From the NYT:
Diplomats said the resolution — which passed with 10 votes, including the United States, and abstentions from Russia, China, Germany, Brazil and India — was written in sweeping terms to allow for a wide range of actions, including strikes on air-defense systems and missile attacks from ships. Military activity could get under way within a matter of hours, they said.
In theory, this shouldn't be all that hard to blast Gadaffi's air force and tanks in open desert. There's a difference between a land war in Asia and a land war in North Africa. We already won one of those 68 years ago, against a better general than anybody working for Gadaffi.
But, then what happens? I don't know.
Let's say, best case scenario, there's immediately a military coup in Tripoli and the Colonel goes away. Whoo-hoo!
Except, then, whose side are we on? Two weeks ago, the Eastern rebels would have likely taken over following the U.S. Air Force's arrival because they were sort of winning at the moment and they held the oil fields, which is the whole point of Libya, anyway. They had momentum.
So, that would have been a simple solution, except that the rebels would have started fighting amongst themselves over the oil.
But since then, the Eastern rebels have proven pretty incompetent. So, are we going to back the member of Gadaffi's inner circle who tells Gadaffi to go, yet then continues to hold onto the oilfields against the rebels? The promise of oil can motivate a lot of fighting as we saw in Iraq.
Or is this just to save the rebels in Eastern Libya? But what good are they without the oilfields on the east central Libyan coast?
Further, as a commenter notes, if the rebels win, the Libyan people will likely try to ethnically cleanse from Libya the sub-Saharan black immigrants Gadaffi invited in and is using as mercenaries.
And what does this imply for Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is headquartered? And what does Bahrain imply for Saudi Arabia?
Should be interesting.
But, then what happens? I don't know.
Let's say, best case scenario, there's immediately a military coup in Tripoli and the Colonel goes away. Whoo-hoo!
Except, then, whose side are we on? Two weeks ago, the Eastern rebels would have likely taken over following the U.S. Air Force's arrival because they were sort of winning at the moment and they held the oil fields, which is the whole point of Libya, anyway. They had momentum.
So, that would have been a simple solution, except that the rebels would have started fighting amongst themselves over the oil.
But since then, the Eastern rebels have proven pretty incompetent. So, are we going to back the member of Gadaffi's inner circle who tells Gadaffi to go, yet then continues to hold onto the oilfields against the rebels? The promise of oil can motivate a lot of fighting as we saw in Iraq.
Or is this just to save the rebels in Eastern Libya? But what good are they without the oilfields on the east central Libyan coast?
Further, as a commenter notes, if the rebels win, the Libyan people will likely try to ethnically cleanse from Libya the sub-Saharan black immigrants Gadaffi invited in and is using as mercenaries.
And what does this imply for Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is headquartered? And what does Bahrain imply for Saudi Arabia?
Should be interesting.
Posts
105 comments:
You can see what is next by looking at Iraq aka Democracy.
Steve, you always play this game when it comes to the Middle East. 'Aw shucks, gee gosh golly, I dunno, Mexican teacher militancy is far more important to the country'. But, this smells more of laziness than anything else. You have great analytical skills, just get over your problem with hard-to-pronounce places and you could really contribute to the discussion. It's Libya mate!; it's not like a tsunami hit Mumbai!
"Are we at war with Libya?"
Yes, we are at war with Libya. We have always been at war with Libya!
What the hell business of ours is Libya's civil war?
How much is this undeclared war - er, I meant to say "police action" - going to cost, in young Americans' lives and in money we haven't got?
How can a country trillions of dollars in debt fight wars or maintain troops all over the world?
It's almost as if we're some kinda dying global empire or something....
The scariest thought is that hardheaded geopolitcal interests are *not* really involved in the passing of this resolution - that it's sincerely altruistic (i.e., self-sacrificial, i.e., suicidal). "We MUST help the poor freedom-fighting underdogs at ANY cost! It's the MORAL thing to do!!" In other words, government by armed religious fanatics, fighting someone who is putting down other armed relgious fanatics.
I can understand that after a decade of flodging around in Central Asia and wasting hundreds of billions, we conservatives are worn out on war. But this is a chance to take out a genuine enemy of the United States, the man behind Lockerbie, etc.
There is no knowing what comes after. But it is not our concern, nor our fault, if things go wrong.
Furthermore, tens/hundreds of thousands of North Africans setting off all at once aboard rickety boats bound for Europe should encourage the EU to finally get its southern border under control. If it won't now then it won't ever.
What could possibly go wrong?
I don't know, I think if we miss this opportunity to tip Gaddafi over we'd regret it - how long will it be till the next chance comes along? He's got a like-minded son. I don't think we /like/ dictators, they're just there, and, when else will the population be fired up and ready to fight? Too, one more major Arab country to put peer pressure on the rest, make a new normal.
David:
More likely it's like the "reverse redlining" mortgages from our recent past--there's an altruistic motive used to justify something that benefits some powerful interest group. But then, that's not really any more comforting, when you think about it....
Not to be too much of a stickler, but isn't it immaterial what the UN does. I thought our Constitution granted the power to make war with our Congress, not the UN. I find it troubling everyone is acting as if we now have the green light because of a UN vote. Our Congress hasn't even taken up this issue yet.
Maybe we should just mind our own business.
> Steve, you always play this game when it comes to the Middle East
He's not being all that evasive. He's saying exactly what J is saying.
The opposition can be coherent, or, more likely, not. If it isn't, then there's apt to be a conflict involving intentional attacks on civilians. In fact, maybe not just intentional murder of civvies, but torture. So what do we do then, nothing? It's OK for them to kill civvies in striving against each other, but not for Kaddafi to kill 'em, or for Balkan peoples to fight a nasty, dirty war (especially if Muslims aren't winning)?
So what do we do, something? Doing something didn't do much to stop civvy-directed attacks in Iraq. It seems the various sides made their point, namely HEY WE'RE A REALLY MEAN LITTLE #(&#&@ ARMY, and its quite possible they have cooled down merely in order to spare resources for later. They're all going to hug each other when we leave? Likely not.
Here's the basic underlying reality: in the past, from before the year 0 right up to Nazi-occupied Europe, when you miltiarily dominated a civvie population and they acted some way you didn't like, you just wasted a bunch of them. 10-20 of them for every soldier of yours killed, minimum, if that's what happened. I mean innocent ones, of course. That's the way it always was - and what else is any kind of unpopular rule, whatsoever, based on? When you look at it that way, you see what a chimera 'humanitarian war' is at its worst - and it's at its worst in the Islamic world, where there are a lot of courageous, tough, in a way very gallant (I mean something like Pashtunwali, not blowing up random women and stuff), but certainly aggressive and uninhibited people who have limited hopes indeed of trusting each other and getting along under the rule of law. If the power of an occupier ultimately rests on the ability to kill a bunch of innocent civvies, how can an occupier stop native civvies from killing each other? He can't, unless he's willing to kill more civvies than they are! So, 'humanitarian war' can sometimes work I guess, sort of, depending on what work means, but the odds in this location are fairly ugly.
I forgot to say, we could just install a dictator. That's usually the sane thing to do if you feel you must take out a government.
But the dictator may have to do some awful stuff. The rougher the country, the roughshodder he'll have to run, especially early on.
So now that everyone in America hates each other, due to demographics and the lack of a unifying external foe, you'll get a lot of shrieking about such a dictator. This is a big electoral liability. During the cold war, one kept mum about the dark side of 'our' dictators. Basically all of them were nicer than Stalin (but credit does go to Stalin where it's due, WWII) -
Withdrawing from Iraq would probably mean trouble there and political trouble for whoever did it, and that's why they never will withdraw. When the economy truly tanks, or whatever, and no one cares anymore what happens in Iraq, they finally will withdraw.
lol @ this. what interest does the US have in libya?
iraq is going badly. iraqis are still blowing each other up at a fairly steady clip, and the US is still spending tens of billions every year to occupy the place. meanwhile, obama and the republicans go back and forth "slashing" 5 billion here, 5 billion there on a trillion dollar budget, a budget which the US doesn't even actually have since it's broke. isn't one costly middle east adventure enough?
i will say this. libya is a perfect opportunity for the US to send it's DIVERSITROOPS! into action.
send a force completely devoid of european males to libya and see how it goes. NO european males allowed at ANY LEVEL of planning or execution. the ENTIRE operation has to be diversitroops from top to bottom. this is their chance to show what they can do!
The problem with humanitarian war is that if people don't know they've been beaten, they often keep fighting. And the longer they keep fighting, the more civilians get killed in collateral damage anyway. So the humanitarian thing to do may be to break the will of the enemy as quickly as possible. Heck, imagine the Civil War if you replaced Grant and Sherman with Casey and Petraeus: it might have lasted decades and cost far more lives.
It seems to be more of an attempted breakaway in the eastern part of Libya rather than a countrywide insurrection. There doesn't seem to be any information on who the leaders are, their ultimate goals, how they've gotten their arms and ammo, etc. Have they been in contact with other countries and have they been trained and supplied by outsiders? Seems like the US, Britain and France are trying to involve themselves pretty quickly now that the rebels have stalled, perhaps out of fear of them collapsing. Seems there's always a lot of support for breakaway movements when the areas have oil, just like Sudan. We were bombarded with stories about atrocities in Darfur. Now the southern part of Sudan has voted to secede, taking with it the oil. There's still violence going on as the various armed groups there have a propensity to fight one another, but we probably won't be hearing much about it now. The real purpose of the hue and cry about Darfur genocide was to wrest the oil away from Khartoum. Mission accomplished.
i wasn't sure how many personnel are involved in a carrier group so i wikipedia'd and it said 7500.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_Strike_Group
let's see barack obama, commander in chief of the US military, fill that entire complement of 7500 with diversitroops, then send it to the coast of libya.
0 european males are allowed to be on any of those ships in any role whatsoever. zero, zip, none. imagine how good they would do without white guys holding them back! go get the libyans diversitroops!
i'm not sure how involved the US military wants to get. if they want to get their boots wet on libyan soil they certainly would have to send more than just a carrier group. it's possible obama might have to send a few thousand diversarines into harm's way. kick libyan butt, diversarines!
If I had to guess the following will happen
- NATO (read US) insures that East Libya is untouchable by Ghaddaffi
- Destruction of Ghaddaffi's air force and tanks makes it to clear to him that he will never take control of the east
- Some deal is struck where Ghadaffi's family flee to some African country.
- New oil distribution plan is devised among the Libyan tribes.
- All past business agreements made between Libya and the West are maintained.
I forgot to add, once Ghadaffi is out, there will be a total purge on black Africans in Libya.
This will be Obama's main foreign policy legacy.
Whose side are we on, indeed. Most likely all sides have cheered every terrorist attack on the US for the last 30 years. The American people want to stay out of this, and yet,sadly, it's the dumb-dumb conservatives goading Obama into action. I say that as someone who votes Rightwing most of the time.
"I forgot to add, once Ghadaffi is out, there will be a total purge on black Africans in Libya.
This will be Obama's main foreign policy legacy."
If such a thing happens, it will show that Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron aren't totally bad after all...
From The HBD Chick:
Libya, Land O' Tribes
>Most likely all sides have cheered every errorist attack on the US for years.
Yes, what if we run out Qaddafi for the sake of Al Qaeda in Libya?
Fighting for peace is like raping for virginity.
We still owe Qadaffi for Lockerby.
One thing has been puzzling me. This simultaneous revolt across the Arab world seems to be exactly what Sheikh Osama was working toward for the last 20 years. He's stated clearly that killing Western infidels is just a tactic. He doesn't care about imposing sharia in non-Arab countries; his goal is to replace the Western-favoring dictators in the Arab world with Islamic governments. Suddenly he's getting what he wants ... or so it would appear ... but why is he silent? Why no words of encouragement?
Steve you're out of your element. As usual. You're sort of okay on this human biodiversity hypothesis but when it comes to strategic planning for the conquest of Planet Earth you just start talking nonsense. We go in with our airforce and hit Gaddafi. Hard. Then we take the coasts and secure the oilfields. Which we can do. We helo in Exxon and tell them to start pumping. Quick. Oil drops to a dollar a gallon and this whole thing pays for itself.
We just can't stay out of something, can't we? We just have to be the god of the world and meddle in anything, anywhere. This country really has lost the formula for stopping.
You can be damn sure that Europe will be all too happy to let the old "let them bomb and let us bitch" cycle start again: they will want us to "do something", and then crank up the anti Anglo-American hegemony racket that they do so well once the blood starts to fly. It's easier to keep a welfare state going when you have someone else's military at your disposal. It also gives you that wonderful feeling of being pure and untouched by blood.
Not that it will be probably tested soon, but as my son is reaching draft age, I have decided that if a real draft situation came along for another war-of-convenience, I would refuse to let the feds take him.
"Furthermore, tens/hundreds of thousands of North Africans setting off all at once aboard rickety boats bound for Europe should encourage the EU to finally get its southern border under control. If it won't now then it won't ever."
Absolutely. Let's look at this as a parent weaning a child. As Pat Buchanan pointed out earlier, Europe has been living in a fantasy La Dolce Vita world, partially due to being able to divert funds that would go to militaries by counting on ours. (Though his colummn today is very muddled, to say the least. His American foreign policy timeline as having a "national interest" era and "idealism" era was a bit mixed up.)
Africa is THEIR colonial/imperialist legacy, not ours. The immigration problem that is not only geographical, but egged on by that colonial past, is their cross to bear. God, for once, let us not grant them another opportunity to be smug. Is there not anyone who isn't tired of their hypocritical America-the-proto-fascist-xenophobe rhetoric?
It is time to let them grow up and face up to what they really do and don't believe. Europe projects their hypocrisies on us. We're their escape hatch that lets them avoid tough decisions, and it is unhealthy for them, us, and Africa to keep such an arrangement going.
No, I don't wish an illegal immigration disaster on them, but letting them deal with their problem in full daylight will be very instructive to this country, and clear up a lot of bad, phony discourse.
What a bunch of tossers the British are. It was just in 2009 that Qaddafi paid them 2.7 billion USD in danegeld, 100 million for each individual killed by the Lockerbie bombing. Now they are the most vociferous in calling for his head on a platter. That is almost Arab levels of ingratitude.
Several explainations:
(1) Shrewd Machivellian: Western powers realized that the the devil you know is better than the the one you don't. They prefered the known risks to oil markets and terrorism than then unknown so the gave lip service to the rebels without any real support hoping they'd be crushed.
(2) Washingtoninan Diplomancy: Caught completely off-guard without confidence to call the winner - Western leaders took a wait and see attitude. They just wanted the conflict to be over ASAP so they could get on with business, minimize chaos and know whom to write the checks to. Also, any intervention of any kind to eithe side will be a net negative and only seen as neo-colonial imperialism by much of the world and history.
(3) Utter imcompetence. Just like the US and Westerners had no clue that these ME revolutions would happen, they are equally incompetent in addressing them after the fact. It's easier to ignore it and focus on what you live live racial bean counting, vacation in Rio and invite Stevie Wonder over for yet another party.
We have no dog in that fight.
No, it's worse. I wish we were merely at war with Libya (even though it would be pointless and criminally wasteful).
Instead our overclass is in love with a fantasy of Libya-- and other Arab countries.
They're babbling on like T. E. Lawrence about "the Arab revolt" and telling each other that Peace and Love wait only for a modest American bombing campaign to free them from the dictators' dungeons.
They're so clueless they don't even realize their line is a century old and still nonsense.
Maybe they haven't even seen the film (much less the other film).
"We" (that is, our overclass) doesn't have a choice between evil dictators and peaceful democracies in Islamic states. They only have a choice between violent benighted pestholes with or without American troops getting blown up by IED's every day.
In 1784 Franklin and Jefferson met with with the Libyan ruler. In those days it was called Tripolitania ("The Shore of Tripoli").
The Bey explained to these Americans that the Koran required the faithful to attack and enslave Christians.
I'm still pissed.
Albertosaurus
Let the French take out all planes and tanks they can find from the air and let the hand to hand combat between the rebels and Gaddafi proceed. Make it a "fair" fight and the outcome is their business. If they want to fight for their freedom at least lets make it a fair one.
"send a force completely devoid of european males to libya and see how it goes. NO european males allowed at ANY LEVEL of planning or execution. the ENTIRE operation has to be diversitroops from top to bottom. this is their chance to show what they can do!"
Another brillant one there, Jody.
"imagine the Civil War if you replaced Grant and Sherman with Casey and Petraeus: it might have lasted decades"
Don't be stupid, they would be killing white Southerners, the poison gas would be laid on thick, with the media cheering the effort.
All of American politics is about race, the Republican Party and Conservatism are simply paralyzed by the issue. In the words of Peter Hitchens:
These [conservative] strengths had been fading for some time, mainly due to poorly controlled mass immigration and to the march of political correctness. They had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to
fight on the cultural and moral fronts.
They preferred to posture on the world stage. Scared of confronting Left-wing teachers and sexual revolutionaries at home, they could order soldiers to be brave on their behalf in far-off deserts. And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad.
What Hitchens dare not explicitly say, though he knows, is that it is the failure of Conservatism to confront the white-hating racism of the Left that is source of their destruction. This is the end game for collaborationist CONservatism, they've finally fallen all the way back to that last refuge of scoundrels. Even Republicans must understand that endless wars for endless election victories, whipping up irrational patriotism among their diminishing base, is a desperate, unsustainable loser of a strategy. But they're trapped, they just can't bring themselves to oppose the colonialism being waged against their supporters and their nation. They're in a classic incentive trap, trading tomorrow for the spoils today. They're just too greedy, frightened and corrupt to take the long view.
Steve,
What I really cannoy understand is Sarkozy's enthusiasm and geeing-up of the Libya intervention.
What he seems to forget that Libya's neighbor, Alferia, is a mass population nation, a former French colony which has a massive and ill-behaved diaspora in France.
Algeria is, of course, run by a brutal, repressive and illegitimate dictatorship (probably worse than Gaddafi)that regularly uses torture to uphold its position - with the full connivance of France that backs the puppet placemen stooges running Algeria to the hilt.
The legitimate government of Algeria is, of course, the Islamist party, FIS, which overwhelmingly won democratic elections in the early '90s - only for the Algerian dictatorship to quash the will of the people.Strange how we hear so little about thi particular ongoing massibe human rights and democracy abuse.
I fear Sarkozy will rue his absurd posturing and grandstanding.
If US goes in, it might turn into Somalibya.
I wonder what NATO intervention will do to immigration within Libya. Breakdown of the system may lead to more black Africans flooding into Libya, wreaking more social havoc. Or, the triumphant rebels might take harsh actions against black Africans and drive them out--just as 'liberated' Iraqis attacked the Christian population in Iraq, driving 50% out of the country.
How does that song go?
"From the Halls of Montezuma,
To the shores of Tripoli...
er, Benghazi"
Sometimes, bigotry is based on 'racist' ignorance. It's been said that 'racists' and 'xenophobes' fear what they don't know or what they know only through a distorted lens.
Until recently, most of us thought that Gaddafi had the support--more or less--of most Libyans. So, we thought most Libyans were anti-democratic and anti-western fanatics or Muslims.
But with the rebellion, Libyans are now suddenly wonderful freedom fighters, and our previous perception or assessment of Libyans might now seem 'racist'.
So, ignorance = 'racism' while knowledge = compassion/tolerance. Sounds simple enough.
Indeed, TOO simple.
It's just as true that ignorance = compassion while knowledge = 'racism'.
During the 80s, our compassion for the wonderful, noble, and heroic Afghan 'freedom fighters' was based on ignorance--much of it willful or deceptive(propagandistic). Sure, they were freedom fighters to the extent that they were resisting a foreign occupation, but their values and ideology had nothing to do with freedom as we know it. They entered in modern schools and killed teachers and students cuz coed education was an abomination. We blocked all that out and maintained an ignorant compassionate view of them as noble heroes.
The more we got to know about the true nature of the kind of people who led the resistance against the Soviets, we got to like them less--indeed, even to hate them, their values, and their culture. Thus, knowledge in this case led to 'Islamophobic racism'.
In old westerns, white hatred of Indians(as red savages) was spread by a distorted picture of Indians as murderous brutes. But, compassion for Indians in movies like DANCES WITH WOLVES was also based on ignorance--the myth of Indian dignity and nobility and harmony with nature and all that crap. So, ignorance can lead to either hatred or love.
Same is true of knowledge. More knowledge can make you understand and appreciate another people; but, it can also make you despise and hate them more. Liberals say they are for more knowledge, and sometimes they are indeed more open-minded and curious. But liberals must know that more knowledge isn't necessarily compatible with songs like WE ARE THE WORLD. So, liberal love/compassion is often based on ignorance. Liberals maintain the culture of love/sympathy for black South Africans by propping up the myth of Mandela and by suppressing the horrible news of black brutality in that country. It is a form of liberal bigotry--or libotry.
Often, it's not the case of liberal knowledge vs 'racist' ignorance but of liberal ignorance vs 'racist' ignorance. But sometimes, it's a case of liberal ignorance vs 'racist' knowledge. Sometimes, the truth favors the 'racist' view, and this is why liberals are so eager to suppress 'incorrect' speech or 'hate facts'.
When it comes to the Middle East and Muslims, there are many simple-minded ignorant 'racist' and liberal stereotypes across the political spectrum: 'Muzzies' are all terrorists. Noble Muslims are victims of neo-imperialism and Zionism. Arabs are all crying out for democracy. Most Arabs would support secular freedom if given a choice. Most Arabs would support theocracy if given a choice. Most Muslims are Americans trying to get out.
At this point, after Gulf War, Afghanistan War, and Iraq War, we just don't know. All the platitudes, liberal and 'racist', have proven to be inadequate.
What should matter for most us is is that US is financially severely in debt and we don't need another headache-inducing on-the-grounds intervention in that area.
In the following article it is said that Israel has secretly been arming and helping Gadfly get the momentum again:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/03/03/gordon-duff-israel-intervenes-in-libya-for-gaddafi/
Wouldn't surprise me. Maybe they are worried about a more democratic Egypt and want to squeeze it with their nukes and IDF on the one side, and the crazy Gadfly on the other. Or it's just for the money again.
Anyway, the risk for them is low coz if he loses they just disappear with the money he gave them, and deny everything, as Israel always does. If he wins they have another proxy.
The reason I favor the intervention is only to prevent Israel from getting away with their scheme.
The whole point is to prevent 10 million Libyans and Africans from washing up on Italy's and France's shores. Provoking a Camp of the Saints and then a counter-reaction of the Northern League and Jean Le Pen taking power.
Sarkozy has threatened to go it alone, to prevent basically Khadaffi from carrying out his ethnic cleansing (of his own people) which would result in both Italy and France becoming Muslim majority in a few months.
There is also the BS belief by Obama that intervening can get the oil flowing quickly. Stupid but there you go.
Let me add, doing nothing is not wise. The US objective is to keep ME oil flowing to keep the economy going. Like $4 a gallon gas? How about $8 a gallon?
The ability to keep the oil flowing requires periodic US military force success (getting rid of guys who don't get with the program) and realistic fear of our abilities and resolve. Doing nothing ala Ron Paul or Obama's instincts is great for Switzerland. The US is not Switzerland and needs cheap global oil.
"Wes said...
Whose side are we on, indeed. Most likely all sides have cheered every terrorist attack on the US for the last 30 years. The American people want to stay out of this, and yet,sadly, it's the dumb-dumb conservatives goading Obama into action. I say that as someone who votes Rightwing most of the time."
Quite true. Obama doesn't seem too keen on expanding our overt military commitments to North Africa, and he is to be commended for that. He seems to favor the Warren Harding approach - just go golfing until it all blows over. If Republicans were conservatives anymore, they might appreciate that - but of course, they are not, so they don't.
Whiskey:
So, the cheapest way to avoid having Italy and France overrun with non-EU refugees is to go fight a war in North Africa? Really? I'm no accountant, but it sure seems like, for the cost of a few weeks of war in North Africa, you could hire a *lot* of immigration agents, and just *deport* them. While there will be some humanitarian concerns with this policy, they're honestly far less than with dropping bombs on and having soldiers occupy foreign countries.
Similarly, our interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq don't support the claim that our wars keep the price of oil low. Instead, the main thing driving that seems to be economic growth in China and (to a lesser extent) India. We're not going to stop either of those things, which is good, since stopping them would be monstrous. So, oil will get more expensive, and we'll learn to live with it. (Or maybe the godawful disaster in Japan will wreck the world economy so thoroughly that all that annoying economic growth stops for a decade or so, keeping oil prices lower at the cost of a mere decade or so of global depression. I'd rather have expensive gas.)
Oh for the days when the United States followed its Constitution and actually declared war. But then that's before our political insiders decided to make us an appendage to the U.N. instead of a sovereign nation.
A soldier killed "enforcing a U.N. resolution", "nation-building", or "defending our national interests overseas" is just as dead as one fighting in a declared war. So why doesn't our Congress declare war anymore?
Maybe it is to avoid having the kind of debate or public discussion such a decision deserves.
Suddenly Sheikh Osama is getting what he wants ... or so it would appear ... but why is he silent? Why no words of encouragement?
Bin Laden probably died 10 years ago. His PR value is still going strong.
The whole point is to prevent 10 million Libyans and Africans from washing up on Italy's and France's shores. . . which would result in both Italy and France becoming Muslim majority in a few months.
Whiskey, if you seriously think it is possible for 10 million people (which by the way even on a generous estimate would have to include every last human being within Libyan territory) to cross the Mediterranean in the space of a few months, and then, within the same few months, to turn France and Italy (combined population 125 million) into "Muslim majority" nations, then you are officially the stupidest person on the internet.
The Anti-Gnostic said...
Then we take the coasts and secure the oilfields. Which we can do. We helo in Exxon and tell them to start pumping. Quick. Oil drops to a dollar a gallon and this whole thing pays for itself.
Oh heck yes. It worked out just that way in Iraq.
"then you are officially the stupidest person on the internet."
LM-GD-AO!
You must be new here. On the Whiskey scale of stupidity, that one was a 6, 6.5 tops.
I mean, this is the guy who brought us:
1) Avatar will be a huge flop.
2) Hollywood does not care about making money anymore
-and-
3) Is no longer run by Jews.
4) The government has no interest in integrating, racially and sexually, the armed forces....
5) The world's richest man and the POTUS are both Beta Males...
Hell, HE CAME UP WITH FOUR OF THOSE LAST WEEK!
I wonder if Dems will try to blame things on Bush a year from now when Libyans start playing with IEDs.
Policing the world; impoverishing ourselves to end up having both sides of a conflict which is other people's business against us. A favorite pasttime of democrats and neoconservatives alike!
"Provoking a Camp of the Saints and then a counter-reaction of the Northern League and Jean Le Pen taking power." - Whiskey
Well, Marine Le Pen. A much nicer person than her nasty old pa.
Avatar made a ton of money. But it cost even more. There's not even a schedule announced for Avatar 2. That right there tells you the whole thing was probably a wash. Nope, Hollywood does not care about making money (producers, stars, directors, almost none of them share in profit upsides, so they do what they want). Most movies made by Hollywood lose money: Redacted, Rendition, etc. Yes Hollywood (sadly) is no longer run by Jews but Ivy League Mafia types or Infotainment Conglomerates (Rupert Murdoch).
As for destroying the cohesion of the US Military, based on White Southern/Western men, who can deny the elites plan to make the military into a gay-female dominated pretend military like the Netherlands?
And yeah Obama and Gates are beta males who hit it big. Just look at them. No woman longs for Bill Gates and Obama before he was worshiped as a rockstar god was nothing to women.
We've been at war twice with North African tribes before: The Barbary Wars. That was just over kidnapped US sailors and piracy.
Obama stepped in it. He said, explicitly, over and over again, that Khadaffi had to go. He has to back up his words or he looks like a doofus who can be safely defied: Iran can simply invade Bahrain under cover of protecting Shias, and drive up the price of oil to their preferred target of $200 a barrel or more. Maybe even target Saudi.
In six months, the Mariel Boatlift put more than 125K Cubans on Florida's shores. Sure, a massive boatlift could put 10 million Libyans, Tunisians, Egyptians, and Africans onto Sicily and other places (like the Italian Mainland).
This is EXACTLY WHY Sarkozy, of all people, is hot to trot to nail Khadaffy before the exodus beings.
Khadaffi's only way to stay in power is to massacre enough of his people that they all flee (to Europe). So his mercenaries can be paid off (with land/territory and positions). And permanent rebellion is quashed. This means mass refugees, on a scale not imaginable. What, all those poor, desperate, "die if you stay" people will just stay in Benghazi?
What the hell business of ours is Libya's civil war?
More to the point, we were doing okay with Ghaddaffey, despite the fact that his name sounds a bit too close to "godawful."
He kept order, and pumped the gas. WTF else do they want from Libya? Christ.
In other words, government by armed religious fanatics, fighting someone who is putting down other armed relgious fanatics.
More like fanatics putting down even more religious fanatics. Seems to me like the guy wanting to upset the apple cart in the Muslim world is always more fundamentalist than the guy running the cart.
>The American people want to stay out of this, and yet, sadly, it's the dumb-dumb conservatives goading Obama into action.<
Dumb-dumb conservatives = neocons.
>They're babbling on like T. E. Lawrence about "the Arab revolt" and telling each other that Peace and Love wait only for a modest American bombing campaign to free them from the dictators' dungeons.<
It's almost as if the neocons are a bunch of old commie hippies. Uh, actually they are.
"Peace" and "Love" have turned out to mean - in middle and old age - destroying the village in order to save the planet. "Worldwide democratic revolution" indeed.
No one's wallet, son, or daughter is safe when world-healers are in charge.
Say, where will "we" get the money to pay for yet another idealistic military crusade? From Japan? Never mind. Just keep singing. "Onward, Christian soldiers...We Shall Overcome...His Truth Keeps Marching On"... Ka-BOOM!
(Prediction: "we" will never see any oil profits, not even in the form of a nickel reduction in the price of gas at the pump. Instead, we will simply have more debt loaded on our backs, debts we, the people, didn't contract. We weren't consulted about starting this war; Congress wasn't consulting. Yet we must pay the cost. If any country needs a popular, democratic revolution against dictatorial leaders, it's America.)
I'll agree Obama was stupid. He looks (and is) stupid and weak and vacillating. Pretending a strongly worded letter of regret can "fix" things. He's determined to be not Bush. At least Bush put Iraqi oil back on the market, its a strategic play that as long as US troops are hanging around there, supplied by sea, we can keep oil flowing. Iraq's oil reserves are believed to be three times at least Saudi's.
At least Bush gave us a play on keeping a lid on oil prices (by bringing Iraq online under US protection/control). Obama is likely to a failure, requiring ground troops to push Khadaffi out of power (and restore Libyan oil to production).
Chinese growth in demand alone makes it imperative that oil keeps flowing. Unless you all want to move to South Central and ride the Blue Line (I would not advise it). Social peace in the US requires cheap oil.
Yes Libya's people are no doubt odious, just like Khadaffi. Our interest is oil -- Obama should have dispatched US naval air assets three weeks ago, as a useful reminder to everyone of US power at sea and on the air (different than on land).
I think it's time to check in with Farrakhan to see how HE sees things:
"Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said on Tuesday that Jews and Zionists are “trying to push the US into war” and that “Zionists dominate the US government and banks.”
Farrakhan, 77, made the comments at the Nation of Islam’s annual meeting near Chicago.
“President Obama,” Farrakhan said, “if you allow the Zionists to push you, to mount a military offensive against Gaddafi and you go in and kill him and his sons, as you did with Saddam Hussein and his sons... I’m warning you this is a Libyan problem, let the Libyans solve their problem among themselves.”
Farrakhan called Muammar Gaddafi “my brother and my friend.”
The Nation of Islam leader also accused American Zionists of attempting to push Israel into war with Iran, stating that “Zionists dominate the government of the United States of America and her banking system.”
“Some of you think that I’m just somebody who’s got something out for the Jewish people,” Farrakhan said. “You’re stupid.
Do you think I would waste my time if I did not think it was important for you to know Satan? My job is to pull the cover off of Satan so that he will never deceive you and the people of the world again.”
-----
So, apparently Obama got seduced by Satan.
A perfectly reasonable explanation for Obama's waffling over what should be a slam-dunk exercise of limited US airpower (Clinton's Desert Fox bombing campaign 1999-2000 against Saddam, operations against Serbia, Bush 1's air campaign against Saddam). Obama's pals Farrakhan, Wright, and Jessie Jackson have all received considerable amounts of money from Khadaffi who has also promised (Farrakhan) more.
So Obama held off moving against Khadaffi to help out his allies, Farrakhan and company, until he realized losing Libya's oil production and masses of refugees would help defeat him for re-election.
Is this the case? Don't know but Obama's "Black first unless it hurts me" strategy has been consistent: police acting stupidly, bitter clingers, etc.
Whiskey is like the court jester of the Sailer comment page. We need him.
As John McCain would say:
"We're all Libyans Now" and "If we need to stay in Libya for 100 years so be it".
Correction
"Congress wasn't consulting" s/b "Congress wasn't consulted". Apologies.
Svigor:
I think the labeling of all troublemakers in the Middle East as Islamists and Al Qaida-linked extremists has more to do with selling the US on helping the existing governments keep control, than with any particular differences in beliefs. Think about how the "communist" label got tossed around during the cold war--it's the same phenomenon.
Whiskey, if you seriously think it is possible for 10 million people (which by the way even on a generous estimate would have to include every last human being within Libyan territory) to cross the Mediterranean in the space of a few months, and then, within the same few months, to turn France and Italy (combined population 125 million) into "Muslim majority" nations, then you are officially the stupidest person on the internet.
C'mon, this is too easy.
Assume that the 120 million natives are distributed as:
0-19: 15 million
20-39: 25 million
40-59: 35 million
60-79: 30 million
80-99: 15 million
That gives you 25 million in the fertile sweet spot [age 20 to 39], of whom 12.5 million are women.
Then assume that the 10 million newcomers are distributed as:
0-19: 5 million
20-39: 5 million
Which gives you 2.5 million women in the fertile sweetspot.
Now if the native population has a TFR of only 1.0, whereas the newcomers have a TFR of 5.0, then you already have parity:
{12.5 million women} X {1.0 children per woman} = 12.5 million children
{2.5 million women} X {5.0 children per woman} = 12.5 million children
And, believe it or not, these assumptions [1.0 post-Christian European TFR -vs- 5.0 Muslim immigrant TFR] are NOT ALL THAT DIFFERENT FROM WHAT'S ACTUALLY TRANSPIRING ON THE GROUND RIGHT NOW!!!
Anti-Gnostic, great Whiskey parody.
So much for the Bell Curve.
http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/18/belonging-matters-researchers-halve-racial-gpa-gap-with-brief-exercise/
Gaddafi vs the people. Tyrant vs the mob. American democracy hates tyrants but is also wary of the mob. And so, American elites have been vacillating between supporting Middle East dictators and promoting democracy in the region. Dictatorship is anathema to American idealism, but a stable dictatorship is preferable to out-of-control populism or mobocracy. Mubarak was the trusted and prized ally of America for many decades. Americans didn't know how to respond to the protests against him. Only when it appeared Mubarak's days were numbered did America strongly come out on the side of the people. Though Americans despise Gaddafi, there's uncertainty about the future if the Libyan people were to take power. After the fall of Hussein, people power in Iraq certainly wasn't pretty, especially for minority groups like Iraqi Christians. And there's news from Egypt that Christians there are facing even more hostility than before. And there was the horrible rape of Lara Logan.
I wonder if the alliance of American Jews and American Wasps owe something to their shared political philosophy. Both Jews and Anglo-Americans are revolutionists who defined their historical/cultural identities in terms of opposition to the Old Order of reactionary oppression. Anglo-Americans rebelled against King George to create the American Republic. And Bolshevik Jews rebelled against the Russian Tsar in the Russian Revolution. Yet, both the Founding Fathers and Jewish Leftists, though revolution-oriented, feared the mob, the power of populism. Though both fanned the populist flame when it served their purposes--to overthrow the old order--, once the revolution was won and the revolutionaries took power, they tried very hard to calm down and control the minds of the masses. Alexander Hamilton called the people 'beast' or 'monster'. Jeffersonian democracy was elitist compared to Jacksonian democracy; even Jackson, once in power, sought to control the masses.
Jews hated the Old Order and sought to overthrow by fanning the rage of the masses, but they feared the masses too. The masses, after all, were the goy majority. The very people who overthrew the Czar could the decide to hunt down the Jews.
And the Founding Fathers were of the colonial elite. Though they disliked British 'oppression', they also distrusted the instincts of the unwashed masses.
Today, both Jews and liberal Wasps despise the Tea Party. Even Neocons are alarmed by it, especially by its anti-AIPAC-ism, and so they've tried to hijack the TP with figures like Sarah Palin.
Recently, I saw a very interesting--and perhaps great--film called LAST COMMAND by Josef Sternberg(from the Criterion Collection of his silents, including the seminal gangster film UNDERWORLD and prole drama DOCKETS OF NY along with LC). It has similarities with BLUE ANGEL, Sternberg's most famous film, especially in its twisted romance plot. But most interesting is the politics of the movie. While the movie clearly sympathizes with the goal of the Russian revolutionists against the power of the Old World privilege and aristocracy, it also expresses fear and loathing of mob passions. Mob passions may be useful in overthrowing the Tsar, but it's also the sort of stuff that led to pogroms. The leading character is a Russian general who is, at once, contemptible and sympathetic. Though no one is clearly etched as a 'Jew', the viewer can tell who is supposed to Jewishy. Maybe Sternberg, of Viennese Jewish origin, felt a certain loathing for radical and vulgar Eastern European Jews who were always making trouble. (Also, as the film was made prior to the Holocaust, it doesn't shy away from negative portrayals of Jewish or Jewishy characters, just like directors like Coppola, Depalma, and Scorsese never shied away from negative Italian-American characters. Maybe if the Italians had suffered something like the Holocaust, they too would have been less likely to be critical of their own kind.)
In the end, the reactionary general comes across as more sympathetic than many revolutionary and mobocratic figures.
Most interesting of all is the movie-in-a-movie framing of the story, which implies how the movie industry became a useful, indeed priceless, tool for the Jews to control and direct the passions of the masses. Though a silent film, it says quite a lot about the role of Jews in history.
PS. Though I never liked colorizing of b/w films, might it not be a good idea to sound-ize some silent films? I dislike the accompanying music of most silents so much that I them muted. But... if realistic sound were to be added, it might be pretty cool. Intertitles are the worst, breaking the flow of the imagery. They should subtitle silent films than employ intertitles, though purists will insist on the original format.
He kept order, and pumped the gas. WTF else do they want from Libya? Christ.
Driving home in the car this evening, I had a truly awful thought: What if megalomaniacal murderers like Khadafy and Saddam Hussein represent the very BEST we can hope for out of hellholes like Libya and Iraq?
We know, for instance, that circumstances for Iraqi Christians were VASTLY better under Saddam Hussein than they have been under Dubya's "all men yearn for freedom" democracy in Iraq.
And what if deposing Khadafy means that we get the Muslim Brotherhood herding Libyan women into soccer stadiums and shooting them in the back of the head?
Whiskey,
all this crap about oil is nonsense. Libya accounts for a tiny fraction of international oil, I think it was 1,5% or so.
That the Med countries want to stabilize the place in order to prevent mass immigration of Muslims is clear. In fact they may be interested in a proper gov there since Gadfly has been using the illegal immigration of blacks as a pressure mechanism to blackmail concessions and money from the Meds. So maybe a proper Muslim gov in Libya will just push all those Africans back into Chad and the problem is solved.
Anyway, Libya is in France's traditional playground so Gadfly had to know the Frogs would do something. This proves Ron Paul's foreign policy concept works: If the US had done nothing, Sark would have sent in his Mirage planes and the Foreign Legion and Gadfly would have been toast. There are regional powers that can take care of most of the world without the US taxpayer having to fund endless battle groups which get involved in so many God-forsaken places.
"Chinese growth in demand alone makes it imperative that oil keeps flowing. Unless you all want to move to South Central and ride the Blue Line (I would not advise it). Social peace in the US requires cheap oil."
When, Whiskey, are you going to address my oft-repeated point that U.S. could be oil-independent IF we Fischer-Tropsch-processed WY coal into synfuels, at very likely LESS cost than the cost of oil on the open market plus the aircraft carriers to keep it flowing -- for the benefit of the world (i.e., Israel)?
You keep insisting that U.S. military might makes for "cheap" oil. But you can't just refuse to consider those billions upon billions in DoD spending. Americans do pay that, too, you know.
http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/110317_obama_foreign_policy.htm
"As for Obama, with our foremost Asian ally going through the agony of its worst natural disaster and with revolution raging through the Arab world, he has given us his picks for the Final Four in the 'March Madness' of college basketball—and set off with Michelle to party in Rio."
My final four pick in the Middle East(as US allies). Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait. In the end, the only one standing with the US will be Israel.
What a bunch of tossers the British are. It was just in 2009 that Qaddafi paid them 2.7 billion USD in danegeld, 100 million for each individual killed by the Lockerbie bombing. Now they are the most vociferous in calling for his head on a platter. That is almost Arab levels of ingratitude.
I'm far from being a British fan, but they had a change of government in the meantime and Labour is known to crawl prostrate before Muslims. So called Conservatives are just Neocons with strong Zionist connections, but in this case it suits my perspective, otherwise not so much. But I think France is the real driver here, coz Libya is in their sphere of influence and the French are known to be a wannabe "superpower", so now they have an excuse to show everybody their fancy hardware.
We are at war.
Sadly, since Obama and Hillary conspired with the UN rather than presenting their case for war to the American people in Congress, we will not hear any outrage from Democrats.
To the Democrats, the UN knows better than the American people. We function merely as its preferred Janissaries.
I don't know, I think if we miss this opportunity to tip Gaddafi over we'd regret it....
If "we" miss this opportunity? "We" don't have any such opportunity.
"Seems to me like the guy wanting to upset the apple cart in the Muslim world is always more fundamentalist than the guy running the cart."
It appears to be a generational changing of the guard. Ghaddafi, Saddam, whatshisname in Yemen, Mubarrak, and the like all came up in the 50-60s secular, Cold-War era that translated into pan arabism, nationalism, and vaguely leftist anti-colonialism. Religion was a lip service thing to them. I don't believe that Quaddafi is any more religious than Saddam was, which was, not at all. I think the jarring discordance between their youthful ideological pretentions and the medieval, third world fundamentalism of their peoples explains some of the "weird" factor in these guys.
Nima M said, "If I had to guess, the following will happen....,All past business agreements made between Libya and the West are maintained."
No one here seems to understand that Americans, British, French, and Italian interests are now trying to improve on the agreements they formerly had with the swindler Khaddafi.
Khaddafi screwed European oil companies. All the Euro governments hate him. Now that the rebels are really desperate, they will cut a sweet deal with the Euros and even give American plutocrats a taste.
The rebels are now ready to give away the store. Halliburton, Exxon, and KBR are saying, "Now we can do business. Send for the Air Force!"
There is a method to Obama's ostensible madness.
Chinese growth in demand alone makes it imperative that oil keeps flowing.
Then shouldn't China pick a side in Libya, and arm them or support them with their troops?
True - China's ability to project military power that far is limited, but couldn't they cut a deal with Egypt to intervene "for humanitarian reasons", and pay off the Egyptians?
"He kept order, and pumped the gas. WTF else do they want from Libya? Christ."
Hilary said the world can't have peace as long as women are oppressed in Musiim countries.
White males are always such tools.
Bill Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 100 names in the phone book than by the Harvard faculty.
Similarly after reading these comments on this difficult and complex issue I'd rather have our foreign policy be directed by these commenters than by Obama, Clinton, and the State Department.
All of the comments here reveal an impressive breath of knowledge and judgement in their authors - except Whiskey of course.
Albertosaurus
"Bill Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 100 names in the phone book than by the Harvard faculty."
Sure, because those first 100 people in the phone book would be too ignorant and dumb to do anything on their own. They would only be nominal figures who'd have to depend on and take orders from guys with money--the kind of people Buckley liked. Sarah Palin, for example, is such a do-do that she gets all her talking points from the Republican Estabilshment dominated by Neocons.
But if in the past, most people with money were conservative or Republican while the eggheads were mostly liberal, today both the rich and intellectual class are liberal. Liberals won the culture war, which means the children of rich people went to colleges taught by liberal and leftist professors.
"...might it not be a good idea to sound-ize some silent films? I dislike the accompanying music of most silents so much that I them muted. But... if realistic sound were to be added, it might be pretty cool. Intertitles are the worst, breaking the flow of the imagery."
There was some experimentation with sound effects in silent films. Murnau added some sound effects to his films. Off-hand, I can think of the doorman's whistle in The Last Laugh. And Riesenfeld's score for Sunrise includes some sort of whistle imitating a pig's squeal and a horn suggesting the Man calling for his Wife.
Murnau had also got the use of intertitles down to a bare minimum. He used dozens in Nosferatu (1922) but in the next few years severely curtailed their use in his films. I think there are only 2 in The Last Laugh (1924). There are a prologue and a handful of intertitles in Sunrise (1927), due to its more elaborate storyline; but I don't think the intertitles impede the narrative flow of the film at all.
And so it is on.
Over $60,000,000 in just the cost of Tomahawk missiles already launched. You tax dollars at work to further destabilize an oil exporter. Brilliant!
Anonymous said...
So much for the Bell Curve.
http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/18/belonging-matters-researchers-halve-racial-gpa-gap-with-brief-exercise/
Optimistic JeremiahJohnbalaya: If one hour of positive reinforcement can really overcome a lifetime of constant exposure to the liberal racism narrative, then maybe there is hope after all.
Pessimistic JeremiahJohnbalaya: Wow, I really hope that those 25 test subjects do not accurately reflect the average black's mental fragility and malleability.
Though Bush was one of the worst presidents in US history, could he have been a kind of idiot savant? Did the Iraq War indirectly pave the way for recent outcries for greater freedom in the Middle East? Suppose US had not invaded Iraq. Hussein would still be in power. The Middle East would be more stable. But, Hussein was removed. During the intense yrs of conflict, the Middle East was united in anti-Americanism. Things were out of control, but people got the message that a tyrant could be removed and the people could take part in the political process, no matter how flawed or imperfect. Arab leaders--tyrants most of them--lectured to Americans about the impossibility of spreading democracy in the region. But as time passed, things more or less stablized in Iraq. Though anti-Americanism was rife during the Bush yrs, as US began to move out of Iraq, the rage of the Arab masses passed from the American invader to the Arab tyrants. Rage, once ignited, psychologically needed to fix on a target.
Alqaeda also played its hand badly by committing terrorist attacks against other Muslims. Though Alqaeda found a second life in Iraq, it also met its doom there, as even Sunni insurgents cut their lies to the psychotic organization whose sole agenda was to ignite wholesale civil war between Sunnis and Shias.
Some might argue that recent events were ignited by two other idiot savants: Bernanke and Osama Bin Laden. Bernanke, by printing mountains of dollars, devalued world currency and raised food prices around the world, making life more difficult for the masses of poor in nations like Egypt. And Osama Bin Laden, by attacking US in 9/11, triggered off a series of events that brought US deeper into the Middle East, which in turn created lots of social and political instability, which indirectly may have led to current pro-democratic or populist events. One wonders how things might have been if Osama hadn't attack US on 9/11. Or if Bush hadn't invaded Iraq. Or if Wall Street hadn't brought down the US economy and necessitated the printing of dollars and weakened the world economy, driving desperate people into the streets. History is one big accident.
Anthony said...
Chinese growth in demand alone makes it imperative that oil keeps flowing.
Then shouldn't China pick a side in Libya, and arm them or support them with their troops?
True - China's ability to project military power that far is limited, but couldn't they cut a deal with Egypt to intervene "for humanitarian reasons", and pay off the Egyptians?
The Chinese are purely mercantilist in all this. Why stray outside the B/W lines of trade and touch the tarbabies of financial, cultural and military intervention if you don't have to.
American and Europe will do all the heavy lifting, pay all the financial and non-financial costs for years to come to keep the markets as open and working as possible.
All this dirty, thankless and expensive work makes much of the rest of the world hate, resent and envy Europe and the US. It will also make Chinese, who are indifferent to anything but profit, look better by contrast and enhance their future trading positions.
'We' may be at war with Libya, but WE are at war with the people who would have 'us' wage war in Libya.
When 1000s of Muslim hoodlums burn cars and attack whites in France, Sarkozy does next to nothing. But when there's a civil war raging between Gaddafi loyalists and rebels, the West has to 'do something' to 'save civilians'. And the West says NO FLY ZONE, but its own jets fly all over Libya to bomb targets. My guess is the West wants neither Gaddafi nor the rebels to win. It wants Libya to be stuck in a permanent state of limbo so as to play divide-and-rule. The West used the current crisis to to turn Libya into what Iraq was in the 90s under the NO FLY provision. Hussein was still in power but ineffective while anti-Hussein forces were dependent on Western support and backing.
The West may intervene in Libya only to the extent of, in effect, dividing the nation into 2 or 3 parts. Gaddafi, weakened and afraid, may come to the table and make concessions to Western demands. Rebels, afraid of Gaddafi were NO FLY ZONE to end, will make huge concessions to Western oil interests in the territory they control. It would be to western interest to ensure that no one side takes total power in Libya. Just as the West created bogus nation-states like Kuwait and United Arab Emirates for its oil interests, it could do pretty much the same in Libya in everything but the name.
At least Bush gave us a play on keeping a lid on oil prices (by bringing Iraq online under US protection/control)
Is that even the case? I'd like to see some evidence for this speculation about Iraq having 3x Saudi Arabia's oil reserves. And I'd like to see the numbers for Iraqi oil production pre-Iraq Attaq I, and now. I have a very hard time believing the numbers have improved now vs. then. Muslims simply do not accept infidel rule (including infidel occupation), and are usually willing (in sufficient numbers, anyway) to shit where they eat until they're free of it. Including destroying their own oil production capacity.
Chinese growth in demand alone makes it imperative that oil keeps flowing. Unless you all want to move to South Central and ride the Blue Line (I would not advise it). Social peace in the US requires cheap oil.
You have some of this stuff mixed up. Urban mass transit is dangerous and unpleasant to civilized people because they have a cheap oil alternative. It is not inherently dangerous and unpleasant to them. If they did not have a cheap alternative, they'd make UMT safe and pleasant.
I'm not a UMT booster but that is the reality. Same with white flight; it's the easy way out.
I think the labeling of all troublemakers in the Middle East as Islamists and Al Qaida-linked extremists has more to do with selling the US on helping the existing governments keep control, than with any particular differences in beliefs. Think about how the "communist" label got tossed around during the cold war--it's the same phenomenon.
You may be right, but note that I'm not labeling all troublemakers in the ME as Islamists, much less Al-Qaeda-linked. I'm just saying that the general trend of ME populism seems to be toward Sharia and Islamic government, like in SA. In short, they seem to take their religion far more seriously than westerners, and seem far more inclined toward integration of church and state, if you will.
What if megalomaniacal murderers like Khadafy and Saddam Hussein represent the very BEST we can hope for out of hellholes like Libya and Iraq?
That's in the neighborhood of my working assumption.
The ability to keep the oil flowing requires periodic US military force success (getting rid of guys who don't get with the program) and realistic fear of our abilities and resolve. Doing nothing ala Ron Paul or Obama's instincts is great for Switzerland. The US is not Switzerland and needs cheap global oil.
No, the oil flow requires the understanding among the elites of oil-producing nations that if they don't get with the program (oil at reasonable volume and price), we'll kill them and break their stuff. That achieved, killing them and breaking their stuff is counterproductive. Less is more, here, and it's far more about sending a clear message and behaving consistently than it is about periodically killing them and breaking their stuff.
Avatar will be a huge flop.
I'd just like to toot my own horn here by pointing out my prediction - that Avatar would SUCK ASS* - did come true. I only watched about a third of that movie, on account of it's hard to watch a movie when your eyes won't stop rolling.
* as a movie, as sci-fi. As a non-interactive video game, it rawked.
When, Whiskey, are you going to address my oft-repeated point that U.S. could be oil-independent IF we Fischer-Tropsch-processed WY coal into synfuels, at very likely LESS cost than the cost of oil on the open market plus the aircraft carriers to keep it flowing -- for the benefit of the world (i.e., Israel)?
Do you have some basic numbers for this, by any chance? Coal reserves, cost of extraction, cost of conversion, etc., etc., etc?
Nima M said, "If I had to guess, the following will happen....,All past business agreements made between Libya and the West are maintained."
No one here seems to understand that Americans, British, French, and Italian interests are now trying to improve on the agreements they formerly had with the swindler Khaddafi.
Khaddafi screwed European oil companies. All the Euro governments hate him. Now that the rebels are really desperate, they will cut a sweet deal with the Euros and even give American plutocrats a taste.
The rebels are now ready to give away the store. Halliburton, Exxon, and KBR are saying, "Now we can do business. Send for the Air Force!"
There is a method to Obama's ostensible madness.
I can totally buy that. Makes more sense than the other arguments I've heard. The trouble is, once we go in and start killing people and breaking stuff, the oil infrastructure could be damaged. And we'll probably piss people off. But yeah, I can buy the "this is our chance, because we've got to be able to do better than Ghaddaffey." Sources on how all the oil companies hate him are welcome. :)
Hilary said the world can't have peace as long as women are oppressed in Musiim countries.
White males are always such tools.
I dunno, sounds like Hillary's the tool on this one. Just another leftist excuse to kill people and break stuff; it's not as if we're actually going to de-oppress wymminz in the Muslim world.
Sometimes, bigotry is based on 'racist' ignorance. It's been said that 'racists' and 'xenophobes' fear what they don't know or what they know only through a distorted lens.
Not really, at least, not often, in whites anyway. Such "bigotry" is weak, having no real basis, and swept away by the wind of PC media. The white "bigots" are generally true believers, anymore. "Bigotry" for whites involves sacrifice.
"Hey, did you know what c-r-a-z-y thing "Whiskey" just wrote?"
"No, what?
"Wow, really?! He's just so Wrong!
"Guess I'd better go on Steve's blog and set that "Whiskey" straight. Its so fun arguing with trolls."
Boring, boring, boring.
"Do you have some basic numbers for this, by any chance? Coal reserves, cost of extraction, cost of conversion, etc., etc., etc?'
I can't provide links to everything I'm going to tell you because a lot of my knowledge comes just from living in WY for decades and reading the local paper.
That said:
I know that Powder River Basin coal is the biggest single reserve of coal in the US and one of the biggest in the world. It is strip-mined, which is the cheapest method.
I've seen figures that PRB coal reserves are sufficient to provide U.S. energy requirements for 200 years.
I've seen in our local paper that WY strip-mined and Fischer-Tropsch'd coal-to-liquids is competitive when oil is $70.
So with oil at $100, and counting in the cost to US taxpayers for military might to keep the Persian Gulf shipping lanes open, American coal-to-liquids is CHEAP.
And since the Germans in WWII used the process to fight a war on 2 fronts when they were blockaded by the Allies and could import no oil at all, the process is PROVEN.
Fischer-Tropsch processes CAN be used to strip the carbon from the coal-based fuels, at obviously higher costs, if we must do so to make the CO2 alarmists happy.
DKRW is currently building a pilot plant at coal mine-mouth in Medicine Bow, WY. The market meltdown in 2008put it on hold, but I heard recently it's back on.
Here's some links for further reading:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=pumping-coal
http://www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/2011/01/clean-coal-task-force-funds-12-projects.html
http://coalgasificationnews.com/2009/02/23/dkrw-plans-to-construct-coal-gasification-plant-in-wyoming/
http://coalgasificationnews.com/success-projects/
http://www.synfuels.com/
http://www.allbusiness.com/operations/shipping/404975-1.html
http://www.dkrwadvancedfuels.com/fw/main/Medicine_Bow-111.html
Whiskey said...There's not even a schedule announced for Avatar 2. That right there tells you the whole thing was probably a wash.
I drew the same inference when Cameron never made "Titanic 2."
"I dunno, sounds like Hillary's the tool on this one. Just another leftist excuse to kill people and break stuff; it's not as if we're actually going to de-oppress wymminz in the Muslim world."
Democracy gives women greater choices. At the least, it destroys the alpha male tyrant meme. The mental image, idea, picture, lockdown thought that men rule in ape-competition for power and sustain power by power. If this is what Hilary is after, then it seems a reasonable target for butch feminists.
JSM, thanks for the links. What is consumed, besides the feedstock? The Wikipedia article is a bit dense. I'm just wondering if there's some hidden limiting resource here. I gather that cobalt, iron, and ruthenium are favored catalysts, and my guess is we're not in any danger of running out of iron before we run out of coal, but...
"I drew the same inference when Cameron never made "Titanic 2."
No why the heck do I need to see a Chris Rock or Will Farrell movie when I have this site?
It's all about cost and CO2 emissions, right? Let oil get expensive enough, and there are many alternatives that win.
We would be so much better off, as a nation and as a whole world, if we'd invested all the money and ingenuity of the war on terror into energy independence. Let the bastards eat their oil, or more likely sell it to the plastics industry at 1/20 of current prices, while we drive cars powered by bioengineered algae or gas from coal or nuke-plant-charged batteries.
"No why the heck do I need to see a Chris Rock or Will Farrell movie when I have this site?"
It reminds me a "Wayne's World", except populated by bigots.
As of February 9, 2010, Avatar has grossed over $2.24 billion in worldwide sales.
The upper bound of estimates for cost seems to be $500 million.
Svig,
Re the catalysts for FT processes that's an interesting question.
I've never heard anyone mention concerns about shortages of the metals. What I've heard them talk about is the price.
What I DO know is the PRB coal is already low in sulfur, which I'm under the impression that sulfur is a big deal w/r/t destroying the catalysts. I seem to remember when PRB coal-to-liquids first started getting talked about in the '70s, the fact that PRB coal is low sulfur seemed to be one of the significant advantages.
"I dunno, sounds like Hillary's the tool on this one. Just another leftist excuse to kill people and break stuff; it's not as if we're actually going to de-oppress wymminz in the Muslim world."
Democracy gives women greater choices.
Democracy allows women to oppress themselves while some of them keep blaming "the white male patriarchy" for all the trouble in the world.
Svig,
Re the catalysts for FT processes that's an interesting question.
I've never heard anyone mention concerns about shortages of the metals. What I've heard them talk about is the price.
Same thing, more or less, but my thinking is always in terms of "resilient communities"; if TSHTF, there won't be boats bringing it in from China. So I think in terms of "what can we run out of?"
It's like with batteries for electric cars, I kept running into materials used in their production that were in short supply, found mostly in bumfuckistan, etc.
Folding a resilient community requirement into your thinking really tends to emphasize the KISS strategy.
It reminds me of "Wayne's World", except populated by bigots.
I'll have to take your word for it; I've never watched Wayne's World.
In my experience, people who throw the word "bigot" around tend to be leftist bigots themselves, and consequently don't even know what the word means (necessary, since if they did, they'd know they were bigots, which is not conducive to remaining a leftist bigot).
Maybe I'm being unfair though, because very few people seem to know what the word means any more, or use it outside of its new, leftist context.
But I am manifestly not a bigot. I'm perfectly tolerant of worldviews and practices with which I disagree, insofar as they aren't imposed on me. This is in stark contrast with leftists in particular, and the mainstream in general, who are obviously intolerant toward anyone who wanders too far off their plantation.
This is a natural, common tendency on the political fringe; we're not tolerated, so we know what it feels like, and we wouldn't wish it on anyone.
As of February 9, 2010, Avatar has grossed over $2.24 billion in worldwide sales.
The upper bound of estimates for cost seems to be $500 million.
I wonder what kind of demo a fellow has to show around to get funding for a $500 million non-interactive video game. It musta been a doozy. Bet it was heavy on the phosphorescent phorest.
"Same thing, more or less, but my thinking is always in terms of "resilient communities"; if TSHTF, there won't be boats bringing it in from China. So I think in terms of "what can we run out of?"
Aye.
Still, somehow Nazi Germany managed, even though the Allied bombs were raining on them. That certainly counts as a fairly impressive S hitting the F scenario, don't you think?
Australia is world's No. 1 producer of iron, and they are our friends.
Svigor:
For a resilient community, it seems like it should be fine to need occasional trade for rare stuff with others, but what you *really* want to avoid is having that be an ongoing urgent need, right? In the worst case you get dependency on oil, where some disruption in your supply means your cars stop running and your lights go out.
I think historically, even when everything falls apart, high-value things get traded if they're made. (Oil and diamonds and addictive drugs continue to be extracted and shipped out of some truly godawful places, for example.) But a lot of high-value stuff can't be made when the big markets break down. Let TSHTF for long enough, and there will probably be nobody making high-end microprocessors or new nuclear fuel rods or some pharmaceuticals or lithium-ion batteries, even if there's a market for them and the raw materials are intermittently available.
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