Only a couple of responses on my Libya comments...which I think sort of gets to the point here. No one really knows what to think. We all beat up George Bush for not letting sanctions and the inspection process and diplomacy run their course in Iraq, but now we seem to have just skipped all of that stuff, shoved through some bogus UN Resolution and started bombing.
But, in the absence of the sort of debate that led up to Iraq and Afghanistan (they may have ignored a lot of the debate, but there was at least a debate)...does anyone know what we are doing? What our goals are? What the objectives are? Obama says that overthrowing Ghaddaffi (and for real, how the fuck does he spell his name?!?!?) is not an objective, but the Brits and the French say that it is. Isn't this the sort of thing that we should iron out ahead of time?
The prevailing argument seems to be a humanitarian one...what's-his-name is being extra mean to his own people, so we need to step in and stop him. As noble as that sounds, why has no one intervened in Darfur? And where were we in Rwanda? Or the Ivory Coast? There is a lot worse stuff going on in other places in the world. And right now, in Bahrain and Yemen, almost the same things are happening...political demonstrations being broken up by excessive force by authoritarian governments. So, why is Libya worth intervening but those other places aren't? The economic arguments are weak, too...there isn't even that much oil there. If anything, the risk of violence on the Arabian peninsula destabilizing Saudi Arabia is a much bigger economic story.
So, I remain mostly just confused by the whole thing. George Bush will be judged by history as having made specious, borderline-truthful arguments about Iraq. But at least he said something. The Great Diplomat has decided to have a couple quiet meetings, drop some bombs and then think about maybe explaining it later on. If he gets around to it.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
More ranting on Libya
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4 comments:
Well said I was nodding the whole time. I think this country is f*cked if we don't get our heads out of our ass.
Thanks for the comment love today and the advice. I've said everything to her before and it doesn't matter he's going to be there no matter what. Her response is "he's already invited". Anyway thanks for the love I needed it today. Our pup is at the vet, and I'm in one hell of a mood :+)
Bwahahaha.
I sure do love your political rants! I wish I could express my similar feelings as eloquently as you do! (;
The arabic alphabet is different than ours, so they don't have Arabic letters that exactly represent a,b,c, etc. Which means there isn't a standard one to one translation into english and you have to use tone/sounds. Think of all the different ways english media spells Muhammad/Mohammed/Mohamad/etc. It is all the same name, the Arabic letters are just translated into english letters differently by different people. Same concept as Hebrew with Chanukah/Hanukkah/etc.
Hope that helps clear up a little confusion!
In regards to what the British government are saying... They started out saying we were going in to get rid of Gadaffi, then had to quickly re-word that when the UN resolution was sorted. Really, no one here knows what the objective is either. As I've said on my own blog, the UK's shady history with Libya make us the worst country to be involved in this in such leadership way. The Libyan's have killed a lot of Brits and that makes our participation in this seem that much more dodgy :/
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