Libya: Zuma Says Gaddafi Ready for Truce. NATO & Islamic Militants "Not Interested"

[Distant Observer]

As usual, the Western Powers don't give a damn about African Opinion. There is not even a discussion.

The African Union's repeated efforts to promote a negotiated stop the killings and superivised elections meet the usual patronizing disrespect from the US and former colonial powers. Britain and France are rushing attack helicopters and bunker-busting missiles into the conflict -- of course to protect the defenseless civilians.

Life in Tripoli has stopped with drastic shortages of food and fuel. Libya will be bombed or strangled into submission. A compliant regime will be installed. The country will be cleansed of black immigrants and non-muslims.

But a awful stench of imperialism and racism hangs over the gatherings of victor as they mingle in Benghazi - that famous center of the North African slave trade where Arabs sold black to whites over the past centuries.

-----------

http://allafrica.com/stories/201105310284.html

BuaNews (Tshwane)

Libya: Zuma Says Gaddafi Ready for Truce

31 May 2011



Pretoria — President Jacob Zuma is on his way back home after holding what he described as a "detailed and long" talk with embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Zuma says Gaddafi is ready to carry out an African Union (AU) roadmap for solving the crisis in the North African country.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Yes - A compliant regime will be installed.

:(

[tabatha]

6. No way in hell.

Not after the personal sacrifices made by the Libyan people.

If you read a bit of history Gaddafi was already complying with the west - in fact it was he who approached western powers and repeatedly asked to open up his markets.

The rebels also asked for help.

All this asking by Libyans.

[PurityOfEssence]

54. Bullshit. He threatened nationalization in 2009 and cut the French percentage of the take

Chevron, after setting up operations, left when they started to see that the deal wasn't as good as they wanted.

[Distant Observer]

58. Exactly. The terms that Gaddafi's Gov offered were not appreciated by Western Oil Conglomerates.

The Gov retained too large a share of the oil revenues and too much went to required wages, social programs etc.

[joshcryer]

62. Nonsense, it was already nationalized and they got extended contracts for years...

...along with larger exploration rights. This is just more spin. Yes, they did lose the *fraction* of their profits, but *overall* they business had *more* exploration rights. Subsidies from their state back home are more than enough to make up from the "losses" they would've got from the new contracts.

[PurityOfEssence]

71. They went from being able to keep 50% of what was produced to 27%

Yeah, it's a fraction alright: they lost just a tad under HALF

We went through this at length in another thread some time ago, and you're still selling the same distortion.

Once the threat is made of nationalization and kept as a threat, it's no longer a "safe" proposition, and regardless of further exploration grants, it all becomes much more risky.

This is not mere spin: pro-war interventionists have continually said that it can't be about oil because Qaddafi was playing ball and a dependable source. This clearly shows him to not only be not as compliant as wished but also willing to pull the rug out from under the oil companies.

Over and over and over and over again, pro-war people say that his dependability proves that it can't have been about oil, yet this clearly shows precisely what oil companies hate: unpredictability.

[joshcryer]

73. 50% of 100 is a lot smaller than 10% of 10000.

I know it's hard for you to understand, but they were just getting the oil contracts so they were given incentives.

The wikileaks cables say that they deals were favorable.

Remember, last time I pointed this out to you, you had to come up with nonsense about how it costs more money to pump the oil out of the ground. Feel free to remember that the production aspect of the extraction is a small part of the overall costs, because it's largely sunk (you can move and reuse equipment, etc).

[PurityOfEssence]

79. When the threat of nationalization is seriously used for leverage, it's a different game

The whole argument that this little greedy adventure had nothing to do with oil was based on portraying Qaddafi as reliable to business. This clearly shows the obvious.

Yes, you bandied about a whole bushel of poppycock the last time we went through it, and as usual, regardless of specifics, you keep responding and dismissing reality.

Answer this: is Qaddafi, in light of having threatened nationalization to leverage a better deal, NO CONCERN for industrialists who demand predictability. Maybe just an eensy little bit?

That's the point.

As for your math, it doesn't matter if they're given rights to expand operations if they're in the known danger of doing all the dirty work of getting things going--while inevitably wasting some money on fields that don't work out--and have the Damoclean sword over their head that they can be nationalized at ANY TIME. They can do all the investing of monies and effort and get nothing, and they know this.

Your logic that this speculation of riches is real, actual riches is ridiculous: they risk the possibility of pouring in great resources and having it all taken away at any time. Nobody likes that prospect. The fact remains that he was drastically changing the present deal for everything that was actually flowing while dangling visions of sugarplums before them.

"Real" oil is what is flowing right now, just as "real" victims are the people actually being killed in this ugly war of conquest, not the ones that some are convinced were saved by halting the troops before Benghazi. This reality thing seems to be a major problem for many of the interventionists, and the idea that just continually responding and hurling insults proves anything at all is an ongoing affliction.

The fact at hand is that he almost halved what they could take and threatened to throw them out completely if the deal wasn't taken. That kind of tack doesn't make friends and completely nullifies the argument that he was considered safe and compliant.

In your mind, is there ANY oil component to this adventure at all, or is it just the allied altruism in the face of very few deaths and a truly questionable insurgency when greater atrocities elsewhere get no action whatsoever?

[joshcryer]

80. Oh, no, of course oil interests exist, that's irrelevant to the people who rose up.

See, here's the problem I have with the demeaning arguments about the uprising. First it was part of the Arab Spring, you and I both saw the thousands of posts about that. Arab Spring! Another Arab country rising up against their tyrant! Then things started getting really messy. Then people started jumping ship because the people who initially rose up and put down a few tyrannical police officers and military people needed outside help.

Morally I could not simply go "oh fuck them the outside just wants their oil.

Nor morally could I look for justifications as to why their initial uprising "must" be bad. Ethically that would just be a disaster.

"It's got to be islamic militants" (a meme perpetuated to this very day).

"It's got to be imperialist oil" (yes, they were lucky that the west cared about them, look at Syria, irrelevant to the initial uprising).

"It's got to be the banks" (that was a fun one).

"It's got to be the CIA" (oh bother).

"It's racist" (yikes).

Don't you see a trend here? You're, like most every other anti-Libyan revolution person, saying similar things to discredit them, as opposed to accepting that they're trying to create something new.

What I want to see is a constitutional requirement that 90% of all oil revenue goes to the people, and given that the Technocrats behind the TNC already have laid out the 2035 plan (that Gaddafi was to implement, but reneged on), it may well work out that way (they want to be off of oil by then). If that happens everyone will have egg on their face. Including the interventionists who only intervened because there's a valuable resource to be gained.

I hate Technocrats btw, they're a recipe for disaster. And I don't care why anyone intervened, I care, ethically that they did.

edit: and let me be clear, I am not backing down from the fact that Gaddafi was opening up his entire country to western oil exploration, all said and done the oil companies prefer stability to civil war. edit again: and 2-3 million exiles from Libya would've been an equally if not preferred scenario, since it would've ended sooner arguably (had nothing happened I think it'd be winding down by now at the cost of a lot of lives and a lot of migrants).

[PurityOfEssence]

84. Who's talking about THEIR motivations? I'm talking about ours.

They certainly know how to use it: their threat of dealing harshly with those who didn't support them suckered France to recognize them when it looked like they might win. That has nothing to do with what I'm talking about, which should be damned obvious after all this

I'm not talking at all about the various reasons for the various rebels to go into revolt; I'm talking about the U.S., France and Britain. My quarrel is with those who dismissed OUR motivations as having nothing to do with oil.

How more obvious do I need to be?

Here's the real problem with the revolt from my perspective: it simply didn't have enough support. There are dedicated democratic types and a very serious component of Islamists, many of whom are bent on vengeance for having their 1995-6 insurgency crushed and many of their kith killed. There are also out-and-out opportunists, many of whom are defectors who lived just fine when cozying up to Qaddafi for years. The problem is that there is not enough of them. They couldn't make it work. They were on the verge of being taken down.

There's a certain justice to revolutions: if there's enough of a collective gripe and enough of a collective will, they often succeed. Look at Egypt.

There wasn't that much death, there wasn't that much oppression and there are many people who like or have no ire at the Qaddafi regime. It's far worse in Syria, it's far worse in Yemen, and we shall see how all that sorts out.

We have been sold this thieving opportunism as pure altruism, and that's deeply, deeply ugly. It's also transparent as hell, and the rest of the world knows it. The fact that some of he rebels clearly yearn for a more open government is, for many of us, thoroughly offset by the dangerous and ugly Islamist contingent and the opportunism of the cynical turncoats. History also shows what nasty turns revolutions can have, as well as the sustained human cost of long struggles like this one is becoming.

My gripe is with US and the enablers of our naked imperialist war of intervention. We had no right to do this, and the motives were scandalously propagandized. I also hold the rebels accountable for persisting in something where they really didn't have adequate support, and I find their methods--especially the oil shakedown--as rather unflattering indications of character.

[dionysus]

2. you'll be sad to see him go, thats for sure.

[SDuderstadt]

4. Why, dionysus!

Are we cross?

[dionysus]

5. why SDuderstadt, i didn't know you was back in town.

[SDuderstadt]

9. Oh, dionysus...

I'm sorry. I forgot you were there.

You may go now.

[dionysus]

10. t-thank you.

[SDuderstadt]

14. Leave the...

shotgun.

[Distant Observer]

8. Always sad to see ruthless, racist, imperialist buchery. I protest it and face guns and bullets as

a youth. The arrogant imperial impulse has not changed.

[Distant Observer]

47. I faced guns and bullets in the anti-imperialists struggle. Gaddafi's Libya aided this struggle

and did not ask for anything in return.

The revolutionary regime was at times brutal and dictatorial, but accomplished much for the Libyan peoples and aided many freedom struggles and conflict resolution in Africa over the decades.

Those are the facts.

[no limit]

48. I guess in the same way you were sad when Saddam was let go. Right?

Or did you support the Iraq war?

What an argument to make on a democratic site. That if you don't support war you support a dictator. Bush would be very proud of you, good job.

[dionysus]

56. whatever you say champ.

:rofl:

[tabatha]

3. Qaddafi not prepared to leave Libya, South African presidency says

Qaddafi not prepared to leave Libya, South African presidency says

Moammar Qaddafi will not leave Libya despite growing international pressure and intensified strikes on his regime, the South African presidency said Tuesday after mediation talks in Tripoli.

President Jacob Zuma held "lengthy discussions" with the strongman on Monday but failed to close the gap between the Libyan leader and rebels on a plan proposed by the African Union.

"Colonel Qaddafi called for an end to the bombings to enable a Libyan dialogue. He emphasized that he was not prepared to leave his country, despite the difficulties," Zuma's office said in a statement.

Zuma met Qaddafi at his home Monday and also went on a tour to see "the destruction caused by the bombings and the deepening humanitarian crisis" and said the leader's personal safety "is of concern".

To read more: http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=276778#ixzz1NwUXOZnw
Only 25% of a given NOW Lebanon article can be republished. For information on republishing rights from NOW Lebanon: http://www.nowlebanon.com/Sub.aspx?ID=125478

[Distant Observer]

7. Obama not prepared to leave America. Mandela not prepared to leave South Africa

The stench of racism is disgusting. Why should they be prepared to leave their countries.

What is wrong with negotiating with the enemy. What is wrong with elections.

[thewiseguy]

12. So Mandela and Obama are equal to Gaddafi in your opinion? Racism?

You sir are a true .....

Feel free to fill in the blank.

[Distant Observer]

15. There is a habit of imperialist bullies with no moral standing telling others to "get out" or "go

back" or else. A very long history.

[EFerrari]

17. Leaders. There's nothing racist in the comparison.

And D.O. is right. Today Manuel Zelaya recounts his ouster by the US backed coup in Honduras on Amy's show. The US and the Western powers believe it is their god given right to tell foreign leaders where they can live and how.

[tabatha]

23. Apples and Oranges

Honduras is not Libya, Egypt, South Africa or any other country.

The Libyans asked and prayed for NATO help - have you not seen the videos of the cheering.

Even after NATO came to help, they have criticized NATO for not doing enough.

Where did any of this happen in Honduras?

And, btw, I agree with you about Honduras.

The Libyan uprising has been compared to the South African uprising. But there are vast differences - although force was used, it pales into insignificance in comparison to what Gaddafi unleashed.

I truly do not get it - you are against unfairness, brutality, and lack of freedom. That is what Libyans are against as well.

[EFerrari]

30. No and that's precisely how this stuff happens over and over and over,

by pretending that each is a special case. In Honduras, the claim was the coup saved the country from Chavez. In Nicaragua, the claim was the Contras were freedom fighters saving the people from repression. In El Salvador, the claim was the rebels were violent communists. In Iraq, the claim was WMD and the treatment of women. The claims vary but what never varies is the avarice of the people pulling the strings on these operations. Gaddafi is not a good leader, neither was Saddam. But that doesn't make the official story true, either. I don't know about you, but the fake claims of defending democracy stopped being credible to me decades ago.

[tabatha]

33. I agree with you about Iraq and Afghanistan

and the countries in South America. Those interferences were done by right-wing administrations. And were disgusting.

I believe the Iraq debacle was because Cheney wanted to make money on oil.
Halliburton was close bankruptcy before the Iraq war - it is now drowning in cash that rightfully belongs to the Iraqis.

Just as I believe Gaddafi has ripped off the Libyans.

To me Cheney and Gaddafi are no different and I would like to see them both rot in hell or in the Hague.

[EFerrari]

42. Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama have all been involved in regime change.

It's what our government does. It doesn't work out for us or for the people over there but cronies make out very well.

[Distant Observer]

55. So you think Sadaam HR record compares favorably to Gaddafi's??? Get a memory!

[Ikonoklast]

19. Yes, elections...as long as Qaddafi has been in power, now he wants free elections.

Too late. Just another dictator who got religion after AFTER the bullets flew his way.

What he wants is to remain in power so he can pass his kingship down to his son.


Fuck him.

[Distant Observer]

57. An political reform and elections planning committee began 4 year ago. A few militant factions

decided to pre-empt that process.

Most don't know the recent history behind the rebellion.

[joshcryer]

61. Bullshit, Saif backed down from that, *and* they backed down from a stipend from oil income.

Every person was to get a stipend from the oil income but Gaddafi said fuck no to that.

[Distant Observer]

13. Tabatha, I think you skipped the most relevant part of that report

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=276778#ixzz1NwUXOZnw

Qaddafi insisted after meeting Zuma that "all Libyans be given a chance to talk among themselves" to determine the country's future, said the South African president, who is heading the African Union mediation process in Libya.

[tabatha]

18. The Libyans are already talking amongst themselves.

It is the Libyans who want Gaddafi out.

It is the Libyans who are revolting against Gaddafi's brutality! It is the Libyans who are dying for their freedom.

Gaddafi seized power in a coup and for 42 years would not allow Libyans to talk amongst themselves.

Do you really believe that he has changed his mind?

Gaddafi is a liar, a cheater, a murderer and belongs in jail.

At the Hague.

Where he will eventually end up.

Please see this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38EXALI60hg

"Gaddafi, we want you to leave. It is enough! We have suffered for 42 years. !!!!!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libya_Alhurra_TV

[Distant Observer]

35. Tabatha, you are smart enough to know war propaganda when you see it. Use your head. Think

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[EFerrari]

45. You don't have to be a Gaddafi shill to recognize a pattern of behavior

our government has been involved with for more than two hundred years since Jefferson refused to recognize Haiti's independence.

[Starry Messenger]

11. recommend.

[dipsydoodle]

16. Kick.

.

[backscatter712]

20. Qaddafi's forces are leaving him, his sphere of influence is shrinking, he has to hide out now.

Why would the rebels make concessions to him now?

Gaddafi only talks peace now because he's no longer able to destroy his enemies.

If I were the leader of the rebels, here are my conditions for a peace agreement.

1. Unconditional surrender.

I'd be going for the full enchilada. Gaddafi had the chance to step aside peacefully, he instead attempted genocide. Fuck him. The war ends when Gaddafi ends.

[Hannah Bell]

21. lol. "genocide". uh, right.

[backscatter712]

22. What was Gaddafi going to do in Misrata and Benghazi if the rebels and NATO hadn't stopped him?

Given flowers to everyone?

[Hannah Bell]

25. your misuse of the english language = war crime.

[Fumesucker]

43. Pretty much what the US did to Fallujah..

I didn't see all that many flowers being passed out by the US troops in Fallujah..

[tabatha]

24. That is exactly what Gaddafi's defected military are saying.

"What is happening to our people has frightened us," said one officer, who identified himself as General Oun Ali Oun.

"There is a lot of killing, genocide ... violence against women. No wise, rational person with the minimum of dignity can do what we saw with our eyes and what he asked us to do."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/30/us-libya-officers-idUSTRE74T41820110530

But even if Gaddafi or the ICC court said so, you would not believe it.

[Hannah Bell]

26. i can't help it if he, like you, doesn't know what genocide means.

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hannah Bell]

28. "your guy" = more spin from the spin factory. and fuck the cia-sponsored "rebels".

and meet the new boss, more compliant than the old (originally cia-sponsored) boss.

people who don't know what "genocide" means are unreliable interpreters of international politics.

[tabatha]

36. I really don't give a flying fig about the literal

meaning of genocide.

I do care about the fact that thousands of Libyans have been killed.

Any person with a heart should care ---- and not quibble about the meaning of genocide.

[PurityOfEssence]

51. Summary: those on the 'good' side may distort as they please

The very idea of continually insulting people as heartless because they don't swallow the bullshit propaganda of their government is ridiculous when the very cause promoted is to wage lengthy and deadly war with no regard for civilian lives.

Words mean things, and the cheapening of them is either sloppiness or an expression of moral superiority. Policy should be debated on facts, not hysteria and self-aggrandizement.

[Hannah Bell]

85. lol. the voice of the propagandist. the meaning of words doesn't matter.

[sendero]

64. +100

.. my sentiments exactly.

[bluestate10]

66. The Brits are putting bunker busting bombs into the fight.

So now the rebels soul condition should be "surrender unconditionally or get your ass blown to pieces, nuff said".

[Modern_Matthew]

29. We must ignore him to keep the bombs falling. There's no such thing as a truce...

under imperialist regimes.

[center rising]

31. Any truce that has Gaddafi still in power is unacceptable.

[EFerrari]

32. Because regime change has always worked out so well for us

and for the world.

We really are unteachable.

[tabatha]

34. One place it worked

was South Africa.
Botswana and Namibia, too.

Zimbabwe is a disaster.

[Distant Observer]

38. In South Africa! Funny!! The Western powers propped up the racists to the end

You would never see the Big powers bombing the white racism minority even as they slaughtered the majority black population decade after decade.

THE CIA WAS HEAVILY INVOLVED SUPPORTING THE APARTHEID REGIME

[EFerrari]

40. At Cal during our protests, we had every kind of Fed instigator

trying to stop us. It was unreal or, maybe not.

[PurityOfEssence]

52. Certainly some fishiness was going on; I was there then, too...

Long strange trip...

[EFerrari]

39. The American government was not responsible for the fall

of the apartheid government in South Africa. The movement was undertaken by black South Africans, then supported in this country by some universities, then by some municipalities and states and finally, by Congress. Remember, that old felon Reagan vetoed the first bill that went to his desk.

[Distant Observer]

44. Tabatha, So you believe Western military intervention caused Black Majority Gov. in South Africa??

Then I understand you peculiar insight into Western intervention in Libya.

But your belief has no basis in reality.

Since the 19th century discover of huge gold and diamond deposits in South Africa, the Dutch and English rapaciously exploited the country, creating large global corporate empires on the backs of the native population while oppressing them in the most organized, ruthless, racist, manner conceivable.

From the enactment of apartheid laws in 1948 to the peaceful negotiated overturn of apartheid in 1990s the Western powers opposed, undermined, and aided in the murder of militant opposition.

The CIA and other Western intelligence services worked hand in hand with Apartheid South Africa's Bureau of State Security (BOSS) as BOSS engineered the most perverse propaganda campaign internationally and the most ruthless oppression of descent internally.

Western intelligence has been implicate in helping Apartheid South Africa develop a nuclear weapon based on a strategy of the West controlling revolution in Black Africa via proxy threat from Apartheid South Africa.

Mandella himself referred to the Western powers as "those who helped our enemies." Anyone who believes that the Western Powers engineered regime change in South Africa, by military intervention or otherwise, is truly delusional.

[Distant Observer]

59. It has always been. The devout islamic militant opposition view him as a heretic and have refused

to compromise their holy Jihad against him for years now.

[joshcryer]

63. Devout islamic militant opposition?

Close to calling racism on this nonsense.

[Canuckistanian]

72. Or even the possibility of Gaddafi remaining NEAR power

The truce should be negotiated with a deal that sends Gaddafi to the ICC - instead of a firing squad before his own people.

[joshcryer]

76. Agreed, and if somehow he is proven innocent in the ICC he can return like so many other tyrants...

...and DU can have celebratory threads about his return! ;)

[Canuckistanian]

78. Really.

This place is rarely boring.

[WinkyDink]

41. The West wants the banks and the oil. Gaddafi wants them for the Libyans. He's doomed.

IT IS THAT SIMPLE AND THAT SHAMELESS.

[Distant Observer]

46. Mandella Supported Gaddafi. It is DELUSIONAL to compare Madella's struggle to Libyan rebel cause

In 1999, When Colonel Qaddafi arrived in South Africa to see Mr. Mandela take his farewell of Parliament,
President Mandella welcome him with the warmest personal affection saying that anyone who did not like the Libyan leader's being invited could ''go jump in a pool.''
(see: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/14/world/qaddafi-gets-a-warm-reception-from-mandela.html)

Even critics of Gaddafi's Libya acknowledge his role in steadfastly supporting the long struggle of the black African resistance to the white Apartheid oppression.

http://www.boydjudson.com/files/FPA_4.pdf

Strategic Moral Diplomacy: Mandela,
Qaddafi, and the Lockerbie Negotiations
LYN BOYD-JUDSON
University of South California


http://www.boydjudson.com/files/FPA_4.pdf


On October 29, 1997, South African President Nelson Mandela arrived in Libya to
award Colonel Muammar Qaddafi the Good Hope Medal. The Medal, also referred
to as the Order of Good Hope, is the highest honor that South Africa can
bestow upon a citizen of another country (it would be given a year later to U.S.
President Bill Clinton.) At the time, Colonel Qaddafi was a pariah in the international
community. Libya had been under United Nations (UN) sanctions since 1992
for its refusal to hand over the two indicted suspects in the bombing of Pan Am
Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.
‘‘Those who say I should not be here are without morals,’’ Mandela said. ‘‘This
man helped us at a time when we were all alone, when those who say we should not
come here were helping the enemy’’


When Qaddafi’s turn at the microphone came, he said, ‘‘What we are facing is an
attempt of domination from one power. All international proposals serve this evil
purpose.

(See: http://www.boydjudson.com/files/FPA_4.pdf

Strategic Moral Diplomacy: Mandela,
Qaddafi, and the Lockerbie Negotiations
LYN BOYD-JUDSON
University of South California )

[muriel_volestrangler]

50. Has he said anything about his behaviour in 2011? Desmond Tutu says he has to go

He hoped events in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya would see African leaders become accountable to their people and peers.

"If Africa's leaders held their peers to account there would be no need for the people of Libya to suffer human rights violations," he said in a statement.

"And there would be no need for United Nations sanctioned military interventions in Libya. Instead, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has for more than 40 years honed his skills in the art of resource management to win friends and influence people. And as a result, Africa seems powerless to stop him."
...
Said Tutu: "The scenes of brutality being meted out with sophisticated weaponry by Libyan security forces against their own civilian population make God weep. With every blow they strike, each human rights abuse they perpetrate, they bring shame on Africa."

http://allafrica.com/stories/201103210757.html

[Distant Observer]

53. We all share Tutu's sentiment in what you cite. We don't support the murderous Western solution

nor have confidence in the propaganda that has dominated the insurgency from the start.

Defense and Intelligence testimony before congress prior to the decision to "intervene" stated that there was no
independent evidence to substantiate the rebel reports of the extent of pro-Gov violence.

[Doctor_J]

49. Saddam tried to surrender too

but bunnypants was having none of it. The shame of this all is that I don't trust my own government to tell me the truth.

[joshcryer]

60. Islamic militants? What islamic militants?

[Distant Observer]

67. Islamist who take up armed insurection and say things like:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110330/ap_on_re_af/af_libya_rebel_goals

"Freedom of religion, we don't want it," he said. "We want the freedom to practice our religion, but we don't want freedom for Jews and Christians and to have naked women and alcohol."


"We want to get rid of that evil thief," he said, meaning Gadhafi, "then unite the Arabs under the motto, There is no God but Allah" — the Muslim declaration of faith.

[joshcryer]

69. They speak for all the rebels? I see no evidence for that.

[bluestate10]

68. Fantasy islamic militants. They are the worse kind. They hide under

beds and come out to scare people that don't have their night lights turned on.

[joshcryer]

70. I know, it's overt racism, I'm just seeing if he can justify it this time.

[PurityOfEssence]

82. That was most uncalled for

This thread starter has a history of being very fair-minded and actually has been instrumental in pointing out the stark and deadly racism of elements of the rebel players, while the interventionists have consistently downplayed this reality.

Jihadists who vow to remove this man for his attitudes toward women, other religions and some form of secularization of the government are the bigots: fundamentalists DEMAND to hold sway and this particular bunch, the LIFG, are hard-core extremists who want literal theocracy. If it's bigotry to call out those who hate plurality and work with violence to end it, then when is information allowed to be disseminated?

There is far too much moral posturing coming from the pro-war group here, and make no mistake about it: interventionists are advocating WAR in no uncertain terms.

Calling people "racist" or playing the tear-stained rape card is a shout-down, and it just makes my head spin to hear people so puffed-up with their grandiose altruism for the potential victims that they demand to be granted special waivers of civility because they're on the good side as they cheer on modern mechanized war and societal destruction. How a bunch of warmongers have patted themselves on the back and declared themselves to be morally superior to those who do not want war is a dazzling example of self-aggrandizement.

If religion is somehow supposed to be out of bounds to the point that the component can't even be raised without shrieks of "racism", then THAT is bigotry: an anti-pluralist expression of privilege.

It's also another incredible misuse of language: it wouldn't be racism; there's no racial component. It would be bigotry. Just as there is no correct usage of "genocide" here either, unless talking about the Arab rebels targeting and killing the African migrants.

Here's a hot one for all the pro-war camp who've swallowed this pack of lies: everything that happens there is now their fault. As we fight a protracted on-the-cheap strangulation, we show no regard for the civilians. The pro-war people are responsible for every death, denied dream, mutilation, fear, privation and protruding lower lip. It was a stable country before. It will be a mess for quite some time. The arguments that we'll hear later that nobody could have seen this coming or whatever happened wasn't really our fault are going to be pathetic.

Dead is dead, but in a way, they get off easy in situations like these.

[joshcryer]

83. Fair minded?

:rofl:

I have yet to see one post by the OP that even remotely sympathizes with the revolutionaries.

[bluestate10]

65. Gaddafi is a butcherous liar. Why should NATO believe that monster? nt

[Distant Observer]

74. Guess you contradict the Defense and Intelligence testimony prior to decision for war

[joshcryer]

75. The decision to stay out of it and remain in a logistics role?

Yeah, we're doing that. :rofl:

[Distant Observer]

77. No, that the claims of the militants could not be substantiated by intel

[joshcryer]

81. Oh, those claims by that one idiot who wrote that shitty article being against R2P.

[Distant Observer]

86. Much of the summaries and testimony from the Council on Foreign Relations draws same conclusion:

the Libya adventure is on of horrible, misguided and conter-productive hypocrisy. The intervention has taken a crisis that could have escalated to some hundreds of deaths in factional conflict to a full-scale civil war with thousands of causalties and vast social dislocations.

http://www.cfr.org/libya/horrible-libya-hypocrisies/p24458

....
neoconservatives and liberal humanitarian interventionists have trapped another U.S. president into acting as if the opposite were true.

Once this terrible duo starts tossing out words like "slaughter" and "genocide," the media goes crazy. Then, the chorus begins to sing of heartless inaction by the U.S. president, blaming him for the deaths.

.....

Other times, the deaths number in the hundreds or so, as in Libya—and the guy doing the killing is someone they have good reason to dislike, and so they want to do good and stop him. It was just so with the irresistible trio of Senators—John McCain, John Kerry, and Lindsay Graham—and with their counterparts in foreign-policy land.