Amr Moussa should shut his pie hole. What did the Arab League expect? The second a single missile is fired into Libya he recants his support for action against Gaddafi? I know he’s now a politician who is hoping to lead Egypt, but voters aren’t normally inspired by wishy-washyness. Having lent support for an international effort to stop Gaddafi from massacring his citizens, Amr Moussa can’t take it back. Some of us warned that a no-fly zone wouldn’t accomplish anything and that, once committed, the UN-enforcement powers would fight until Gaddafi is removed from power, no matter how much blood is spilled. If you signed on for a penny, you signed on for a pound. We all need to make the best of it now, even those of us who warned of the dangers. There are no mulligans in war-advocacy. The cause is just here, it’s just the risk/reward ratio that is out of whack. Don’t complain if people’s hair gets a little mussed because that is what you bought when you advocated action. Gaddafi will have to removed from power now, and then someone is going to own Libya, we’re just not sure who that will be, yet.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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ugh! You are so right about this. Where did Moussa get his wishy-washy lessons, the DLC?
Hey, come on Boo.
The super coalition managed to keep it together for a whole 36 hours before the doublecrossing and backbiting started up.
It was very important to have the Arab League on board after all. And the African Union. Such committed partners for liberty for all and friendship with the West.
Hmmmmm….
Which “cause” is that, Booman? The “humanitarian” one? Oh. OK, let’s hit the Saudis and Yemen too.
Oh.
No?
Hmmmmm….
Why only Libya?
Duh.
Oil is the “cause,” of course.
You also write:
We’re not?
Britain, France and the U.S. are going to go sharesies, Booman. It’s already been hashed out. Whoever is going in firstest with the mostest…that’d be France if the hypnomedia can be parsed finely enough to actually find some real information hidden inside of the usual gibberish…gets the biggest cut. Like a whaling expedition.
Moby Oil.
The Great Black Whale.
Even more valuable now that the peons have their panties all in a bunch regarding nuke power.
Bet on it.
Or sump’n like that.
Bet on it.
Watch.
AG
That’s ridiculous.
The military command is running from this thing as fast as they can, cracking the civilians back into line. As hard as it might be to believe, this really is Europe’s party.
The Pentagon will choose its own wars, thank you very much.
First?
Second?
Yassuh,bossman Bazooka Joe guy, suh. They is runnin’ so fast that they is flyin’!!!
C’mon, man…
As usual, a compromise has been made.
But not ” cracking the civilians back into line.”
Compromise.
The Obama Blue Plate Special.
Good?
Bad?
Probably a little of both.
The very definition of the word “compromise.”
AG
P.S. What? Do you not think that Ms. Clinton is deeply allied with certain areas of the intelligence services? Check out the whole Valerie Plame brouhaha for all you need to know on that idea. She was in it on the CIA’s side, right up to her earrings. And do you further doubt that said intelligence services have at least as powerful an influence of foreign policy as do the armed forces?
It’s vector politics, Bazooka. Just like vectors in elementary physics. Different forces push on a given mass from different directions and at different powers and the mass moves accordingly.
Watch.
No U.S. foot soldiers (Xceptin’ maybe the spooks) , lotsa explosions.
Watch.
AG
My apologies but I long thought you were a Hillary-ite before Obama’s nomination. She is an abomination. Did you see how she winked and smiled at the ‘crowd’ at the end of her Paris press conference when she was defending war—WAR. She seems to have no feeling for the realities of her activities. Then she pulled the mini-victim card by wishing the people in the room who could stay in Paris for the night, a good time. You know, Paris is beautiful and chic and posh and all that stuff and I’m not allowed to enjoy it because of the great weight I bear in the country’s service. Bill too. You see, she suffers under the burden of her convictions that any military action is a good action. And then she has the nerve in nearly the same breath to announce her impending departure from State. It’s kind of like, I’ve got mine, now you go and figure it out for yourselves. She’s annoyed, and when this lady is annoyed get out of the way.
An “abomination.”
Perhaps.
Humanity itself is an abomination if seen from one point of view.
Politicians are abominations almost to a man (and woman) when seen from any number of points of view.
Or, they…politicians, humanity, people who make war and everybody else, from Hitler through Mother Teresa…are simply part of a process when seen from one very specific point of view.
The process of evolution.
She’s good at what she does.
Probably better at it than anyone else I have seen during my lifetime.
That is my opinion.
Am I thus a “Hillary-ite?”
As you wish.
As I said elsewhere here recently:
Dassit.
Over and out.
When you figure out how to get rid of all of the possible “abominations” that exist on this mortal plane, please get in touch with me.
Until then…she is our abomination, and she has done a masterful job at it.
AG
P.S. Quentin…do you use oil products? Are you willing to do without almost all of them? Could you do without almost all of them and still survive? Hecause that’s s. Clinton’s gig right now. Keeping the oil running in the U.S. at a price that will not literally break the economy while alternate forms of power are developed. It’s a dirty job, but apparently someone’s got to do it. She’s got the gig. I couldn’t do it. Diplomacy is not one of my stronger talents. Could you?
Without doubt I am not prepared to live without the products the Qaddafis of the world can help make possible with their oil. I couldn’t step out of the front door without them. No one could. But then again, there was no question in this case of having to do without the oil. Quaddafi was supplying colonel-class oil and gas to the world without problems. His opponents rocked the boat. Or do the permgov people know that his opponents will give then am even a better deal?
‘Abomination’ is a schoolmarmish word with overtones of righteousness and the jewish bible (so-called old testament) and suits Hillary Clinton to a tee in a corny sense. Someone with her class and breeding would more probably say ‘appalling’.
People are an ‘abonimation’? Our awfulness is the base line with which we have to work. If we accept ourselves as we are with all the nastiness, the world would be a much better place to live in. The moralizing idealists—who the USA has more than its fair share of—are in the business of causing more trouble than they’re worth.
What is this UN resolution all about? The French are back on the map. The Germans remember the past. The Americans just can’t resist the opportunity. We’ll all be getting back to this over the coming months.
I really had the impression that you supported HRC for Democratic presidential candidate. That’s not important. Her husband is running Haiti I heard on the radio this morning. The US is stuck in a self-destructive time warp. It must learn to renew its institutions and priorities or perish. I’m somewhat familiar with the jewish bible too.
The Middle Eastern boat has been…and is still being… throughly rocked. I think that the major oil-consuming nations of power…the members of NATO, China, Russia, perhaps Japan although they are certainly too busy with other matters to have much pull at the moment,…are each trying to figure out where said boat is headed after the rocking subsides. Not only figure it out, but influence that processs in any way that they can manage to do so. There are many differing opinions regarding this action and each nation is coming to its own conclusions. Another vector situation. Push and pull, pull and push. Four dimensional chess with human beings as the chess pieces.
My point about Hillary Clinton…and yes, I thought that she would have been a better choice for president than was Barack Obama…is that she is a proven grandmaster in this game. This does not mean that she is “good” in some abstract moral sense, and neither does it mean that she is incapable of error. Grandmasters lose matches too. But overall…throughout her involvement in national and international politics she (and her husband and the forces with which they are allied) have been very, very good at what they do. Obama, on the other hand, was an untested and untried factor. I personally believe that the 2010 Dem electoral fiasco would not have occurred if she had been the president. At the very least it would not have occurred in the same manner. She would have gone for the right-wing jugular about 17 seconds after she stepped down from the podium on which she had been sworn in. That fact alone lost her the nomination, in my opinion. The real powers-that-be are right/centrist like a motherfucker, and they did not fear Obama nearly as much as they did Ms. Clinton. They trained their opinion-maker bazookas on her and she lost in a squeaker as a result.
But that’s old news.
Yup. Read TarheelDem’s excellent analysis of this situation for a more thorough version of what you wrote here.
!!!???
First of all…what “radio” told you that? Is there a “radio” in the U.S. that you can actually believe? Please…tell me where it is on the dial.
Secondly…c’mon. Bill Clinton isn’t “running” Haiti. Haiti is nearly un-runnable, and the forces that he represents are just another vector in the Push and Pull Derby that is going on throughout the Caribbean.
Bet on it.
AG
Info was fed to the NYT that Hillary CLinton was the decider on the no fly in Libya and Ms. Powers and Dr. Rice were with her. Nope. Obama makes his own decisions. I think the CLintons are trying to sabotage Obama. I also think this is because of what Clinton and her envoy did in Germany at the meeting about Egypt.
I imagine that Clinton was told not to contradict stated US policy and she must have flown into a rage. She well could be very resentful.
Let’s talk about that “compromise”. It is more complicated than you think. Gaddafi was a reliable partner to oil companies and every nation involved in the first strikes had a oil company nominally theirs who were benefiting from their deals with Gaddafi. The chaos of a revolution or a civil war would not help those oil companies–too much risk. Oil interests tilted toward Gaddafi.
Let’s look at the UK and France. Cameron in new in office. Sarkozy is approaching an election polling lower than the National Front, a party driven by anti-immigrant sentiments. Where do those immigrants come from and why? North Africa, to escape political repression and to seek economic opportunities–same as immigrants everywhere.
Cameron gets the chance to look like an independent world leader; Sarkozy deals with his upcoming election in two ways–but only if it looks like immigration will decrease. Italy is torn between its oil interests and the prospect of a flood of refugees now from Libya.
Obama needs another war like he needs another progressive blogger. So much so that he did not cancel his trip to beg Brazil for construction jobs, please Dilma just some jobs, jobs jobs.
So Hillary fronts the effort. But she knows that there has to be an invitation from someone and the likely one is the Arab League. Now I don’t understand the vote of the Arab League unless the motive was “Don’t look at us, look at him.” And it allowed Bahrain and Yemen to buy Washington’s public silence about the repression going on in their countries. And Saudi Arabia got the same silence in exchange for its votes in the GCC and the Arab League.
Lebanon had an issue with Gaddafi. Egypt and Tunisia punted relative to their newfound “democracies” by voting for the resolution. Morrocco and Jordan were influenced by their “long-term friendship” with the US. Iraq, well their motives are obvious: “Now US, would you leave please.” But Syria, Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan? Somalia likely was not there.
So Lebanon, being on the UN Security Council carried the referral. And here is where the personal relationship of former Libyan ambassadors came into play. So look at the compromise there. Bosnia/Herzegovina apparently thought it benefited from the no-fly zone imposed in the 1990s. The other non-abstentions were South Africa, Gabon, Nigeria, and Colombia. Colombia’s motive is obvious. But why did South Africa, Nigeria, and Gabon vote yes. South Africa and Nigeria see themselves as competing with Libya for the real leadership in Africa. But why Gabon?
Well here you go: “Gabon’s economy is dominated by oil.”
So what pushed Obama in his decision? Because he decided reportedly over against his national security staff. My suspicion is political staff afraid of a Rwanda scenario after the rebels started waving the bloody shirt. And Gaddafi’s non-transparency automatically destroys his credibility. Not public opinion, but the fear of public opinion if he didn’t act and Gaddafi made good on his threats to people who were protesting.
Lots of different things at play in this compromise.
Indeed.
AG
Is it ever possible, just a teeny bit that Obama the person didn’t want to see another genocide?
I hesitate to say what Obama wants, but I’m sure that preventing a genocide is one item on his list.
The disagreement is whether a genocide would actually occur, that is over whether Gaddafi is different in kind from the other autocrats in the region.
Is it genocide? Or a civil war?
Exactly (see my comment just below).
Oh, come on! There was/is no real threat of genocide. Do we still not recognize war rhetoric, which the U.S. and its “allies” use in abundance, when we hear it? Are we all still so unschooled that we are not accustomed, in particular, to Arab war rhetoric?
The ghost of Rwanda stalks US foreign policy. My comment was about what Obama wants. That is a minimal statement that does not necessarily apply here.
In fact, today Obama made clear that US participation in the international coalition is limited strictly to the terms of the resolution. And that the US is not seeking to remove Gaddafi through military means. He apparently does understand Arab war rhetoric.
My question is whether journalists understand Arab war rhetoric.
Once again, thanks for the thoughtful response.
My reading. The referral of the issue to the UN by the Arab League made the assumption that reliable allies like Russia or China would veto military action. And now that action has happened, the Arab League is divided. And Amr Moussa is dealing with his bosses with this statement. The Egyptian street apparently is divided between those who see the Libyan opposition in the spirit of Tahrir Square and those who see Western intervention as just more imperialism. What Moussa might say to the Egyptian street might or might not coincide with what he must say on behalf of his bosses.
In a situation like this, talk and posturing is very cheap. One has to look at the actions.
Did they expect us to leave the air force bases and anti-aircraft stuff operational? Not sure how you enforce a no-fly zone doing that.
And wasn’t Egypt sending weapons to the rebels? You know, the country he wants to run?
I’m shocked — shocked — to find an Arab leader who can’t make up his mind.
It doesn’t look so much like wishywashy as like either Amr Moussa doesn’t know what it means to establish a no-fly zone, or he never expected the UN to go for it in the first place, and was just flapping his gums for the base.
I don’t know how you can state that the cause is just, Boo, when you yourself correctly pointed out that we have no idea who or what will follow Gadaffi. Only two things look clear at this point: this was not an Egypt-style peoples’ movement, and the Western involvement is looking exactly, down to the rhetoric, like the start of VietNam.
Taking a hammer to Gaddafi and his lunatic goon enablers is a just cause when he’s braying about hunting people down in their closets and exterminating them like rats.
The cause is just.
But not all just causes are justified, or solvable, or, especially, our problem.
So, now a donkey’s braying is a “just cause” to engage in military violence? Give me a break.
what is this crap about not meaning a no-fly zone.
what the hell did they think a NO FLY ZONE MEANT?
Anyone calling for a no-fly zone should have known it would mean a different bunch of civilians being killed. It always does.
This is about regime change, a deal with some ex-regime defectors, counter-revolution, oil, geo-poltical strategy and a bigger mess to come with more radicalized people in the world. Still Sarkozy looks happy as his prosepcts of electoral humiliation recede.