I come to bury Quadafi

[DonCoquixote]

I realize it is tempting to polish up the head of the Col. as some sort of trophy, as if to say to our GOP enemies "Gee, looks like Barry and Hillary know how to handle foreign policy." However, I have to rain on that parade: this was a failure for many reasons:

1) Qaddafi, was like Hussein, one of the few secular Arab states. Simply put, we made Al-Qaeda happy, because they will step into the void of leadership, just like they did in Iraq.

2) We just told Europe that we were willing to enter a war for THEIR Oil. Even as the Gulf Coast is still sticky with British Petroleum's mess, even as the White House is getting slammed for not shutting the Mid East wars down, we have shown we will enter a Third. This is a bad message, as even the European nations that slammed us for Iraq will still rely on our shiny war Machine.

3) Women. Qaddafi had a guard made of Women, because he, unlike many, wanted to encourage women as soldiers and professionals. He made efforts to attack the sexism that is inherent in most religious cultures. Just like in Iraq, the women will be knocked back a few centuries.

4) GOP. All we did is make the GOP case that we war machine cannot be dismantled. If we lose 2012, then the GOP and AIPAC will go for the Holy grail, the war with Iran that has been on backorder.

To quote the great Rachel Maddow : talk me down.

[Mimosa]

1. There are things we don't know..

and never shall. The dictator was not given a trial.

I also fear Islamist fundamentalism. And nobody can tell us it won't happen there and elsewhere.

[leftstreet]

2. K&R

Sorry, can't talk you down

Although I wonder if they'll actually wait for a GOP White house before Iran

:scared:

[TBF]

12. He's on a roll -

but I'm betting Algeria is next. We've left the chess and moved on to dominoes ...

[geek tragedy]

22. Did you ever express sorrow over the demonstrators he had gunned down?

Or do you just value dictators' lives but not those of their victims.

[mdmc]

3. As Allah wills

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. Sounds like you are also praising him to some extent

BTW Syria is next, not Iran.

[leftstreet]

6. Is that a problem?

[Inuca]

7. One of his "pluses"

was that he had a guard made of women? And that's because he was for women rights? :rofl:

By the way, I don't like excutions, any execution. But I am glad he not around any longer.

[FSogol]

8. Your item #3 is beyond ridiculous. Why not do some research on how those

women were used, raped, and abused.

:facepalm:

[ellisonz]

10. ...

Not to mention sending their husbands, sons, and fathers off to fight his wars of empire in Uganda, Chad, Egypt etc :puke:

[elfin]

9. He was a mass murderer - as was OBL

The tide has turned for now- dictatorial mass murderers are not welcome on this earth. Their subjects will arise and be abetted in a variety of ways by the West. Time will tell how they employ their new slates.

If they succor other mass murderers, they now know their rule will be rudely (and murderously) shortened via mass media, social networking, Nato and drones.

Our interests remain pragmatic, balancing our values vs. a certain stability - threading the needle to always advance our values and interests in frequently and frustratingly incremental ways.

UNLESS the Repugs and Blackwater win -- then war, war war, unilaterally, with Iran and others.

[joshcryer]

11. Let's see, I disagree with three out of four of those.

1) Gaddafi was certainly a sore spot for Al-Qaeda, I will give you that, however, if Libya was left to foster for many years under a civil war, Al-Qaeda would have certainly regrouped in Egypt and Tunisia, in preparation for incursion back into Libya. It would've been an Algiers style guerilla war for many years. I have a hard time believing that nurturing islamists and not banning them and rejecting them is a bad idea. Teabaggers are the wests' islamists, for all intents and purposes, and we get by, mostly, with few terrorist attacks, one a decade or so. It would be remiss for us to ban the teabaggers from existence, but that has been American policy against islamists for many decades. It is folly at best. Meanwhile, Sharia law was the rule of the land under Gaddafi, it was not a secular state by any means. Gaddafi banned the Amazigh from speaking their own language and their cultural practices.

2) War for oil, yes. Uganda is showing an interesting divergence. All examples show though that wars are intrinsically about resources, that's unavoidable. Doesn't change that the Libyan people rose up against Gaddafi in big numbers.

3) This is false, it is revisionism at its finest, and I wish people would stop prepetuating it. Please stop it, it's wrong. Libya was at the http://genderindex.org/country/libya">bottom of the gender indexes. Gaddafi's "encouragement for women as soldiers and professionals" ended with his http://news.oneindia.in/2011/08/30/gaddafi-passed-around-female-guards-like-used-objects.html">raping them. The stories of the high guard are numerous, but it is reported frequently that he would send his guards to find women for his inner harem. I have no reason to disbelieve these reports. It still remains a fact that Libya was at the bottom of the gender indexes for women.

4) If any case can be made it is that we can have a logistic role in an internal civil war, we can pick a side, and we can help them win, with barely a rounding error in expenses. This is a very very bad day for GOP, because they want to spend trillions occupying other countries whereas we can spend millions where it's clear that a peoples want to be rid of a tyrant, and they will do it themselves. It's a purely internationalist position (Castro would be proud if he wasn't senile).

[Warpy]

13. What would have happened if NATO had not intervened?

Do you not think his mercenaries would have slaughtered civilians whether or not they'd taken part in the rebellion, solely based on geography? His history suggests he would have.

Do you honestly think the rebellion was the West's idea? People had been chafing under his iron fist for decades. When hedge funds drove up the prices of basic commodities, hunger pushed them over the edge. If you want to complain about who started the revolution, start complaining to your friendly hedge fund managers. They didn't intend to destabilize the Middle East. They only wanted to stripmine more money out of it via charging ridiculously high prices for all foodstuffs.

It's really easy to sit in our armchairs and second guess the reasons for violent revolution, but we didn't start it and we didn't really finish it. The people on the ground there did and what happens is largely going to be their call.

(However, yes, the religious loons, Israel Firsters, and Pentagon "Intelligence" cabal is hot to trot to a war on Iran. Such a war will finish this country and we will not be on the winning side.)

[EFerrari]

23. First, Human Rights Watch's own data showed that fighters

not civilians, were being targeted by the regime before NATO intervened. There was one analyst, a Canadian iirc, who studies humanitarian interventions and he deduced from the very small number of women, children and elderly that were admitted to hospitals that fighters, not civilians, were Gadaffi's targets.

And hunger was not a problem in Libya outside of the rebel areas like Benghazi. That wasn't hedge funds but disrupted supply lines afaik.

Second, the mercenary story has been blown out of proportion by the Western media.

Then, we know the CIA was on the ground since the very early days of this rebellion because it was reported by the NYTs.

Lastly, we do not know who started this but we do know from the reporting that it has been very much a collaboration since the earliest days of the uprising.

[tabatha]

14. Libya: Women, Girls Locked Up Indefinitely Without Charge

These facilities are far more punitive than protective. How can they be called shelters when most of the women and girls we interviewed told us they would escape if they could?


Farida Deif, Middle East and North Africa researcher for the Women’s Rights Division
The Libyan government is arbitrarily detaining women and girls indefinitely in “social rehabilitation” facilities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Officially portrayed as protective homes for women and girls “vulnerable to engaging in moral misconduct,” these facilities are de facto prisons.

The 40-page report, “A Threat to Society? Arbitrary Detention of Women and Girls for ‘Social Rehabilitation,’” documents numerous and serious human rights abuses that women and girls suffer in these facilities. These include violations of their rights to liberty, freedom of movement, personal dignity, privacy and due process.

Libyan authorities are holding many women and girls in these facilities who have committed no crime, or who have completed a sentence. Some are there for no reason other than that they were raped, and are now ostracized for staining their families’ “honor.” Officials transferred the majority of these women and girls to these facilities against their will, while those who came voluntarily did so because no genuine shelters for victims of violence exist in Libya.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/02/26/libya-women-girls-locked-indefinitely-without-charge

Just google "Libyan womens rights" and you can do your own burying.

[DonCoquixote]

16. ok

I did not know about this part...and I apologize..

as far as the rest of my points, I stand by them...Libya can be Iraq on steroids.

[tabatha]

20. Other points

1) Qaddafi, was like Hussein, one of the few secular Arab states. Simply put, we made Al-Qaeda happy, because they will step into the void of leadership, just like they did in Iraq.

You don't know Libya and Libyans.

2) We just told Europe that we were willing to enter a war for THEIR Oil. Even as the Gulf Coast is still sticky with British Petroleum's mess, even as the White House is getting slammed for not shutting the Mid East wars down, we have shown we will enter a Third. This is a bad message, as even the European nations that slammed us for Iraq will still rely on our shiny war Machine.

Find a map that shows how much the oil fields in Libya have already been divvied up for foreign countries. Europe did not need the Libyan war - they were fine as it was. With all the corruption in the Gaddafi regime, some companies had under the table deals that were good for some US and UK companies. The NTC is going to clean up corruption in the oil contracts - so for some companies it will be worse with Gaddafi gone. Also, Gaddafi was quite happy for foreign companies to handle the responsibility of oil extraction - and long as he made money which he stuffed away into banks and not on the Libyan people. Forget European oil, the oil earned in the future will go to Libyans and not Gaddafi - billions worth. Do a little homework, and the reality of the situation will make your claim seem very ignorant.

4) GOP. All we did is make the GOP case that we war machine cannot be dismantled. If we lose 2012, then the GOP and AIPAC will go for the Holy grail, the war with Iran that has been on backorder.

Whaaaaat? are you talking about. What a load of nonsense. Who was going to dismantle the US war machine? With Russia, China and Iran, it would be suicidal to do so. Libya was very very small potatoes compared to Iraq and Afgnistan, and the Libyan undertaking would not sway military policy in any way shape or form. It is just too insignificant. Look for Libya costs on this chart.






You may also want to read this about Libya and oil:

http://www.juancole.com/2011/06/libya-not-a-war-for-oil.html

[EFerrari]

26. Tabatha, it's late but I will point out that here you recycle arguments

you have already been called on many times.

1. Yes, there is an Islamist contingent among the rebels and some of them are high ranking.

2. Yes, we did go to war for Europe's oil. The OP is correct, as the oil contracts negotiated by the NTC before they were even widely recognized showed.

3. Usually follows 2

4. OP is again correct that this "humanitarian" bombing of Libya only further entrenches us in an endless cycles of disaster capitalism in military drag.

5. Juan Cole has been one of the very worst apologists for this mess. His arguments are about a quarter inch deep and he immediately resorted to name calling for people who failed to line up behind the bogus official story. Read him if you like badly written fiction and have no access to hard reporting.

[tabatha]

27. "you have already been called on many times."

Really?

1. All of Libyams are Islamist - they are all Muslims. I know all about Behaj.

2. Nope you are wrong.

4. You are projecting. No facts. Just your opinion.

5. Juan Cole. Sorry, he has more credibility in one sentence than all the verbiage that you dispense.

I usually base my arguments on facts. I have been reporting them for seven months.

You come across as if you know better than anyone else. Sorry, you do not.

[EFerrari]

25. Before you buy in, notice that this claim, because it is only a claim,

is in the same category as the mass rape as weapon claim that turned out to be complete bullshit.

And a government shelter for women who have been raped and turned out by their families is still a shelter for women, no matter how hard HRW tries to turn itself into a pretzel making it not so.

[tabatha]

28. Please provide a source for your claims..

I have read what real Libyans say on AJE blogs, and you know very little about Libya.

[EFerrari]

29. I've made no claims, only pointed out yours.

Unless you are once AGAIN claiming that the mass rape story was true.

Amnesty International Finds No Evidence of Mass Rape in Libya
http://www.genderacrossborders.com/2011/08/05/amnesty-international-finds-no-evidence-of-mass-rape-in-libya-how-should-feminists-respond/

[Joe the Revelator]

15. You lose credibility with number 3

[Number23]

17. Bad analysis.

Really, really bad.

[Nye Bevan]

18. 5. Gaddafi was extremely diligent about recycling.

When it came to separating out plastics and cardboard, he was one of the best murderous dictators around. His death is a loss to the worldwide community of brutally repressive recyclers.

[pinboy3niner]

19. Where you been? Clock's running out, man

I see you already brought your shovel. :)

[ellisonz]

21. Worst Post of the Day.

:puke:

[Kaleva]

24. Several captured members of Qaddafi's female guard reported sexual abuse..

by Qaddafi, his sons and other members of Qaddafi's inner circle.

"Five of Qaddafi’s female bodyguards went public with allegations of rape by their former boss. The women were part of the “Amazonian Guard –” an elite group supposedly handpicked by Qaddafi and forced to take an oath of chastity (with an exception, perhaps, for the strongman himself).
The U.K.’s Daily Mail profiles Nisreen Mansour al Forgani, a 19-year-old member of Qaddafi’s all-female militia who admits to having executed as many as 11 suspected rebel prisoners. The young woman says that she was sexually abused and forced to carry out the killings by senior members of Qaddafi’s military."

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/women-war-and-peace/news/new-reports-of-rape-and-sexual-abuse-under-qaddafi/