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The NYT reports:
Forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi advanced rapidly on Wednesday, seizing towns they ceded just days ago after intense allied airstrikes and hounding rebel fighters into a chaotic retreat....
There were few signs of the punishing airstrikes that reversed the loyalists’ first push.
Did God not hear
Thomas Friedman's prayer?!
I am proud of my president, really worried about him, and just praying that he’s lucky...
I hope Qaddafi’s regime collapses like a sand castle, that the Libyan opposition turns out to be decent and united and that they require just a bare minimum of international help to get on their feet. Then U.S. prestige will be enhanced and this humanitarian mission will have both saved lives and helped to lock another Arab state into the democratic camp.
Dear Lord, please make President Obama lucky.
Posts
210 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 210 of 210God: "Lucky!?...I thought Friedman said 'Yucky' " Heh.
The worst aspect of this kinetic bullshit is the simple fact that now obama and Hillary have to have their military excursion turn out to be a success. This could take forever, and I don't think that they can have success unless there are forces on the ground. Watch them try to think of a reason that they have to do it. Something we don't need. Right, garage? Alpha? fls?
Original Mike said...
Does NATO have its own planes?
3/30/11 12:26 PM
I get your point, but I think the answer is yes. NATO has its own AWACS.
Anything that drops bombs are owned by member nations.
Scott M sed:
"We could have won Iraq in less than four years easy under those circumstances."
We won the Iraq war in three weeks. What followed was occupation--occupation of a country with several warring factions, some warring against us.
WWII was not over in four years for us. It ended with the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951. We were still returning German POWs in 1949, and we were generally returning them to work gangs in France before they were repatriated.
The occupations of Japan and Germany went more smoothly because both countries were exhausted. In Japan the emperor, a living "god," decreed cooperation. In Germany, if the Werwolves (German resistance) killed a US soldier, SOP was to set up a field piece and shell the offending village randomly through the night (reprisals against civilian populations were not proscribed in the Geneva Convention until 1949). Also, Germans in the American sector were well aware they had it better than their countrymen.
Don't let the fog of time cloud your perception of our success in Iraq.
I certainly hope that the stories of CIA people being on the ground in Libya are true.
Its not possible to conduct close air support without observers on the ground.
The notion that we could do a bombing campaign involving troops in contact with nobody on the ground is ludicrous.
36,
You still fail to get the point. Your stated opinion is that we are obliged to go to war for humantiarian reasons. Being obliged means you must. It isn't optional else it isn't an obligation. While Obama did not use the word "oblige", he did suggest something similar. Yet, both of you blithely ignore situations far, far worse than Libya.
This suggests that you believe no such thing and are simly posturing. Moral posturing is a terrible reason--maybe even the worse reason--to go to war.
Joe,
I concede the term obliged may not be the best word to describe my opinion. My thoughts are that the U.S. should take the position of being in favor of engaging in humanitarian crises versus taking a completely hands off approach. Obviously, each situation warrants a separate review before we act taking into consideration numerous factors such as military versus diplomatic or economic options, force availability, threats (N. Korea with nukes for example), costs, etc.
Again, regarding Libya, in MY opinion I believe that we are justified in engaging due to the humanitarian concerns, as stated by Obama, which I must assume are partially based on classified information on the situation on the ground there (this assumption is just based on my own experience working with Intel while in the service).
As far as ignoring other situations far, far worse than Libya, as I stated previously, that is U.S. policy. I don’t claim to speak for the U.S. Again, MY opinion on those situations is stated in the first paragraph above. Also, as I stated previously, in MY opinion, the reason the U.S, and other nations, engage in military action in some countries with humanitarian crises and not in others is the national interests regarding oil resources. Just look at a map. Three of the last five major military conflicts have been involved with oil producing countries – Iraq in 1991 and again in 2003 and now Libya. Do you not believe that the oil industry has a tremendous amount of influence in the U.S. and other countries?
I guess now we can confirm, using our president as evidence, that it's better to be lucky than smart.
So in other words we didn't know were the WMDs were before invading Iraq? Interesting.
Well we actually knew where they were. Libya was being paid by Saddam to develop them. You can look it up.
And why did Kdaffy give them up? Well he may have actually have said, "Nice country I have here and I don't want nothin bad to happen to it."
I see that Obama has sent in CIA "advisors."
Just like JFK did.
In Viet Nam.
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