obama is a liar and a Nazi? Where are the groups of “artists” wishing death upon the “warmonger” Obama? Where are the cries for Obama’s impeachment? There aren’t any, and there won’t be any, either. Obama – who made a fetish out of his opposition to the “surge” in Iraq, yet ordered a “surge” of his own in Afghanistan – has just committed American forces to combat action against a third Muslim country. No matter. He won the Nobel Peace Prize a priori. The Left regards him as a man of peace in its own mind; the facts are irrelevant.
The Left’s hypocrisy on matters of war and peace is sickening. When the Democratic Party is in power, it routinely commits America to war. When Republicans are in power, Democrats engage in shameless demagoguery and paint the Republicans as bloodthirsty warmongers.
Complete and utter hypocrisy.
Remember when the left cried “Why don’t you go to war with North Korea? They have WMD’s too….you are just taking the easy way out”
Do we hear the cries now? Obama decides to go after a “easy” target in Libya while he completely ignored the student uprising in Iran. And even then, backing the rebels in Libya may very well make this region more dangerous, instead of less. When the OIC backs Obama’s war you have to wonder if we’re backing the right side.
H Y P O C R I T E S
Exit quote given to this excellent summation of Obama’s folly by David Warren:
….the Bush administration tried to meet all the criteria of a just war, when invading Afghanistan, then Iraq. They tried to meet the Powell maxims, too. They went to elaborate and exhausting lengths to leave “democratic” and constitutional regimes, in a most unfavourable region. For this, especially, they endured the contempt of the world’s most aggressively self-righteous people.
Who, in turn, seem to be rallying behind the Security Council resolution of Thursday night, which “authorizes” the enforcement not only of no-fly zones over Libya, but any other uses to which military forces may be put, short of a decisive ground invasion.
The very fact that Russia and China failed to veto this resolution, speaks against it. That it fails not on one, but on every single criterion of a just war, should be noted. That it fails the Powell test is a matter of course.
…Sarkozy’s France has, without consulting her European allies, already recognized the rebels in apparent control of Benghazi as an alternative government. No one else knows whom they are supporting, and in point of fact, the most promising internal opponents of Gadhafi’s regime are thuggish tribal chiefs and Islamist ideologues we have no reason to prefer to the monster with whom we are overfamiliar.
And as we have already seen, both the strength and ruthlessness of Gadhafi’s Libyan regime, after more than four decades in power, have been underestimated. We cannot foresee, even to the degree we could over Serbia in 1999, the likely results of our “experimental bombing.”
We don’t know what we are doing. We only know that we have moral support for it on paper, from an international organization that is utterly corrupt, wherein members who do not wish us well are pleased to grant us permission to blunder.
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