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This isn't going to be relatively quick. This entire action is going to prolong the civil war for months. A lot of people are going to die as a result of that.
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Mar 19, 2011 22:07
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VikingSkull posted:As opposed to the quicker, more violent crushing of the rebels by Gadhafi and the purge that follows? The "rebels" are not like the people in the streets of Cairo. They're an alliance of tribes, as Libyan politics tend to be. There is no reason to believe they wouldn't also violently crush and purge Qaddafi's allies following a victory. This is not an easy good vs. evil no matter how the media tries to portray it. It's the West intervening in something that isn't their business. Again. And again, we'll just make things worse than they were before.
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Mar 19, 2011 22:13
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VikingSkull posted:Yeah, only this time we were asked by the people of the country, the region, and the UN...and are doing it reluctantly. It's not that it's like Iraq and Afghanistan, it's that we are prolonging the civil war instead of letting it run its course. And at the moment, we don't even know what happens if Qaddafi loses. The best bet is Somalia, not democracy.
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Mar 19, 2011 22:21
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Cartouche posted:What the gently caress are you going on about? I suspect that your version of "running its course" is Gadaffy slaughtering civilians until there is nobody left to rebel. It's stupid to assume that Qaddafi is simply going to slaughter everyone. In the towns he has re-claimed, we have not seen these "purges" that everyone claims are going to happen. It's just justification for intervening where we don't belong. We picked a side in a civil war and now we're trying to justify it because they're the good guys and Qaddafi is the bad guy. As if.
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Mar 19, 2011 22:28
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L-Boned posted:You are either a troll or completely uneducated about the differences between Somalia and Libya to come to that conclusion. Libya's politics are heavily fragmented along tribal and clan lines, just like Somalia's. There isn't much reason to think it won't end up divided among warlords and tribes following the collapse of the central government.
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Mar 19, 2011 22:32
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Zorba the Greek posted:To assume? So you think Gaddafi is a great guy then? You're so naive it's hilarious. Actually, no. But I think saying the rebels are great guys is idiotic. Why don't we intervene in Yemen? They're violently putting down protests, too. With snipers. In fact, they don't even have the excuse that the protestors were picking up weapons and fighting the government in Yemen.
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Mar 19, 2011 22:35
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evilweasel posted:A civil war isn't something where the 'natural' result has any moral value, we are not observing penguins in the artic trying to shoot a documentary with no human interference. "Running its course" doesn't have a moral value, but in this case is the best option. It will quickly be resolved if we let it go. By intervening, we simply prolong the conflict and that will lead to massive suffering.
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Mar 19, 2011 22:36
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evilweasel posted:What do you think the difference is? One is a strong ally and the other is an easy target.
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Mar 19, 2011 22:37
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Calling this a "genocide" is not only a misnomer, but incredibly offensive to what a real genocide is. There's a difference between violently putting down a rebellion and ethnic cleansing. Obviously, violently putting down a rebellion is bad. But that's what autocrats do when their regime is threatened. That's hardly unexpected. This happens all the time, and we feel no need to intervene at other times. Now suddenly Libya is a "cause" and gosh, we gotta get over there and start saving people. Nevermind that our intervention will kill more people than it will save.
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Mar 19, 2011 22:40
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VikingSkull posted:Not only that, but Yemen was a particularly bad example to pick. The government there can say they are fighting Al-Qaeda and there's a chance it might actually be true. You think the peaceful protestors they're killing with snipers are Al-Qaeda?
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Mar 19, 2011 22:41
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evilweasel posted:Not only did you try to dismiss every point people made with a stupid semantic argument, it wasn't even one anyone made. I misread someone's post in the deluge of posts as saying Qaddafi was carrying out a genocide. My bad. You are all misinterpreting what I'm saying. I never said Qaddafi's victory will be bloodless. That's a strawman. I said that it will kill fewer people than a prolonged civil war will. There is no reason to believe that Qaddafi is going to embark on a campaign to wipe out his enemies forever. He reacted the way he did because the rebels began to "liberate" cities and that was a serious threat to his regime. Remember that there weren't very many journalists in Libya, and so it's impossible to even figure out the truth in regards to things like "Libya turned anti-aircraft guns on peaceful protestors." Correspondingly to the fact that there is no reason to believe Qaddafi is going to purge and exterminate everyone he hates, there is also no reason to believe that the rebels would not do the exact same thing he would do. Would we intervene against them to stop them from massacring the tribes that side with Qaddafi?
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Mar 19, 2011 22:50
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evilweasel posted:No. One has the potential to be solved through UN intervention that doesn't involve an invasion, the other does not. You're right, Yemen has a potential to be solved without a UN intervention. That potential is that Yemen's government will continue to crackdown on the protestors, who have not reached critical mass and will therefore fail.
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Mar 19, 2011 22:53
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evilweasel posted:I mean, he's quite openly, repeatedly, on tv, said he will. The rebels wouldn't have a similar incentive to establish a rule by fear: their legitimacy is based on his attacks on civilians, and they appear to have popular support (that's why they're so dangerous to the regime). Your view of tribal politics also appears overly simplistic: it's not a simple issue and this isn't one tribe vs. another: this is a popular movement, that is influenced by tribal loyalties and customs and the like. Not really much of a popular movement. We have no reason to believe that there were even attempts at large protests in Tripoli, which contains something like 1/3 the population of Libya. On the other hand, we saw in Cairo millions of people protesting against a government with what was likely the most formidable secret service apparatus in the Middle East. That was a popular movement - it quickly reached critical mass, making it nearly impossible to put down violently (because doing so would have been sucidal). The government was then unable to actually enforce its will, leading to breakdown of order. By contrast, the rebels never reached critical mass inside Tripoli. There were protests, sure. But there were protests in a lot of countries. A popular uprising is successful when the government is simply unable to rule after it loses the consent of its people. That never happened in Tripoli, which is by far the most important city. As for purges, he said he was going to kill the people trying to take down his regime. That's pretty standard fare, not indicative that he's going to institute the sort of collective punishment claimed in this thread. quote:Protracted civil wars are bloody things, but given the geography of Libya I don't see it as likely that this would follow the standard civil war script: it's a giant desert with dotted towns and cities that have actual importance. There's really no other option besides pitched battles. I'm not sure what you mean here. A back-and-forth civil war will be absolutely devastating regardless.
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Mar 19, 2011 23:10
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UK might recognize the Libyan rebels' Provisional Council. That will be interesting. The world's first internationally recognized government that exists solely on Twitter.
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Mar 31, 2011 06:10
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Lascivious Sloth posted:Is twitter a suburb of Benghazi? I'm not sure how much more demonstration it is possible to be given before you realize that there isn't any actual cohesive leadership of the Libyans fighting against Gaddafi, and that the "transitional government" is plainly nothing more than a PR outlet with no power whatsoever.
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Mar 31, 2011 06:20
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Lascivious Sloth posted:vvvv I disagree. There is a lot of evidence pointing towards a structured council. What you don't understand is that not all aspects of the organisation can suddenly develop overnight or work flawlessly without time and resources, least of all the military part of it. There is no evidence that it's working at all. In order to be a provisional government, you must actually govern something. While Benghazi is not controlled by Gaddafi, it's not really accurate to say it's controlled by this "structured council," as it's very apparent that no one really seems to care what it has to say. Except, of course, the West, which finds its existence very convenient so it can portray the rebels as a cohesive force rather than a ragtag coalition with widely differing agendas.
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Mar 31, 2011 06:39
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AllanGordon posted:Think them organizing and selling oil to Qatar goes a long way to prove that they are doing things. Also providing food/water/gas to their people should be noted as well. Did they ever actually sell any oil to Qatar? From what I remember, Qatar signed the deal but acknowledged that they had no way to actually get any oil. And that buying the oil violates UN sanctions. I have not heard of the transitional government handing out food/water/gas to anyone. Link?
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Mar 31, 2011 07:25
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The US also says that selling arms to the rebels doesn't violate the arms embargo, so I don't think it has a lot of credibility on this issue.
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Mar 31, 2011 07:33
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Or rather, the US has a vested interest in ending this war as quickly as possible, hence the mission creep. Plus, arming the rebels very blatantly violates the UN resolution, so it's clear that that the US is only interested in removing as many legal hurdles to aiding the rebels as possible.
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Mar 31, 2011 07:40
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IRQ posted:I know you're trolling but how is that a bad thing? I'm not trolling. I'm not sure what you're asking. You mean, how is it a bad thing that international law is blatantly violated?
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Mar 31, 2011 07:42
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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,754035,00.html A great profile on the Revolutionary government, if you haven't read it yet. quote:Around 100 regime loyalists have recently been imprisoned. Armed young men are searching houses and also arresting sub-Saharan Africans, anyone they assume to be mercenaries and all those they simply refer to as spies, locking them up in the same prisons once used to hold opposition members. They are then shown off to busloads of journalists. The prisoners sit in dark cells that stink of feces and urine. They say they're from Mali, Chad, Sudan, that they're construction workers and were dragged out of their houses. Concerned Citizen fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Apr 1, 2011 |
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Apr 1, 2011 03:15
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AllanGordon posted:That's nice. Inform me when they start massacring entire towns for disagreeing with them. The article is pretty clear that there are revolutionary death squads operating in Benghazi alongside Gaddafi's death squads. Edit: Just to clarify, "alongside" meaning they work in the same space i.e. Benghazi, not that they are actually working together. Concerned Citizen fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Apr 1, 2011 |
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Apr 1, 2011 03:47
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The rebel attack on Brega seems to have failed again, and they've retreated in disarray. http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/rebel-attack-on-brega-ends-in-stalemate/?partner=rss&emc=rss Concerned Citizen fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Apr 2, 2011 |
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Apr 2, 2011 02:33
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The NTC isn't the one providing aid. They don't actually anything to give. However, to their credit they are allowing NGOs to distribute aid and improve conditions on the ground, which Gaddafi is not allowing. The human cost of this civil war is now absolutely disastrous, even with the aid. 400,000 displaced Libyan refugees and an unknown and probably unknowable number are dead. Benghazi is turning into Baghdad circa-2005 with rival death squads gunning down regime supporters or prominent rebels. Static frontlines would be one thing, but this back-and-forth is not a good thing for conditions on the ground. Concerned Citizen fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Apr 2, 2011 |
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Apr 2, 2011 05:25
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CeeJee posted:The attack was impressive for its display of firepower but unimpressive in its coordination. It was unclear if the rebels knew precisely what their targets were or if they were simply lobbing high-explosives toward the town. "Abdul, you've switched off your targetting computer. What's wrong?" "Nothing. I'm all right." *blasts a hospital*
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Apr 2, 2011 08:41
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Even if the rebels win (and this will not an inevitability since they are still outgunned 10-to-1 according to Gates), the challenges facing them in trying to actually establish a successful government are daunting. 1. Libya is in flames. It's going to take some time to reconstruct, even with its oil wealth. 2. It's not likely that Gaddafi's defeat is the end. There will certainly be an insurgency to deal with, and there is a very substantial risk that the tanks/weapons may fall into the hands of militias with their own agendas. 3. The rebels are weak, militarily. Defeating Gaddafi is one thing, but it will take an even greater presence to actually govern. There is a very, very substantial chance that irreconcilable differences between factions may doom the Rebel coalition to factional fighting. 4. The NTC is full of ex-Gaddafi regime. It's hard to imagine that the new government, assuming the NTC actually fulfills manages to govern something, won't be extremely corrupt. The makeup of the regime-in-waiting makes the prospect of actual democracy remote, which again may be an agitating factor toward breakup and a renewed civil war. Even without the the back-and-forth going on at the frontlines, the future is quite uncertain. This is a worrying situation. The worst thing that can happen is a prolonged Africa-style civil war. Historically, that has brought out some really atrocious things, like child soldiers, mass rapes, genocide, etc. Gaddafi winning would be vastly preferable to that outcome. The West has made it clear that they aren't interested in staying in Libya after Gaddafi is gone, so unless there is some serious mission creep (which is not improbable), I am not confident about the future we're trying to create for Libya.
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Apr 2, 2011 22:18
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Surely no one actually believes NATO intends to run a no-fly zone over Libya for years? A stalemate favors Gaddafi because the West will eventually withdraw as the interventions become increasingly unpopular.
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Apr 6, 2011 22:44
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euphronius posted:Iraq NFZ was enforced from 1991-2003. That was not NATO technically but it was enforced by NATO members. Right, but that was an actual No Fly Zone. A NFZ alone would result in a ton of dead rebels in Libya.
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Apr 7, 2011 03:50
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NYT: (I've cut it up a bit here) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/africa/21rebels.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 quote:BENGHAZI, Libya — A PKT machine gun, a weapon designed to be mounted on a Soviet tank and fired electronically by a crew member inside, has no manual trigger, no sights and no shoulder stock. That does not prevent many Libyan rebels from carrying it as if it were an infantryman’s gun, even though it cannot be fired.
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Apr 21, 2011 07:26
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Brown Moses posted:No, you've missed my point. Gaddafi is using an army of professional soldiers to commit a huge range of war crimes against civilian populations and a massive scale, while there's only isolated reports of rebels doing anything even remotely similar. If the rebels had spent the past month shelling civilians and using snipers to murder civilians in the streets of cities then I could agree with you, but they haven't. When those isolated incidents occur they should still be treated seriously, but to compare it to what Gaddafi's forces are doing and say they are just as bad is an incredibly crass comparision. Libya is desert warfare, "front lines" are very fluid. Saying that they spend their times at checkpoints is fairly meaningless when that checkpoint could, in an hour, become a frontline. Anyway, the rebels' use of indiscriminate shelling is well documented. Ever since reporters started covering the rebellion, the misuse of mortars and rockets fired randomly has been regular. I would not be surprised if they killed far more civilians than Qaddafi soldiers at this point. The coverage is one-sided, though - there aren't any reporters embedded with Qaddafi's units to see the outcome of rebel shelling, but plenty of units are there to watch the result of Qaddafi's attacks. It's clear that child soldiers are not being used on a widespread basis, but the fact that we're starting to see them at all during this early stage of the war is a very bad sign. Acclimatizing people to the idea of child soldiers could lead to major war crimes down the road should the civil war continue as a "slow burn."
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Apr 21, 2011 09:22
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Sorry for the ambiguity, but by "killed more civilians than Qaddafi soldiers," I meant that the rebels had killed more civilians with their shelling than they had managed to Qaddafi soldiers. I'm certain Qaddafi has killed more civilians than the rebels. I don't think the story of Qaddafi de-populating an entire town is true, though. I remember reading that many cases of Qaddafi supposedly going door to door and abducting all the young men actually just ended up being a case of people simply fleeing prior to Qaddafi's arrival. Concerned Citizen fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Apr 21, 2011 |
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Apr 21, 2011 09:36
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/amnesty-questions-claim-that-gaddafi-ordered-rape-as-weapon-of-war-2302037.htmlquote:Amnesty questions claim that Gaddafi ordered rape as weapon of war
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Jun 24, 2011 02:00
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Seems pretty obvious to me it was an internal power struggle. You don't just arrest and execute someone that high up on suspicion of betrayal. And then they flat out lied about what happened. And frankly, the idea that Younis defected to the rebels (probably the highest level defection to the rebels), fought numerous battles with the force he brought over, would subsequently betray everyone is just beyond belief. Concerned Citizen fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Jul 29, 2011 |
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Jul 29, 2011 06:55
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Jut posted:In short, rebels rounding up suspected CQ "Fifth column", My favorite part: quote:But others, including the rebels’ most senior leader, Mustapha Abdul Jalil, have said the summons or arrest warrant was legitimate, and it was not clear what authority the defense ministry had to cancel it. Mr. Sagazly and other officials said the group in the factory had called itself the Yousef Shakir brigade, after a famous pro-Qaddafi commentator on state television who is from Benghazi. They said the group took orders from Mr. Shakir over the television, and that Mr. Shakir broadcast minute-to-minute details of the fighting during the battle. They took orders from him over the TV? Come on.
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Aug 1, 2011 22:43
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Namarrgon posted:To be fair this one is most certainly not Western-caused. It's Western-caused in the sense that the rebels were never a credible insurgency, were never anywhere near setting up anything but a weak facade of legitimate governance, and would have been crushed ages ago by Gaddafi if not for being propped up for geopolitical reasons by NATO. The rebels are completely divided and the idea that they will somehow manage to pacify Tripoli and the tribes loyal to Gaddafi to a point that there is an actual chance for a peaceful, functioning democracy is a ridiculous fantasy. Concerned Citizen fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Aug 1, 2011 |
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Aug 1, 2011 22:45
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Contraction mapping posted:The average length of a civil war is ~4 years, and the countries of NATO played absolutely no role in the circumstances that initiated this one. Given that many of the deaths that would result from this conflict are inevitable with or without intervention by NATO, I don't think it's unreasonable to suppose that supporting the less comically evil side in said conflict MIGHT be a morally sound choice, despite the risk of potentially protracting the length of said conflict. I don't think there can really be much doubt that this civil war would over now if not for NATO's intervention. The rebels were badly outmatched and on the verge of being evicted from Benghazi before the intervention. Instead of a relatively quick resolution, we have a drawn out bloodletting that destroyed much of Libya, including Misurata and pretty much everything between Benghazi and Tripoli. The death toll alone is uncountable, and more importantly there are a massive number of refugees. The worst part is that there is really no forseeable endgame - even if Gaddafi loses, it's pretty much certain that the civil war will go on for many, many more years as tensions fray between the East and West (note that the Misurata forces refuse to accept NTC authority) and Benghazi's alliance largely falls apart under the strain of what is really an odd couple sort of relationship between the Islamist brigades and the various other tribes.
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Aug 1, 2011 23:03
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Contraction mapping posted:While it is certainly fair to state that the formal conflict would likely be over without NATO intervention, would you care to estimate the relative death toll resulting from the post-rebellion crackdown by Gaffy, or the casualties resulting from guerrilla warfare by the rebels? There's much more to a civil war than open conflict between two opposing armies, and my guess is that the aftermath of a rebel collapse really isn't much rosier than the present 'stalemate', especially given than an NTC governed Libya couldn't possibly be less humane than the alternative in the context of the distant future. I'm not sure why you think the rebels won't crack down on Gaddafi supporters. (They even admitted there would be bloodshed to the media) A "NTC governed" Libya will likely be as bad because the NTC largely has no control over its constituents, many of whom are perfectly willing to take the opportunity to get revenge against rival factions and tribes that supported Gaddafi. It's not at all certain, either, that Gaddafi would go on the sort of systemic slaughter that everyone claims he will - many of the atrocities attributed to him, such as cleansing entire towns of every man as retaliation for the town rising up, have largely be found to be completely fabrications. Concerned Citizen fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Aug 2, 2011 |
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Aug 2, 2011 00:42
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Lascivious Sloth posted:[Big loving Citation Needed For Strawman Argument] quote:I'm not sure why you think the rebels won't crack down on Gaddafi supporters. (They even admitted there would be bloodshed to the media) A "NTC governed" Libya will likely be as bad because the NTC largely has no control over its constituents, many of whom are perfectly willing to take the opportunity to get revenge against rival factions and tribes that supported Gaddafi. It's not at all certain, either, that Gaddafi would go on the sort of systemic slaughter that everyone claims he will - many of the atrocities attributed to him, such as cleansing entire towns of every man as retaliation for the town rising up, have largely be found to be complete fabrications. Moreover, that's not what "strawman" means.
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Aug 2, 2011 02:51
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Contraction mapping posted:I'm amazed that you can say this with a straight face in spite of the abundance of evidence that the NTC is treating captured Gaffy soldiers very humanely, l m a o quote:as well as the abundance of evidence that Gaffy's tactics of systematically slaughtering his opponents is what led to this conflict in the first place. Even Jut would be hard pressed to make statements so completely divorced from reality. The fact that Gaddafi will oppress or kill his political opponents is not contested. In fact, this has been done by half a dozen Middle Eastern governments with barely an outcry for Western intervention. Here, however, the thought goes that Gaddafi must be stopped because he will go house-to-house and, with laser precision, identify and kill all of his opponents while burning Benghazi and all nearby towns to the ground (thereby dooming loyalists to starvation after destroying the country's bread basket). I am simply saying that the idea that Gaddafi is somehow a thousand times worse than Assad, and thus deserving of intervention, is complete garbage. Gaddafi is standard fare for ME dictatorships, and a very large number of ridiculous nightmarish stories have been invented by the NTC's propaganda arm to help the West politically justify its bombing campaign. Speaking of the NTC propaganda arm - for all the ridicule heaped upon the Gaddafi regime for its absurd claims, I have to wonder if perhaps the NTC has subscribed to the same PR firm? We laugh when the loyalists claim to control such-and-such town while it has clearly fallen, yet we just shrug off whenever the rebels do the exact same thing. Hell, they blatantly came out and claimed that Gaddafi forces had killed Younis despite it being completely obvious to everyone that it wasn't the case. And then they claim that some rebel brigade was actually a secret Gaddafi brigade that took orders from a commentator on state television, and moved in and killed them all. And you say that I'm divorced from reality. Concerned Citizen fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Aug 2, 2011 |
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Aug 2, 2011 07:00
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Tapatio posted:Every comment on CNN's website coverage on Syria seems to implicate Israel in this uprising for some reason. Syria is known to have hired several PR firms. Wouldn't surprise me if some of them are creating fake comments on various news websites.
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Aug 5, 2011 09:31
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