http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7143/lessons_of_libya/"Launched almost exactly a quarter-century after Ronald Reagan first bombed Tripoli, America's new war in Libya was guaranteed to be yet another fist-pumpin', high-fivin' remake of a big-budget 1980s action movie — the kind of scripted, stylized "Top Gun"-like production that gets audiences to cheer wildly and ask few questions.
Almost three weeks in, Operation Odyssey Dawn has no doubt delivered on that promise — it has a blockbuster $100-million-per-week budget, a comic-book-grade villain in Col. Moammar Gadhafi and the modern media's obedient transcription of U.S. government pronouncements.
What war proponents did not bank on, however, was this latest exercise in "shock and awe" also unmasking unspoken and uncomfortable realities at the twilight of American empire. Here are just a few:
— America Suffers from a Bad Case of Selective Deficit Disorder: Dick Cheney once said "deficits don't matter," and that attitude defines our increasingly acute case of Selective Deficit Disorder — i.e., the disease whereby politicians express concern about deficits only when it justifies cutting non-military expenditures. Just weeks ago, both political parties were calling America "broke" and competing to show who was more concerned about reining in spending. Most of these same deficit hawks, though, seem unconcerned about all that cash being spent on million-dollar cruise missiles in North Africa........................................."
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truth to power
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