Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

alfred get your defense secretary in line

please to point out where I have been a "triumphalist" on this thread

I don't think it's accurate to call the transitional organization "totally unknown", that's about as far as I'll go in disagreeing with goole.

I wasn't pointing at you, Mr. Secretary -- I was remarking on the number of fools in journalism and Beltwaytocracy already crowing about who 'won.'

lol how about "pretty unknown, probably not very reliable"

i mean look just for the record i'm not like, totally against what nato's doing over there - i think it'd be really sweet if the us's decision to go to war at least had the pretense of some sort of democratic process, and it'd be nice if nato were actually honest about what the mission was when the time for a vote was held and had to be held to that mission at least somewhat. i realize the former is pretty much a 19th-century preference for most people, including liberals, but hey. i just think ppl are being pretttttttty naive about this whole thing like there's not a 90% chance it's going to be a complete hellhole in a few months when these rebels actually have to govern

I don't know enough about Libyan tribal politics and behind-the-scenes coordination with NATO/other countries to really say how well structured they are at this point. their spokesman talks a good game about reconciliation and the path forward - move rebel gov't to Tripoli, re-establish critical services as quickly as possible, allow holdovers from previous admin to continue to serve, referendum to establish interim gov't that will propose a constitution followed by a full vote, etc. Naturally there's a lot of uncertainty - there's still fighting going on! - but this seems like the most reasonable series of steps one can recommend in all this chaos.

their = the rebel gov't obviously

They're going to have a Constitutional convention and then elections next April.

There's a multi-national meeting scheduled for September 1st

90% chance it's going to be a complete hellhole in a few months when these rebels actually have to govern

I wouldn't even pretend to know what the odds are. How willing the eastern tribes are to forego any kind of revenge on western tribes seems key, and then there's the berbers... who knows really.

I think it's safe to say that NATO and especially France and Italy have a heavily vested interest in their not being a prolonged civil war.

there

arrrrgh

Libya either I would assume. They need oil revenue to buy food and most of the oil workers left the country.

i just think ppl are being pretttttttty naive about this whole thing like there's not a 90% chance it's going to be a complete hellhole in a few months when these rebels actually have to govern

― frogsb (k3vin k.), Thursday, August 25, 2011 11:47 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

feel like this thread just goes round and round

it may well be a hellhole in a few months, but really, all you're saying is that the libyans were wrong to take on gadaffi. they brought revenge upon themselves, and fucked matters up even further by inviting nato into their house. so far as i can tell, you would rather have the regional strongmen in place than even a revolution that was at least *started* by the ruled over.

possible counter-arguments: the rebels were cia stooges/the rebels represent an insignificant minority/something something bad about the rebels

or: if they'd backed down fast it would have been over quicker. which does not seem to have happened in syria.

themaynepreport.jpg

history mayne, fuck you.

Whenever someone asks a question or expresses well-reasoned doubt, you accuse them of being Qaddafi apologists.

yeah the 90% number i pulled out of my ass i was just saying people were being a lil optimistic about the whole thing when a lot of shit still has to go right. not that i'm not rooting for it to go right! but yeah those things you said i said that was exactly what i meant, thanks

haha no, it's your assumption that no-one else has doubt -- 'pretttty naive'

xp

sorry, who is being a lil optimistic? specify

possible counter-arguments: the rebels were cia stooges/the rebels represent an insignificant minority/something something bad about the rebels

yeahhh you're a moron

xp BLOGGERS

but no basically people who get all butthurt for their rebel boyfriends when anyone expresses doubt that they're reliable/capable etc, see above

again, i think the doubt can be assumed. and again this is getting repetitive -- when libya does turn into a fullblown hellhole, then would be the time to bring it up.

it would be more productive to spend your time looking for fissures within the syrian resistance *now*, because that situation can still be saved.

if you demonstrate their lack of reliability etc, hopefully the west will turn their backs on them and... it'll play out the way it should

Whenever someone asks a question or expresses well-reasoned doubt, you accuse them of being Qaddafi apologists.

― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, August 25, 2011 11:08 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

his guesstimate percentage was a 'well-reasoned doubt'??

I was referring to goole.

again, i think the doubt can be assumed. and again this is getting repetitive -- when libya does turn into a fullblown hellhole, then would be the time to bring it up.

hmm

assets to be unfrozen

can someone explain to me what the Qwadawfwy/South Africa connections is and why they would bother being dicks about this...?

again, i think the doubt can be assumed

PASSIVE VOICE

there is nothing wrong with the passive voice; anyway i assume doubt, yall pretty much sound like blowhards

i am in favor of people doing something about bad governments they live under. nobody's an angel or anything, but as a general deal, that's my thing, man

my list of problems up there aren't with the anti-qdf partisans -- whatever their strengths or weaknesses on somebody else's metric, it doesn't really matter to me morally, except to try to think about what's happening there clearly, if that makes sense. "reliability" is an odd word to be throwing around. will they get what they want? will life be better? i...dk, yet!

my comment was really directed stateside, where defenders of the president have been eager to chalk this up as a "win" for "us" or "obama", not really to speak of libya in itself but to stick it in the face of obama's domestic enemies. bit early for that.

Howard Dean and Tina Brown gave a weird interview on MSNBC with Jeremy Scahill the other day in which they praised the President's "performance" on purely political terms when they weren't applauding his use of drones, proxies, and the CIA as opposed to "putting boots on the ground." I was stupefied.

yeah I don't have any use for considering this in terms of domestic politics

xp

don't think of the rebels as proxies personally

im sure some of them are awful and could turn libya into some kind of military dictatorship, but proxies?

I don't think of "the rebels" as a monolith personally.

but some of them are proxie

s

HM where/who is this "proxy" stuff coming from? i don't think anyone here is arguing as much. plenty of outside help, sure, but...

yall pretty much sound like blowhards

― some jock-bully out to take down the hipsters (history mayne), Thursday, August 25, 2011 4:34 PM (17 minutes ago)

pot, kettle, etc. enjoy your armchair general realpolitik cynicism.

also:

when libya does turn into a fullblown hellhole

can I borrow your crystal ball, I need to check what your SB numbers will be in a couple of days.

when they weren't applauding his use of drones, proxies, and the CIA as opposed to "putting boots on the ground." I was stupefied.

― a 'catch-all', almost humorous, 'Jeez' quality (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, August 26, 2011 12:42 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark

i just hadn't heard there were proxies for US ground forces before

wait, *my* cynicism? im pretty sure im being the optimist in this argument

ok well i don't know what exactly was said in that TV spot, nor do i know exactly what alfred means, but, other NATO and gulf special forces troops could count as "proxies" for obama's interests, if you squint

re "proxies": We've (as in the Defense Intelligence Agency, CIA, NSA, and the other members of the alphabet soup) paid locals in Egypt, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Iraq to fight, capture, and torture for years.

Here's some evidence: http://www.thenation.com/article/161936/cias-secret-sites-somalia

Do you think there's a difference in principle between a US-supported rebellion and a proxy war?

oh ok -- that doesn't directly relate to libya. torture is bad imo.
there is less triumphalism here.

xpost

yes. but i don't think US involvement is unproblematic.

you guys are misusing the term proxy war here

lol bbc

Ursula, emails: Muammar (Gaddafi) does not have palaces - quit the false propaganda. His throne is only in the hearts of the people! This so-called tyrant is in reality different from the fiction the media, controlled by world powers seeks to portray. The Jamahiriya is a democracy of all the people where Muammar sought to have the people rule themselves! They vote every year and several times per year, not for parties but for the people who represent them in manager positions for the Jamahiriyah or the people. Rats is a nice term for people who invite the Nato countries coalition to massacre their people and bomb the hell out of them over the past six months. In the heat, Nato forces not only kill en masse and terrorise the Libyans but they cut off electricity so food goes off both in warehouses and in homes! Muammar and the people of Libya will not surrender.

ok richard seymour i mean 'ursula'

Triumphalism is always tasteless and misjudged but the flipside to so is the determination on the part of some of those who opposed the intervention to see it all go bad. I've read predictions (itt and elsewhere) that the fall of Q will lead to (a) an Islamist takeover (b) a western puppet state (c) a military dictatorship or (d) civil war. These are all possible of course, but the aftermath of a long dictatorship is invariably messy and at least in this case there appears to have been a serious degree of planning and no powerful Karzai-like demagogue seeking to seize the reins. If the revolution had succeeded without NATO help would the same people be predicting disaster or would they be wishing the Libyans well? This is far from over, and I'm in no position to say the more grisly scenarios won't unfold, but it would be nice to give the Libyan people a bit of credit as opposed to seeing them as a sinister and/or incompetent bunch of extremists and western stooges.

"the Libyan people"

it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. libya has exactly zero experience with the cut and thrust of national democracy. its politics has been defined totally and completely by quetzalcoatal for the last what, 40 years, and before that it was a colony. and before that, a region of scattered tribes. so there is this tremendous opportunity, but also a big possibility of just slipping into whatever the national default mode of informal tribal governance is i.e. bribes, tributes, feudal stuff, with a veneer of elections over the top of it. which wouldn't be the end of the world, of course. but it's amazing to me how strong these cultural modes can be. the soviet union had one of the world's most radical systems of government ever, and after 80 years threw the whole thing overboard in favor of the plain, naked corruption they'd had before. it's as if there really is such a thing as a continuous national character, in some places at least. so i guess my question is, what is libya's?