Here is my offer: If Tripoli goes over to the rebels by local popular uprising,

[howard112211]

without massive battles taking place within the city and a without a large portion of the local civilian population coming out in support of Ghaddafi and clashing with the rebels, resulting in massive destruction within the city, and this whole revolution thing ends smoothely within the next two weeks, with NATO concluding operations and withdrawing all forces within the next month, the rebels do not conduct massacres on suspected loyalists, and clearly establish themselves as a secular, democratic movement, I will concede that the advocates of this whole adventure had a point. I will not dwell on the "days not weeks" talking point at all.

[notesdev]

1. If monkeys fly out of my butt

I'll be handing out darts and opening a stock brokerage

[howard112211]

3. I remain critical of the operation and am trying to formulate the conditions

under which I will concede ground to the advocates.

[joshcryer]

9. I expect the criticism to move from the revolutionaries to the revolutionary "leaders."

The people building the new government. It's already started. Libya, a country where a good portion of the population is children, expected to make a government without having people in place who know how to run government. Egypt had similar slanders, but I expect Libya to have to deal with daily postings about how evil the government is.

They'll have free elections and I'll still expect the Libyan people to be degraded. Could go on for years in veiled comments about them.

[howard112211]

11. If they have free elections, that would mean quite a lot, not to say everything.

To me at least.

[joshcryer]

13. They will, but the people "running" the elections likely will put those elections in to "doubt"...

...in the minds of some. Because some expat returns to the country to run it and sets up the constitution and sets up the elections (himself just one part of a much bigger picture as anyone who knows democracy can attest). I hope they are wise enough to ask for international support for setting up the elections and to have UN observers, it'll blow ALL YA'LL MINDS. :hi: :)

[dkf]

2. Me too.

[aquart]

4. And always go to war wearing white gloves.

I mean, REALLY.

[joshcryer]

5. Thanks howard.

I do think that it is unfortunate that you appear to be spreading the "Arabs can't do democracy" meme that was postulated by right wingers so long ago.

[dkf]

7. I think this comes out of stories on who the rebels are more than a blanket thing.

I don't normally come at things from the religious perspective as it not something I dwell on, but there have been enough reports to give me pause.

[joshcryer]

16. No one story can characterize the rebels completely.

There have only been a couple of reports about their "terrorist ties" and those reports are typically overblown, and indeed, something Gaddafi has been claiming since day 1. As if a small contingent of people could foment a revolution that simultaneously spread to a dozen cities. :shrug:

[dkf]

22. How do we know they are overblown?

All I know is I don't want some young girl denied an education because we decided to take Ghaddafi out. If they do it all on their own then that is their business, but if my money pays for the ascension of some group who will go all anti feminist then I'd rather not take sides.

[bobbolink]

18. That evil Martin Luther King had a "religious perspective", not to mention our own FOUNDERS.

Some of us are really tired of the anti-religion bias.

After all, isn't the struggle over religion one of the causes of war? Didn't our FOUNDERS have to fight for their OWN freedoms in that regard?

When "discussion" veers really close to the recent "hearings", it makes me very sad.

[dkf]

20. Hey I appreciate a good freedom from religion fight, but freedom for religion is someone else's war.

[bobbolink]

21. Then it would be a good idea not to bring it into this discussion, wouldn't it?

[dkf]

23. I didn't bring it up, the OP did, and then there was a remark that it stank of the

ME unable to have a proper democracy. I think there is more to this angle than that generalization.

[bobbolink]

24. There is so much more depth to this, and it is sad... no, a tragedy... that so many are unwilling

to hear anything other than preconceived notions.

:(

[howard112211]

8. Actually

my objection stems mainly from the fear that this conflict is of tribal nature, rather than of political nature, and that a democratic outcome of this is neither the objective of NATO, and actually is made less likely by coming in in favor of one side of such a conflict, and will potentially escalate the tensions further. How Tripoli and the surrounding cities behave in the following days and weeks will be very telling. I don't think that "Arabs cannot do democracy" at all. As far as that matters, in every country of the world there is always a fraction of the population that "cannot do democracy", at least not very well.

But again, from this point: Time will certainly tell.

[joshcryer]

12. The tribal nature is overblown, Gaddafi used "tribes" to create a "mafia state," effectively.

The tribal leaders much like Don's in the west. In fact you can look at state TV news and how Gaddafi's regime is attempting to foment tribal divisions already. Gaddafi forced tribal mixing for several decades, there are no tribes living separately anymore, they're all living together.

[howard112211]

14. Let's hope your forecasts become reality.

[joshcryer]

15. I am almost certain, I've been completely consumed by this.

While others have spent most of their time squabbling about insignificances (burka wearing terrorist oil grabbing expats CIA ops blah blah blah) I've been watching what's happening on the ground.

[Paper Roses]

6. Dear Howard, I agree with you but must ask that you consider this:

It would be easier for me to follow you and agree if you broke up your sentences. A run on sentence is hard to follow. Your point is well taken. Maybe I'm just getting too old to follow logic when it is presented in such a long a statement.

[howard112211]

10. Yes. I am sorry for my long sentence. I actually doubted that

that was such a good idea afterwards.

[sad sally]

17. As long as they're the right/good rebels...

Empire loves "regime change." Tell the people that X, ruling over country Y — which few can find on the map, and fewer still have any knowledge of — is an evil dictator, Hitler of our time, killing his own people who want nothing but peace and democracy (i.e. to be like Americans), and the war is on. Needless to say, X is usually someone who refuses to conform to Empire’s view of the world, divided into servants and victims.

No one stops to think that killing the people of Y to "liberate" them from being killed by X defies all logic. Besides, when the Empire kills that is "liberation." When others do it, it’s an atrocity, war crime, even genocide. And since it is a sacred mission of the U.S. to stop genocides, they somehow keep occurring all over the planet, at convenient times.

When bombs failed to effect "regime change" in Serbia, the Empire resorted to subterfuge. Intelligence services and the National Endowment for Democracy trained, paid and supported a legion of cheerleaders to develop a template for "popular revolution," used in many other places since. Yet these supposed "democrats" and "liberals" have been nothing of the sort, wallowing instead in corruption, tyranny, treason and even casual racism.

Then there are the Libyan rebels, who don’t even have a figurehead leader, and prefer posturing for news cameras to actual fighting. It is almost as if their sole purpose was to create a pretext for Imperial intervention; those who argued against it have since been drowned out by the chorus of bomb-seekers. The Western public is somehow supposed to believe these rebels are all about "diversity" (though they very clearly are not). Also, the U.S. intelligence agencies swear that the rebels have no terrorist ties. Just as they swore that Saddam Hussein did. For that matter, one of the "diverse" rebels profiled recently by the Washington Post had fought the U.S. in Iraq, his brother was a suicide bomber who killed U.S. Marines, and another brother is an al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan. But Abu Sultan declares his undying devotion to the ideals of liberal democracy — so that’s all right, then.

http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2011/03/25/another-evil-little-war/?du

[bobbolink]

19. the British empire didn't seem to like "regime change" back in 1776.