Roude Leiw
Member
i guess he was hinting at germany.mentalfloss said:
UN and NATO to Gaddafi: Operation Odyssey Dawn |OT|
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RustyNails
Member
Rebels have retreated from Ras Lanuf. Jeeze these guys! Stand your ground dammit.
Ignis Fatuus
Banned
Seriously? That's some epic fail.RustyNails said:
Roude Leiw
Member
i am wondering if any of the defected soldiers are actually fighting for the rebels.
RustyNails
Member
Yep. Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid is saying that its a repeat of what happened earlier, except with mortars and artillery instead of tanks and fighter jets. Now we have to see if the rebels will lose Ajdabiya as well.Ignis Fatuus said:
Ignis Fatuus
Banned
The subject was sale of Libyan oil by Qatar so the slip didn't exactly come out of nowhere.Ushojax said:
LQX
Member
Collateral damage is different from outright massacre of people on a wide scale.mentalfloss said:OBAMA: "Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action."
That said Obama is full of shit. That conference yesterday was almost laughable.
seattle6418
Member
If they are using AC-130´s or guided missiles it doesn´t matter.
There is no such thing as a cyrurgical attack.
Thousands of civilians will die, no matter what, in a situation like this one.
It´s just a matter of wheather we want to support or not.
My country (Brazil) chose not to vote because i think between letting a dictator kill some, and letting us kill some, there´s no practical answer.
There is no such thing as a cyrurgical attack.
Thousands of civilians will die, no matter what, in a situation like this one.
It´s just a matter of wheather we want to support or not.
My country (Brazil) chose not to vote because i think between letting a dictator kill some, and letting us kill some, there´s no practical answer.
Roude Leiw
Member
so far there are no confirmed deaths of civilians by coalition forces. you dont kill civilians by blowing up tanks.seattle6418 said:
seattle6418
Member
Roude Leiw said:
You believe that?
Governments tell whatever they want about their own military actions. After Vietnam journalists do not have that kind of freeness along the battlelines. They just pass on informations given by generals and commanders.
Every war is like this, they keep telling us about "precision airstrikes", "strategic airstikes", but in the end thousands of people end up ketting killed.
I just think about the situation people are facing in Tripoli: the chances of them getting bombed in next two months are very high, either by Gaddafi, or by Nato.
To support the killings is to let Ghaddafi kills his people and to keep getting juicy oil countracts.seattle6418 said:
I don't know if civilians died or will die , but you can't say that the coalition would kill as many people by mistake as Ghaddafi would have by purging Bengazi.
All journalists aren't American...And there's a lot of them in rebel cities and Tripoli etc....
If you prefer to believe fucking Ghaddafi's propaganda channel it's seriously mind numbing.
Ignis Fatuus
Banned
Uh huh. And what do you make of the civilians in Libya, especially in Misrata right now which is receiving the brunt of those precision attacks, who insist that there have been no "injuries let alone deaths" from the coalition air strikes? If the air strikes are killing them and not the Gaddafi tanks and artillery in the city, then why are the local doctors begging for more?seattle6418 said:
AlimNassor
Banned
I suppose things aren't looking good for the rebels now... :/
Joel Was Right
Member
The resolution was to protect civilians, not regime change - although that was the desired outcome of the bombings. If the rebels cannot win the fight against the Libyan military, then the international community cannot intervene
Roude Leiw
Member
the air strikes wont kill thousands of civilians. gaddafi forces on the other hand already killed at least 1000 civilians.seattle6418 said:
Joel Was Right
Member
Purkake4 said:
The legality of this resolution was one of the biggest factors the leaders were keen to emphasise, to invoke the example of Iraq.
Ignis Fatuus
Banned
I can't help but notice that the air strikes that were most beneficial to the rebel front lines have ceased ever since the NATO takeover was decided.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-counterattack-20110330,0,3358498.story
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-counterattack-20110330,0,3358498.story
I would blame Turkey, Hussam.
TacticalFox88
Banned
All US bombers have pulled out of Libya right?
Joel Was Right
Member
I think it was established that airstrikes alone will not change a regime. If people want the rebels to win, they need infantry support.
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
Because Turkey realizes there is no clear plan?
seattle6418
Member
Slow down people, i´m not giving any props to scumbag Gaddafi. What i meant to say is that this is a difficult decision because any path you choose leads to multiple killings.
Plus, the "rebels" are shaping up to be just like the Northern Alliance we (the western world) supported during the war against Afghanistan. In the end people found out they were straight drug dealers looking for money, but back in the day they we portraited as the only hope for human kind in the region.
Plus, the "rebels" are shaping up to be just like the Northern Alliance we (the western world) supported during the war against Afghanistan. In the end people found out they were straight drug dealers looking for money, but back in the day they we portraited as the only hope for human kind in the region.
seattle6418
Member
sangreal said:
Which is the question i was trying to raise. Replace shit with with shit while losing a billion or so in the process is a question i´m sure Obama is thinking.
I commented on that because some people (not necessarily GAF) think that this can easilly be solved with a couple of bombings and the assassination of Gaddafi.
I´m not giving any solutions, i´m just stating that the civilians there are in big trouble because there´s no true saviour at the moment.
The bigger problem is what happens on the ground if we do manage to get rid of Gaddafi? What makes us so damn sure the people of Tripoli and the rest of Libya will just accept rule by the rebels? How are they going to enforce that rule? What happens if it just throws the country into civil war with a bunch of warring factions sort of like the tribalism in Afghanistan?
Jason's Ultimatum
Member
avaya said:
Because there seems to be a difference in opinions on how NATO air strikes should be conducted, and which targets should be attacked.
It also doesn't help that France and Turkey's relationship is strained by the idea of Turkey's request to be in the EU.
~Devil Trigger~
In favor of setting Muslim women on fire
....so you're saying do nothingseattle6418 said:
seattle6418
Member
Gaborn said:
Exactly. I trully believe Obama only got into this because, well "i guess we have to do something" and not by any other strategic decision.
Maybe there is something the United Nations could do, but it´s not a simple equation of just "arm rebels + kill Gaddafi = peace".
Funky Papa
FUNK-Y-PPA-4
I've been critical of the intervention, but that kind of attitude resulted in the massacres of the former Yugoslavia.
Funky Papa said:
You can point to many massacres around the world (Darfur comes to mind) where the US has not chosen to intervene. You can also I think safely assume that there are going to be in the future many massacres where we won't intervene. Using the "there's a massacre going on" argument can be applied to any and every position in the world. The US has always taken the view that it's only going to intervene when our vital national interests are directly threatened. Secretary Gates doesn't even believe that about Libya!
seattle6418
Member
Yeah, it´s even tougher because both sides have arguments. Altough i think Yugoslavia was a bit different.
And to think that in the world right now we have at least 100 leaders like Gaddafi waiting to be thrown out...
And to think that in the world right now we have at least 100 leaders like Gaddafi waiting to be thrown out...
RustyNails
Member
Outcome 1 - No intervention: Benghazi is purgedGaborn said:
Outcome 2 - Intervention: Benghazi is saved
Now tell me why outcome 1 has fewer negative repercussions than outcome 2.
empty vessel
Member
RustyNails said:
I don't think we know the answer to that yet. It may have fewer, it may have more. Outcome 2 could lead to more total misery than outcome 1 when everything is said and done, because intervention can have long-lasting repercussions (for example, like Soviet and American intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s is still being felt today). I don't pretend to know the answer, but I also don't believe anybody who says they do.
RustyNails said:
The problem with outcome 2 is that at the moment there is no endgame for us. If Gaddafi had slaughtered the people of Benghazi it may (or it may not) have united the Arab world to go in themselves and deal with Gaddafi. But the issue isn't outcome 1 because it didn't happen, at least not yet (the way the rebels are being driven back who knows what Gaddafi may or may not be able to do).
The issue is outcome 2. I think the biggest problem as I've said over and again is that we don't seem to have a plan for extricating ourselves. We seem to assume that if we get rid of Gaddafi our work is basically done with when I see a very good chance of that being far less than half of our effort in Libya. The moment we actually remove Gaddafi we are committing ourselves to establishing a new government that we hope the people of Libya will accept. We don't know how qualified the rebels are to rule and I don't think we know that Tripoli or most of the rest of the country is going to accept the rebels and once they have the power we don't know that they won't turn out to be as bad as Gaddafi himself has been.
Are we going to have another Shah of Iran type situation the locals won't accept? What if the Libyans just the "new leader" as a puppet of the US?
Obama is either delusional in that he sees the current mission as simplistically as he tried to portray it last night or he is lying to us about the scope of what we have done. We're going to be involved in this situation for better or for worse for a long, long time.
And I'm not even saying everything WILL turn out badly either incidentally. Maybe it will all go perfectly smoothly and not degenerate into an even worse civil war. But it very easily could.
radioheadrule83
Banned
I don't know why people can't get their heads around the idea that politicians have to be pragmatic towards foreign policy. Some assholes can be assholes with more impunity than others. They have more strategic geopolitical capital to burn, the countries who could intervene would have more to lose, and / or - they simply weigh the strategic odds of long term failure as against their national interests.
Doing nothing would have halted the democratic surge in Africa and the Middle East -- tyrants everywhere would have seen that they could respond to popular uprising with extermination. They would have been shown that they could get away with it... that the US and chief European powers are too 'overstretched' to stand in their way. Gadaffi had no cards to play to protect him from the consequences of his actions. No justification, no allies, no hope. Even his fellow African tyrants have not bothered to cry crocodile tears for him. He is a known tyrant, with a proven history of belligerence and links to terrorism. Having watched Mubarak try the strong-man card and fail, he went even more hardcore in his violent response, and openly stated on the world stage that he was going to go house to house cleansing his country of his popular political opposition. His actions resulted in foreign ex-pats fleeing into exile, the destruction of what progress Libya had made in integrating into the international community, and turbulance in the oil markets - as Libya produces 2% of the world's oil. He was not only threatening the peaceful protest movement sweeping the middle east, he was threatening thousands of innocent lives. The UN did the right thing for once and managed to act before it was way too late.
We're all too quick to criticise our own leaders -- sometimes, cunts like Gadaffi bring things like this on themselves!
The toil and cost of unpopular and incorrectly justified wars like Iraq has clearly made us weary of getting involved in further conflict - but the world has to be strong, but pragmatic. It cannot turn always turn a blind eye and appease in moments like these.
Doing nothing would have halted the democratic surge in Africa and the Middle East -- tyrants everywhere would have seen that they could respond to popular uprising with extermination. They would have been shown that they could get away with it... that the US and chief European powers are too 'overstretched' to stand in their way. Gadaffi had no cards to play to protect him from the consequences of his actions. No justification, no allies, no hope. Even his fellow African tyrants have not bothered to cry crocodile tears for him. He is a known tyrant, with a proven history of belligerence and links to terrorism. Having watched Mubarak try the strong-man card and fail, he went even more hardcore in his violent response, and openly stated on the world stage that he was going to go house to house cleansing his country of his popular political opposition. His actions resulted in foreign ex-pats fleeing into exile, the destruction of what progress Libya had made in integrating into the international community, and turbulance in the oil markets - as Libya produces 2% of the world's oil. He was not only threatening the peaceful protest movement sweeping the middle east, he was threatening thousands of innocent lives. The UN did the right thing for once and managed to act before it was way too late.
We're all too quick to criticise our own leaders -- sometimes, cunts like Gadaffi bring things like this on themselves!
The toil and cost of unpopular and incorrectly justified wars like Iraq has clearly made us weary of getting involved in further conflict - but the world has to be strong, but pragmatic. It cannot turn always turn a blind eye and appease in moments like these.
We will see if this will end up as another Bosnia/Herzegovina. In the end the no-fly zone didn't help that much and I think it will be same thing here (not in scale). Gaddafi has trained forces and sophisticated weaponry when compared to the rebels, he can wait, take it slowly and take advantage of rebels weaknesses. There has to be direct ground support or this doesn't end well. No, I'm not an strategist expert, just pessimistic about the whole situation.Funky Papa said:
RustyNails
Member
You are correct in your assessment. Gaddafi forces in the future may very well surround Benghazi again and launch another ultimatum for the city. But the core of my argument is that we were in a direct position to act and prevent the loss of lives in Benghazi, and we acted. I say 'we' not as USA, but the coalition, including the UN Mandate. Also by 'acted' I don't mean dropping bombs necessarily, but mobilized the coalition and set the stage for military intervention of the allied force. All completely legal under international law if you want to be technical. But going back to the outcomes, I believe that we would have very well fell into the trap of analysis paralysis where we try to come up with sub-scenarios of outcome 2 that may or may not eventually come to pass while Benghazians are being killed by Gaddafi forces. We took the risk of intervention and saving countless immediate lives.empty vessel said:
There are parallels to Afghanistan intervention in the late 1980s where we sided with Northern Alliance by supplying them with stingers. But the similarity stops there. Afghanistan did not have a peaceful pro-democracy movement like Libya that was brutally suppressed by the regime in weeks. Afghan rebels were truly 'rebels' that have been fighting an occupation army. Second, Afghanistan did not have an opposition unity government like Libya currently has. Today there was a summit in London with all the coalition powers being represented, including representatives from Libya's NTC. This is what was read today in London
Of course, we shouldn't take them at their word and they could be saying things we very well like to hear. But there's no reason to believe that they are illegitimate so far. France has recognized it as Libya's official government and Sec. Clinton has had meetings with them. That was hardly the case with Taliban and a far cry from their stated goals.
joseph1594
Member
The rebels seriously need to get their shit together. You cannot just expect to take down a military force just by driving straight ahead with rocket launchers. The rebel's quick advance worried me because they are just moving forward without moving back. the rebels need to prevent the jumpy, hot-blooded, untrained guys from just running to the front lines. While being far lightly armed than Gaddafi's forces causes the rebels to be at a huge disadvantage, the biggest disadvantage they have is there is no communication or command structure among their forces.
It is going to get nasty if Libya turns into a long stalemate where retreats, offensives, and counteroffensives become extremely common.
By the way, it isn't a very good analogy to compare Libya to Afghanistan. The situations in Libya and Afghanistan were/are completely different. Afghanistan is a rural, mountainous country where chaos and anarchy is allowed to flourish. Libya on the other hand is a very urbanized society and the average Libyan is far more wealthy and educated than the average Afghani. Also, the Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation differs greatly from the Libyan rebels ideologically. The Afghan resistance quite openly declared their goal as driving the godless heathens out of Afghanistan. However, the Libyan rebels seem quite adamant to emphasize their goals as freedom and democracy. While it could be just total bullshit, at least the Libyan rebels are different than the Afghan rebels in they are trying to make it look like they are for a free democracy.
It is going to get nasty if Libya turns into a long stalemate where retreats, offensives, and counteroffensives become extremely common.
By the way, it isn't a very good analogy to compare Libya to Afghanistan. The situations in Libya and Afghanistan were/are completely different. Afghanistan is a rural, mountainous country where chaos and anarchy is allowed to flourish. Libya on the other hand is a very urbanized society and the average Libyan is far more wealthy and educated than the average Afghani. Also, the Afghan resistance to the Soviet occupation differs greatly from the Libyan rebels ideologically. The Afghan resistance quite openly declared their goal as driving the godless heathens out of Afghanistan. However, the Libyan rebels seem quite adamant to emphasize their goals as freedom and democracy. While it could be just total bullshit, at least the Libyan rebels are different than the Afghan rebels in they are trying to make it look like they are for a free democracy.
SnakeswithLasers
Member
Wait, you're telling me that arguing:Plumbob said:
"We aren't intervening in Sudan. Therefore, we shouldn't intervene in Libya."
Is a fallacy? It must be a true argument, because I've heard it so much lately! How can this be?
Rebels are mounting mirage rocket launchers on pick-up trucks, not sure how effective they will be in the battlefield 
Rebel Rocket-Trucks (Youtube)
Rebel Rocket-Trucks (Youtube)
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