First, the attack was not planned. There was no demonization campaign, as with Saddam/Milosevic/Noreiga et al. They just went ahead and started bombing, meaning that they had no part in the uprising, and had no time to make up a good cover story. This took them by surprise. (“Them” is ubiquitous – the Pentagon, the White House, Wall Street, London … a very large group of powerful people.)
We don’t know who or what they are bombing. It’s a bit complicated, as with Iraq pre-2003, where they wanted Saddam Hussein in power to keep things in a state of “stability” until they could move in with the muscle. So we’re hearing now that they do not want regime change. They want their stability. They are, however, going after military hardware, which means that they do not want Ghaddafi to completely quell the uprising. And yet, given the anti-American sentiment that exists in Libya and just about every other Arab country, it is safe to assume that they do not want the rebellion to succeed.
Confused? Me too.
Some are saying that Obama is merely imitating his idol, Ronald Reagan in doing this attack. This presumes that Obama has the power to make such decisions. If there is any power left in that office, there is no resolve to use it, so that it’s highly unlikely that Obama had anything to do with this decision. He’s just the ribbon cutter.
Oh, yeah – and now they are saying this is a NATO operation. That’s a ruse, of course, but there’s a real reason for it: They did not go through the motions of getting that perfunctory joint resolution from Congress authorizing the act. So it’s an illegal war. Hence, it’s “NATO’s idea.” But since NATO is submissive to the U.S., it’s window dressing.
I’ve come to believe two things during Obama’s presidency – one, that Gates at Defense and Geithner at Treasury were used as signals to the world, and Wall Street, respectively, that nothing had changed with his election, and two, that Rod Blagojevich is probably a decent guy, and that’s what cost him.
But who knows. In American politics, if good guys exist, they are like children, seen but not heard. But I can’t get over this feeling that Blagojevich was caught in the path of a steam roller.
… Oh yeah, almost forgot … human rights. Let me think about that … no, they don’t care about that. Must be something else.
Piece of Mindful 
You’re not the only one confused.
Obama in 2002:
Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.
He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.
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It’s very easy to find politicians caught in contradictions, especially with words spoken during election campaigns, which are meaningless. In 2002, however, Obama was still considered a liberal, and his bomb had not yet been defused. So perhaps he expressed a genuine viewpoint.
You do realize, Swede, that presidents don’t make foreign policy, right? You’re not sitting here thinking that it was any different under Bush – right?
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One glaring difference I see between Bush and O is the treatment of war atrocities.
Abu Ghraib (if you could it an atrocity) was given 52 prominent articles in the NYT. Yet have we seen the same treatment of this:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327
You mentioned AG in several posts and to your credit blamed Bush as much as America as a whole.
I’m waiting to see you and like minded left outlets treatment of the “Kill Team”.
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Now you read Rolling Stone too?
If you reduce this to D vs R and “the liberal media,” then you have not thought it through. “They” are
“They” are comprised of D’s and R’s, as is the NY Times, which gave Judith Miller free rein to spread the agitprop about WMD’s on its front page during the run-up to the Iraq invasion.
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Who’s talking about the battle to secure known oil reserves? Will China get all the oil because it is willing to pay more? Or Europe, where prices already pinch the “consumer” economy? Should we go to war over cocoa for example, in Ivory Coast. Myanmar over opium? How about Mexico? Is our “humanitarian interest” equally strong in countries without significant oil reserves? I think not so much.
It is a mistake, I think, to view the world through the lense of “nation states,” when it is perfectly obvious that multi-nationals operate with complete impunity to national laws and regulations when it benefits their motives, which have never waivered. Profit, profit, and profit.
The conventional state v. state battle over scarce resources seems to be rapidly morphing into a global battle of humanitarian vs. corporate.
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Mark – I like how since you can’t fit this action into your worldview, you act as though there is no possible explanation.
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps this is exactly what it’s being billed as –
1. First priority – protect the people of eastern Libya from the brutal reprisals promised by the Gaddafi government
2. If possible – create conditions for a rebel victory while avoiding Western casualties
So far everything we’ve done in Libya fits a hypothesis that these are our goals.
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This would be a change of course indeed, full transparency and honesty about goals. I applaud your willingness to hold out hope in spite of a long history of the opposite. In the meantime, Lucy holds that football. Kick away!
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Do you have any evidence to the contrary? As you pointed out, the UN, NATO, and the US all seem to be reacting to events as they occur, as they have been throughout the Arab turmoil. Don’t forget, there IS a high price to pay for letting thousands of civilians get killed in reprisals – especially on the front page and especially when there are people from every political leaning waiting with ‘I told you so’s. Avoid that, hopefully introduce a government that owes us a big favor…seems to explain the situation just fine.
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When we do not have access to critical information, “evidence” is hard to come by, and we are left with logic and history.
Set aside concern for human death and suffering as a motivating factor. There’s nothing in U.S. post-war history to suggest that could be a motive. Concern for publicity over death and suffering could be a concern, but they were able to cover those matters up effectively in Iraq and Afghanistan, and indifference mattered not a whit in Rwanda.
Set aside any interest in democratic governance, especially given Arab sentiments regarding the U.S. The vast majority of them believe that 9/11 was an inside job. They have seen their brethren suffer at the hands of the U.S. state-sponsored terrorism, which breeds contempt. In those circumstances, democratic governance will produce an anti-American Arab state controlling oil resources.
We do know that Libya was one of seven countries that was scheduled for attack by the second Bush administration.
We do know that U.S. foreign policy has not changed with the titular change in leadership after the 2008 election.
We know that no one is in charge of events, though events are often staged for our benefit (Tonkin, incubator babies, WMD’s). The uprisings in Arab countries are hardly what the U.S. wants, but are happening anyway.
So U.S. reaction to Libya is ad lib, off the shelf. There are two potential enemies, one we know, one we don’t. The one we know, the Ghaddafi government, is an irritation, but not a credible threat. The other – the members of the uprising, are potentially dangerous in that they might lead to another Iran-type anti-American popular overthrow of a government.
Given all that, it seems that the best course might be to contain the Ghaddafi government, allowing it to contain the rebellion, but keeping it intact until a full-scale invasion can be mounted.
In fact, there is precedent for this in that the U.S. kept the Saddam Hussein government intact through the period from 1991 to 2003. [And indeed the Obama administration has publicly said that it is not interested in regime change. Public utterances usually have no content, but this one does make sense in light of all of the above.]
Best I can do at this time. More information would help, but that will take years, if not decades to uncover.
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I disagree – publicity from deaths in Iraq was not well buried. Sure, the American public was far more affected by the thousands of American deaths than by the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, but the world at large saw what was happening and was put off even by the death toll than by the boorish way we started the war.
I think you’re failing to see that there are real divisions in what the ‘aristocracy’ (I’ll stoop to using your sensationalist language) wants. There is a real divide between those who see the benefit of our military budget, and those who do not. Naturally, those who benefit from our military budget want to see that military used aggressively. Why do you think Newt Gingrich et al were calling on Obama to do something about Libya (before they were chastising him for the same, I mean)? And so the decision makers in government are walking a tightrope – not wanting to appear weak or like we are abandoning LIbyan rebels, but at the same time not wanting regime change to occur if the rebels don’t seem to be able to handle running a new regime without Western boots on the ground.
There is all the more reason to believe that Gaddafi’s violence (and perhaps France’s tenacity in insisting on intervention) is what prompted a change of heart because, as I pointed out to Lizard, Libya has recently been undergoing massive neo-liberal reforms. Odds are if the rebels were likely to be put down, but with few civilian casualties and little international outrage, the proponents of neo-liberalism would have used the event to move even closer to Gaddafi. However, a spectacle predicted violence would have provided far too much ammunition to the militarists, and so those in government had to do something to prevent it without getting themselves entangled.
I see why you think the way you do – it is very fun to imagine there are intelligible forces at work whose power allows them to remove any proof of their existence, that we live in a particularly interesting episode of 24.
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Wow, what an excellent comment. But I’ll take you on on several aspects – I have written on the Iraqi death toll here, but if it as, as you say, “tens of thousands,” then those who have actually put feet on the ground to study it are way off. If they (Johns H, ORB) are right, then the actual toll has been concealed from you, and I am correct.
I have never imagined that the “aristocracy” speaks with one voice. There is often internal turmoil, but we rarely know about it and usually must intuit its existence, as when prominent public figures or television journalists are openly critical of policy. Not happening here. (It is perfunctory that prominent Republicans criticize D’s in power. As with issues like deficits, the parties merely switch sides after elections. If a Republican were carrying out this policy, Obama would be in the Senate criticizing him and it. )
As there is no regime change in the offing, Ghaddafi is exempted at this time exempted from a land invasion or S&A, meaning that he is being disciplined without being toppled, as I see it. Your neo-liberal take could well be right. First I’ve heard that take, and it makes sense.
I do not imagine that the powerful forces are hidden from existence – they are in plain sight. They merely act through politicians as hand puppets. Was it ever different?
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