U.S. actions in Libya may speak louder than words

[Lasher]

PARIS — As international forces launched attacks against Libya on Saturday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton struck a tone highly unusual in the annals of American military interventions: humility.

“We did not lead this,” she told reporters.

But her modest words belied the far larger role the United States played as international forces began an open-ended assault on Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s military capabilities. U.S. warships fired more than 110 Tomahawk missiles into Libyan territory to disable air-defense systems. And the French and British warplanes that began to enforce the emerging no-fly zone operate under U.S. command.

<snip>

Obama has spent much of his first term seeking to repair U.S. relations with the Islamic world, and his emphasis on the international support for military strikes in Libya is an attempt to allay suspicions over U.S. intentions. And as budget deficits mount at home, the American public is looking for other nations to carry the fiscal burden of the fighting after a nearly a decade of war.

But U.S. diplomats were key in broadening and securing a United Nations resolution authorizing military force in Libya, and U.S. military power proved essential Saturday in preparing the battlefield for a no-fly zone to be enforced by European and possibly Arab nations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-actions-may-speak-louder-than-words/2011/03/19/ABVWsZx_story.html

[napi21]

1. I can't deny the Libyan people their call for help. I sure don't want

another war, but I thik the US, combined with the efforts of several contries, will bring Gadaffi to his knees. I think we were very wrong to enter Iraq & Afghanistan, but in this case, the people of Libya asked for our help.

[Zoeisright]

2. I agree.

Using our military for humanitarian reasons is the only moral use for it. Which, of course, leaves out Bush and Dumber and his evil master.

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. It would be nice to know which people in Libya are asking for this help.

[aquart]

5. Well, let me know when you complete your survey.

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. Bomb first, ask questions later, right?

Or is it just ask well to say, "we had no IDEA ......"

[Doctor_J]

13. Yes, much the same as with Saddam

I am certain that SOME Iraqis wanted him removed. Therefore, it's good that we've spent a trillion dollars and killed a million people there. :eyes:

I don't know if these war fans are being brainwashed by hate Radio & Big Media, or if they just believe that the admin can do no wrong.

[bhikkhu]

10. The ones with the artillery pointed at them

Fairly simple.

[Lasher]

4. We can't save the whole world.

We're cutting US social programs while we get involved in yet another foreign entanglement. Our priorities are wrong. We need to put our own citizens first.

[emilyg]

7. +100

[indimuse]

8. this is just the beginning!

this is a military campaign to secure the oil and other business interests in Libya.





::: posted earlier::
Interview of Amy Goodman on 2007 Middle East Agenda (Wesley Clark) WAR/Libya/etc.VIDEO.

In an interview with Amy Goodman on March 2, 2007, U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.), explains that the Bush Administration planned to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran


It appears that the Obama administration will fulfill this nightmare!!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x696039

[Lasher]

9. In another way of looking at it, Iraq was the beginning.

Just the Beginning

Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world?

by Robert Dreyfuss
April 1, 2003

In the Middle East, impending "regime change" in Iraq is just the first step in a wholesale reordering of the entire region, according to neoconservatives -- who've begun almost gleefully referring to themselves as a "cabal." Like dominoes, the regimes in the region -- first Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, then Lebanon and the PLO, and finally Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia -- are slated to capitulate, collapse or face U.S. military action. To those states, says cabal ringleader Richard Perle, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an influential Pentagon advisory committee, "We could deliver a short message, a two-word message: 'You're next.'" In the aftermath, several of those states, including Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia, may end up as dismantled, unstable shards in the form of mini-states that resemble Yugoslavia's piecemeal wreckage. And despite the Wilsonian rhetoric from the president and his advisers about bringing democracy to the Middle East, at bottom it's clear that their version of democracy might have to be imposed by force of arms.

And not just in the Middle East. Three-thousand U.S. soldiers are slated to arrive in the Philippines, opening yet another new front in the war on terrorism, and North Korea is finally in the administration's sights. On the horizon could be Latin America, where the Bush administration endorsed a failed regime change in Venezuela last year, and where new left-leaning challenges are emerging in Brazil, Ecuador and elsewhere. Like the bombing of Hiroshima, which stunned the Japanese into surrender in 1945 and served notice to the rest of the world that the United States possessed unparalleled power it would not hesitate to use, the war against Iraq has a similar purpose. "It's like the bully in a playground," says Ian Lustick, a University of Pennsylvania professor of political science and author of Unsettled States, Disputed Lands. "You beat up somebody, and everybody else behaves."

Over and over again, in speeches, articles and white papers, the neoconservatives have made it plain that the war against Iraq is intended to demonstrate Washington's resolve to implement President Bush's new national-security strategy, announced last fall -- even if doing so means overthrowing the entire post-World War II structure of treaties and alliances, including NATO and the United Nations. In their book, The War Over Iraq, William Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Lawrence F. Kaplan of The New Republic write, "The mission begins in Baghdad, but it does not end there. … We stand at the cusp of a new historical era. … This is a decisive moment. … It is so clearly about more than Iraq. It is about more even than the future of the Middle East and the war on terror. It is about what sort of role the United States intends to play in the twenty-first century."

Invading Iraq, occupying its capital and its oil fields, and seizing control of its Shia Islamic holy places can only have a devastating and highly destabilizing impact on the entire region, from Egypt to central Asia and Pakistan. "We are all targeted," Syrian President Bashar Assad told an Arab summit meeting, called to discuss Iraq, on March 1. "We are all in danger."

"They want to foment revolution in Iran and use that to isolate and possibly attack Syria in (Lebanon's) Bekaa Valley, and force Syria out," says former Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Edward S. Walker, now president of the Middle East Institute. "They want to pressure (Muammar) Quaddafi in Libya and they want to destabilize Saudi Arabia, because they believe instability there is better than continuing with the current situation. And out of this, they think, comes Pax Americana."

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=just_the_beginning

Neocons' schemes of world conquest were exposed at DU years ago.

[BobbyBoring]

12. And the evil George Soros

Is behind it all:evilgrin:

[Cieran_WI]

11. Yet again, America proves the only way we won't conquer you is if you have nukes.

Quit building power plants and start building bombs, Iran, or you're next!

[Keith Bee]

14. Actions always do

[pberq]

15. good point - actions speak much louder

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/not-worth-it-first-day-of_b_838659.html

"The administration launched this new war (and yes, it is a war) with no official congressional authorization, little public debate and with a vague, possibly even non-existent, endgame in mind. It's as if the lessons of the last decade are completely lost on policymakers in the United States."


http://tarpley.net/2011/03/19/obamas-bay-of-pigs-in-libya/

. . .At the UN vote, the Indian delegate correctly pointed out that the decision to start the war had been made on the basis of no reliable information whatsoever, since UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon’s envoy to Libya had never reported to the Security Council. The bombing started shortly after a glittering Paris summit “in support of the Libyan people,” where Sarkozy, Cameron, Hillary Clinton, Stephen Harper of Canada and other imperialist politicians had strutted and postured.

Token contingents from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia were supposed to take part in the attack, but were nowhere to be seen, while some Arab states were expected to provide financial support. The minimum estimated cost of maintaining a no-fly zone over Libya for one year is estimated in the neighborhood of $15 billion – enough to fund WIC high-protein meals for impoverished US mothers and infants for two years.

From no-fly zone to regime change
The alleged purpose of the bombing was to establish a no-fly zone and to protect a force of CIA-sponsored Libyan rebels composed of the Moslem Brotherhood, elements of the Libyan government and army subverted by the CIA (including such sinister figures as former Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil and former Interior Minister Fattah Younis), and monarchist Senussi tribesmen holding the cities of Benghazi and Tobruk. But twin Friday ultimatums by President Obama and British premier Cameron, plus a speech by Harper, made clear that the goal was the ouster of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and regime change in the North African oil-producing nation, whose proven reserves of crude are the largest on that continent.

Prospects for military success are uncertain, despite the apparent NATO preponderance. No clear military objective has been articulated, and disagreements about the scope of the war are likely. If Qaddafi’s tanks and infantry are engaged in house to house battles with the rebels in cities like Bengazi and Tobruk, it will be hard for NATO to bring its air superiority to bear without massacring large numbers of civilians.

[TMcCaleb]

16. re

Maybe the Arab League or Europeans should be doing the grunt work instead of us for a change. The country is broke and doesnt need a third war.