Meanwhile, remember Libya?
Qaddafi does. And he’s making sure that Libya remembers him.
Is the fact that Qaddafi is successfully fighting the rebels any sort of surprise? It shouldn’t be. Nothing fundamental has changed in Libya since I wrote this three weeks ago:
There are tyrants, and then there are tyrants. Qaddafi is no Mubarak; he’s more brutal and repressive, and already a great many more people have been killed in demonstrations in Libya than in Egypt as Qaddafi tries to hold on to power. That’s the way it is with dictatorships: the worst of them are always prepared to do more violence against their own people.
That means it ordinarily takes far more courage and far more lives to depose them, or is even impossible. If the ruler wants to up the ante, it can be made very costly indeed. The turning point often happen only when their own armies and police forces refuse to follow orders.
And, oddly enough, this also is still true, from the same post:
I have read nothing that indicates any sort of knowledge about who the Libyan protesters are. Patriots eager for liberty? Islamists eager for a theocracy? Enemies of Qaddafi eager for their own leaders to take over, establish their own tyrannical dictatorship, and enjoy its spoils? Young men just tired of being poor, and angry in general? All of the above?
Meanwhile, Obama does nothing. He has hardly been immune from criticism for his inaction (see this, this, and this).
Those who criticize his lack of response are at the same time trying to figure it out. What could it signify? What is the strategy? I’m not of the opinion that it’s a mystery at all: (a) Obama hasn’t a clue what to do; (b) his default position, especially in foreign affairs, tends to be inaction; and (c) I’m not at all sure he even cares much about what happens in Libya.
I chose c, b, and a in that sequence of order.
We live in very dangerous times. What happens anywhere is only more fodder for tyranny of leftism, soft or hard, in the U.S.
We have no independent press. They are all agents of the hard left. Fox is the exception that proves the rule is all, and they are a more and more marginalized squeak relative to a squall.
Obama only has to wait, and then take credit for whatever happens. The media will back him 100%. We live on Animal Farm and that’s it.
If Khaddafy is oeverthrown, te media will give O credit. If he is not, the media will credit him with not getting America involved like the hated Bush – and then they will just forget it.
Any and every variation on that theme is operable. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, Obama will be given credit for it.
And Bush will be blamed for anything negative, including the rise in gas prices and the lousy economy.
There is nothing to wonder about for the future. That is what we are dealing with.
Our only hope is victory. Total victory.
Short of that you can forget it. Anyone’s analysis will be utterly beside the point, at some point. And we are very close to that point.
Tea Party is probably our only hope. Even they have been quiet too long now.
Mike,
You are more pessimistic than me and I thought I was becoming too pessimistic and cynical! 😉 I think we have a 50/50 shot at reaching a point where it is still possible to turn things around. But if we wait too long IMO it will become impossible to prevent an economic collapse. How long is too long? I don’t know, but I do know drastic measures must be taken and the longer we wait the more drastic the measures will have to be.
I read a WSJ article today that stated interest payments on the federal debt will top $200 billion this fiscal year. That should be a wake up call in DC but no alarm is ringing inside the beltway. Aside from the republican freshmen in the house and Rand Paul, no one in DC is truly serious about the debt-deficit crisis. Democrats are predicting the apocalypse now if 61 billion is cut out of a 3.7 trillion budget. The old guard republicans seem to think its meaningful, which it isn’t, its merely symbolic.
Back to Obama & the situation in Libya…. If he can come up a policy or plan of action that will make him the center of attention he would do something, otherwise its just a drag on his domestic agenda.
I hate to give zero any credit. I think he’s using productive procrastination. Turfing Daffy out merely means al Q or the Muslim Brotherhood take over unless we want to do another Iraq there and sit on the place, remaking it. After a hell of a fight.
Zero doesn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to do Iraq.
The nation doesn’t want to do that.
Wretchard’s Three Conjectures are getting tighter.
Oh, yeah. If the Yurps ask for us to do it, or most of it, they will tut-tut, try to get US troops arrested to be tried before the ICC,and the Arabs will riot.
Scroom.
I agree that there isn’t much we can do in Libya. A no fly zone requires first taking out Qaddafi’s air defenses and forget NATO, it will be US forces that would have to do the job which means putting our people in harm’s way and spending our treasure. And, as Neo quotes we have no idea who the rebels really are and what they want. An embargo is a no go IMO because it hurts everyone, not just Qaddafi and his thugs.
The degree to which we get involved is a justifiable topic of discussion. Unjustifiable is Obama’s SOP of talking tough before he knows what he is talking about and then walking back from his initial position. He may have gotten away with this at the beer summit, but Libya is in a different dimension of the chess game. Obama just loks like a wimp, and everyone but Valerie Jarret knows it.
One can not be a collective alone…
expat
Yeah. He’s a big-mouth wimp. Think people voted for him because of it, despite it, not knowing, or desperately hoping he’d change?
What is it with this thing?
He doesn’t even have the courage to keep his mouth shut when he should.
Libya reminds me of Hungary in 1956. The USA, especially via Radio Free Europe, had encouraged the Hungarian uprising against the 8 year-old Communist regime, but did nothing when the Soviet troops and tanks came in. I was then what the MSM today terms a youth, excitedly told my mother that, Wow!, this might mean the end of the Iron Curtain, but she just shook her head without otherwise showing her cynicism.
The entire population of Libya is only 6M. If we can’t take on the Libyan air defense and air force, we can’t do squat. Baraq+Gates+Hillary: three of a kind. Three zeros.
Libya is at the moment a shining light in the fight against the spread of the muslim brotherhood, al qaeda, and taliban style islamic supremacist rule.
If it falls, we’ll have those guys in power from the atlantic ocean to the persian gulf, a taliban style state larger than the USA, larger than the EU, and in control of most of the world’s strategic oil reserves as well as the Suez canal and straits of Gibraltar.
I applaud Khadaffi for not folding, for doing everything needed to suppress these “revolutionaries” who are really al qaeda stooges just as they are in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The question that has (or should) be asked is what do we gain by intervening? I doubt there is an upside to intervention. As Neo quoted above, we don’t know what the rebels want. It may be that they don’t really know what they want, but intervention is often like opening Pandora’s box. If you are not willing to take it all they way, don’t take it part of the way. All the way IMO means we conquer and then impose a system of government and occupy Libya for 10+ years to make sure it sticks. I don’t think we’re ready to do that. We haven’t done it in Iraq or Afghanistan.
My problem with Mr. O’s words (there have been no actions) is similar to Richard Aubrey, he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. Its important to remember that from Obama’s POV everything must be about how wonderful Obama is, otherwise its a waste of his time when he could be flying around on air force 1 or playing golf.
Gaddafi is certainly a brutal fellow whose country resembles Stalin’s Soviet Union in some ways, at least according to Michael Totten. But I doubt that Gaddafi thinks he is killing “his people”. Those rebelling seem to come from the eastern portion of Libya and are from different tribes that of Gaddafi. Similarly, when Saddam Hussein killed Kurds or the marsh Arabs (who were nearly all Shiite), he didn’t consider them “his people”: they were enemies from other tribes who had to be crushed.
I point this out mostly because I don’t think that enough westerners really understand that much of what happens in the Middle East is related to tribalism rather than nationalism.
While Libya burns, Japan collapses, and the budget remains an unmitigated mess, what does Obama do? He plays 18 holes of golf, picks his NCAA brackets, makes speeches on education reform and sex discrimination, and attends a fundraiser for his 2012 campaign. How is it possible that after more than two years in the Presidency he still fails to understand that he should, at least, PRETEND that he cares?
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/262148/while-japan-burns-obama-fills-out-his-bracket
For President Obama not to know how Libya will turn out is fine; nobody knows how it will turn out. For him to therefore be reluctant to choose sides is understandable.
For him to shy away from enforcing a no-fly zone, so that Qaddafi cannot send gunships on strafing runs against civilians, seems to me morally repugnant — but, as others have pointed out above, it’s at least a defensible position.
On the other hand, having watched him sit on his hands as civilians are mowed down, I don’t want to hear ONE BLESSED WORD from him on how awful it is that Israelis are… building houses.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
Henry Bowman says,
“… much of what happens in the Middle East is related to tribalism rather than nationalism.”
Very true, and germane to most of sub saharan Africa and elsewhere on the planet.
Mrs. Whatsit,
How is it possible we elected him? Still astounds me. If we give him another term it means we have given up on “America”.
Perhaps that our Great Intellectual President has taken to heart those immortal words “They also serve who only sit and wait”
President to ESPN reporter: Hey, check out my March madness picks! Oh and by the way, while they’re filling out their brackets Americans should think about helping the Japanese.
And this is on the White House blog!