Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Spiky Ooze posted:

Not really a question, they use everything against Obama regardless of what it is. Healthcare? NOT IN MY COUNTRY, rear end in a top hat.
No, because this comes on the heels of a very hawkish UN resolution which I think even neocons didn't dream they'd get. They won't attack Obama on a foreign relations issue on which they agree in all substantive points, not when it means taking Qaddafi at face value, an act antithetical to their position that Qaddafi is a rabid dog that needs to be put down.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Ramms+ein posted:

Not his argument at all (as far as I can tell). I can definitely see the justification for using our military assets against Qaddaafi's, I would just like it to be done in a way that acknowledges that it's politically very easy and takes little courage to attack and invade pariah states, while we would never do something like that to extremely similar and equally brutal dictators who are our allies.

Fine by me if we can destroy his military and help the people of Benghazi buy some time, but just don't try to paint it as though it's some humanitarian mission that we're undertaking because we heart human rights.

Killing people is a serious issue that needs to be discussed rationally. We blew up 9 Afghan kids collecting firewood the other day, how many kids are going to be gathering firewood in Libya? If you call for a military intervention in any country, just do in a way that acknowledges that it is due to specific political and economic considerations that happen to allow it, and not because our government cares at all about human rights. If it did we wouldn't have made it a policy to prop up torturing and murdering dictators in the Middle East for decades.
I'm not sure what anyone gains from being "honest" except lots of hand-wringing dissertations on the ambiguity of international politics written by people who don't, you know, actually make these sort of decisions. Bad things happen to civilians in any armed conflict, yes, but I'm prreettttyy sure the possibility of shooting these hypothetical kids around Tripoli has been judged somewhat less pressing than the certainty of Qaddafi shelling whole towns without regard to combatants/non-combatants.

If you want to make a deeper analysis on the civilian toll of intervening versus not, or the moral cost of being selective in backing revolutions, by all means do so. But this is a very superficial and shallow argument that really does state the basic "we can't act like non-hypocrites so we should just cry in a corner lamenting" theme that's been pretty prevalent.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Baddog posted:

Well, lets just be honest with ourselves, and admit that we don't do poo poo unless its in our strategic interests. Or in this case, France's. I don't know why they can't do it on their own though, that is my problem. They aren't helping us out a great deal with our other wars. We're loving broke. They should be able to carry their own (dirty) water in Africa.
You think you're making some insightful comment on how the US only does things in its own best interests, but that's been true since President Monroe declared the Western Hemisphere offlimits to Europeans, and no casual observer has ever missed that fact since. So does every other nation on Earth, being the US is only exceptional in making particularly lofty goals and claims in its actions making the gap that much more noticeable.

And for once, we do have strategic goals (aiding a potentially friendlier (proto)government in a nation that exports a critical resource) aligning with more idealistic ones, all wrapped up in the package that at this stage in the game it can be done within modest means. Time may prove any or all of the above to be illusory, but since the main argument espoused against are some broadly sweeping statements that completely ignores all possible nuance to see things in strict black and white, I'm willing to give the current action the benefit of the doubt.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

The Angry Bum posted:

The War Powers act itself is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court needs to abolish it NOW. And Obama himself specifically said he would NEVER use the act to commit to a military operation that was not any threat to the United States. He broke his own promise, and his words are as useless as Qaddafi's. Obama is currently breaking the law and the US Constitution and should pay for it with his job IMMEDIATELY.
Funny, because the War Powers Resolution is held to be an unconstitutional check on the President's power, and that is the view of every president since Nixon. So assuming this magical SCOTUS of yours sua sponte decides without any actual controversy brought before it that the resolution is in fact illegal, it would in fact expand the president's authority in dispatching military forces, not constrict it.

So clearly, by failing to uphold the constitution, Rep Kucinich is committing an impeachable offense in unlawfully restraining the President's authority as commander in chief of the armed forces to deploy them as he sees necessary. Good to know!

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Shitpost Gaze posted:

It's just that I thought I read that there was some clan-related animosity in there and a little bit of an East vs. West thing too. Not trying to say that the (very) vast majority isn't fighting for new governance or that the rebels aren't genuine!
There is that, of course, and a reason why the ragtag rebels are, uh, ragtag is because the eastern half of the nation is significantly underdeveloped and armed compared with the depots in the west, where Qadaffi's tribal allegiances lay. And there's no accident that the east rebelled first; it's the tribal area most alienated by Qadaffi's rule (interesting historical note: the monarch deposed by our Beloved Brother was from a tribe in this region.) The transitional council, however, has been taking extraordinary pains to present a united front transcending all these tribal concerns. How deep this unity goes is honestly an open question which no one has a real answer for.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Young Freud posted:

Let's not forget Misurata is still a hot spot for the rebels and Zawiya and Zwara had to be occupied to keep them from rebelling, all of which are in the western quadrant of Libya and near Tripoli.
Absolutely, and that Tripoli itself became a weapons-free warzone or else this little intervention would have been wholly unnecessary because Tripolans would be doing the Ceausescu noose dance for the Qadaffi clan a few weeks back. However it is not crazy to be a little cautious if and when the dust settles and Qadaffi's gone and suddenly the matter of who came from where takes on sudden prominence in the supposedly unified rebellion.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Umiapik posted:

No, he's not sure at all. We in the West are seeing the TV pictures and immediately fitting them into our own Middle East narrative: Evil despot vs resolute populace. Other people, in other parts of the world, might see something else entirely. There's a good article on this here (read it!):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/20/bahrain-saudi-intervention-religious-divide


You shouldn't assume that, just because Gadafffi's a murderous lunatic (which he is), the people opposing him are automatically peaceful democrats themselves. Like most of the posters in this thread, I know next to nothing about the history, culture and aspirations of the different tribes that make up the Libyan population. Perhaps they just want rid of Gadaffi so that they can invite Osama Bin Laden into Libya! "That's not true!!!", goons reply indignantly. Well, how do you know?? Have you bothered to investigate what the rebels really want at all? At least ask the questions before taking up their cause so enthusiastically.
I won't claim to be an actual expert in Libyan politics or history, but it's also clear that Bahrain is a poor analogy to tribalism here because this is by no means also a religious divide -- Libyans are almost uniformly Sunni, and there won't be the sort of animosity that exists between the two sects like in the Persian Gulf. Moreover, not that this is any sort of iron-clad indicator, but the leaders and instigators of this rebellion have been mostly civil servants and the professional class, while imans and other religious authorities have been relegated to cheerleading status. As a whole, there's a reliably secular nature to the leadership, to the demands, and to the message the breakaway regions have displayed.

Taken as a whole, it's strongly suggestive that this isn't some backdoor attempt to install Al Qaeda or anything (suggestions that they were AQ pawns were met with reported eye-rolling in rebel held areas when Qadaffi made that particular claim), and that fractures in any ruling coalition are strictly speculative at this point.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

DeclaredYuppie posted:

The concern isn't that we're helping our enemies, it's that we're charging in to a situation where few people understand the tribal and regional politics driving events, and that there are reasons for this rebellion happening aside from the good guys wanting to institute a good country and big jerk Gadaffi won't let them.
No one knows with absolute certainty how the tribal faultlines will quake after all is said and done, and it is not an unfounded fear, but it's also true that there is very broad support regardless of region for the rebellion. The article above about Tripoli, supposedly Qadaffi's strongest base of support, shows that the level of dissent is proximate to the amount of government firepower that can be immediately brought to bear as a "rebuttal." A reminder too that Tripoli experienced heavy protests before troops were let loose on the population; this would indicate that the rebellion strongly crosses tribal lines and cannot be reduced to a simple east/west Libya conflict.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Libya is now very heavily urbanized. When Qadaffi took power, where one lived in the interior was important, but now some like 90% of the population lives in a city along the coast. There's been a steady erosion of said ties to familial lands and peoples, something which we can ironically thank Qadaffi for.

I won't expect a fairy tale ending where everyone lives happily ever after, but I think also people are giving too much thought on supposed tribes when the entire nation at some point has been in protests.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

DeclaredYuppie posted:

Agreed- I don't necessarily think we're getting into Iraq/Afganistan 2.0 (3.0?) in Lybia, although it's a possible outcome.

Also I think we'd agree that it's important to caution that an agreement between various factions in Libya that they don't like Qadaffi doesn't necessarily mean they'll agree about much else once a new government needs to be finalized and decisions about who is in charge of what is divvied up.
Yes, I doubt we'll end up with Westminster in Tripoli, but I have cautious optimism in that we'll see it more like the baby steps Eastern Europe took towards democracy which ended up being much more stable than Lebanon's sectarian paralysis. The problems facing Libya are less intractable, and oil wealth if it's spread out even a tiny bit more equitably than now where it's held by a small coterie of Qadaffi's family and supporters, can go a very, very long way towards purchasing tranquility. But I'll admit that's more an article of faith than well-researched analysis.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Baddog posted:

I thought it just made politicians even more reluctant to talk of "genocide" when they don't want to get involved (see sudan).

Look, its ok to admit that European countries don't like a madman controlling a country in Europe's soft underbelly. And that things would go smoother if a major source of oil for Europe was under much more friendly control. I just wish that wouldn't mean us spending billions of dollars (yet again). How's all that bailout money we sent to you all through AIG working out for you? Care to share anything so that we can get some health care as well?
If we're going to play the Realpolitik card, at least pretend to know that the status quo would have been preferable in every strategic way given the uncertainty involved in any regime change. Basically you're asking that we did this solely out of our selfish needs by trading a stable, known quantity largely aligned with our economic interests for an uncertain rabble shooting up a government from their office chairs.

Kissinger would be aghast at such sloppy geopolitical calculations.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Baddog posted:

mmm hmmmm
Are you saying Qadaffi wasn't happy to sell us all the oil we wanted at standard market rates, and that him reasserting control wouldn't have brought production online faster than said office-chair rebels? Because as far as I can tell, you have nothing to rebut with and are grasping for straws here

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

He's done nothing to stop said flow of oil, grudgingly or not, and that he's had no indications whatsoever of changing course (being that, you know, he likes his oil revenue). If it was only about oil in our friend's completely simplistic view of things, why mess with something that's been well enough for a while?

Secondly, Qadaffi as recently as 2008 was held up as an example of a "reformed" Arab leader who can be a "partner" with the West. He went in and slammed a bunch of Al Qaida training camps within Libya, as an example. If our only intentions in the international politics world is purely about our strategic needs, we should have been screaming AL QAIDA AL QAIDA until Bengzhali was a crater and then promptly forgot the whole mess.

In any event, gambling that we get a more favorable government while we can deal with the truculent one we know of is simply bad strategic sense, if we're going by Baddog's particularly simplistic analysis.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

HeroOfTheRevolution posted:

The problem is we don't know anything about what that government will look like. There's not a whole lot of political rhetoric coming from the rebels and what's there is disorganized and sporadic, much like the organization of the rebels themselves. We don't even know if we can achieve what you're saying we can achieve. There's just so many question marks, and I feel like the last time we went into a conflict with this many question marks, without knowledge of the endgame, we ended up with Iraq.
That's the entire point! If this was purely for our own strategic posturing, why are we throwing away a known and semi-controllable leader for potential chaos? If we were supposedly only in it for cynical purposes the analysis wouldn't have gotten beyond that simple question, and Obama would be steering the conversation to Japan's woes.

The logical answer is that against strict rational sense, we let our ideals sway the decision, and we're going in because we feel it's the "right thing" to do. It may in time be a stupid decision, it may even turn out to have that cynical lining (of that I have no doubt), but it cannot be discounted that at some level there's an altruistic element in ramming the resolution through the UN.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

It's funny because according to the NYTimes, no one wants control. It's like everyone realized well after the US that taking command would mean holding the bag if the whole thing goes to hell so watching all the NATO and EU diplomats try to shirk it is a special form of comedy.

Relevant quote:

NY Times posted:

But divisions persisted on Tuesday over how the campaign should continue and under whose command.

Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain has said responsibility for the no-fly zone would be transferred to NATO. But France objected to that, with its foreign minister, Alain Juppé, saying: “The Arab League does not wish the operation to be entirely placed under NATO responsibility. It isn’t NATO which has taken the initiative up to now.”

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said on Tuesday that the United Nations should be the umbrella for a solely humanitarian operation in Libya, Reuters reported, insisting that his country, a NATO ally, “will never ever be a side pointing weapons at the Libyan people.” The dispute raised concerns that American plans to hand over command of the operation could be delayed by disputes among its partners over who should take control.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

God, if the USAF got caught flat out lying about something like this they'd be crucified. Given how many reporters there are from news agencies all around the world, it'd not be a question of if but when such a thing would be exposed. Always better to get ahead of the story and spin it for damage control than to engage in a ham-fisted coverup.

Have there been no further developments in the story? That really seems unusual.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Haha, he's using the "consistent with the War Powers Resolution" phrasing at the bottom of the letter. He doesn't want to change the idea that some president may challenge the act as being unconstitutional.

(Remember boys and girls, the WPR has been held by every president since Nixon to be an unlawful infringement on the executive's power by Congress, not the other way around.)

Edit:

thefncrow posted:

I agree. Specfically, in this case, it's specifically attempting to deny the ability of the President to claim powers to send the armed forces whereever he so wishes, without regard for the traditional limitation that the armed forces be used only with the prior authorization of Congress or in the case of a national emergency.

Like, for instance, the powers you're trying to claim for the President in this conversation.
Traditionally, the president as Commander in Chief of the armed forces can deploy troops wherever he likes. The inherent contradictions of the Section 1 congressional power to declare war versus the Section 2 power of the president to wage it has never been satisfactorily resolved. Even in the early days of the republic quite a few military actions were sustained on no more than the president's assertion that it was necessary, like the Quasi War or, incidentally, attacking Tripoli during the height of piracy along the Barbary Coast. When you mix in that a UNSCR is indeed binding on its members under the treaties creating the UN, and that the president is "merely" enforcing that law because treaties are specifically held as part of the body of US national law, then yes, a UNSCR is legal cover in fact.

kw0134 fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Mar 23, 2011

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Ticonderoguy posted:

I took it to mean that the if we let the rebels win then we will effectively create a weak democracy with all kinds of different factions (tribes etc.) trying to seek power for themselves only which and factions (NOT POLITICAL PARTIES) will eventually be the downfall of that government and a new Dictator will take power once again.

Sort of similar to what happened to the Weimar Republic after WW1.
But, we don't know that. The problem with going TRIBES! every time we talk about the rebels is that it ignores much of recent history and the grievances that practically everyone bears against Qadaffi. To be sure, it's not something we can sweep under the rug and it would be naive to assume a full liberal democracy will spawn in its place. But by the same token that uncertainty also means we cannot assume the worst case scenario either; it falsely excludes the middle.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Presumably because state TV is staffed by non-combatants and regardless of the nature of their "news" it would set a bad precedent for letting governments target the media.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Ramms+ein posted:

Everyone in the opposition does indeed bear grievances against Gaddaafi, but unfortunately all do not likewise share a unified desire for what the country should look like after his removal (as far as we have been able to tell from watching and reading the news). We have already seen that the opposition is indeed extremely fractured, with some groups like the professional unions rejecting negotiation with Gaddaafi out of hand while their self-appointed leader and former minister of justice `Abd Al-Jalil engaged in back-door talks. Shouting TRIBES! obviously doesn't help explain the situation, but it's important to remember that, to date, the opposition has shown itself to be extremely fractured, and there is no reason to expect that everyone will unite and calmly transition into democracy once Gaddaafi is gone. There are a lot of disparate groups, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that they have different visions of a future Libyan state, and that they might easily resort to violence when it comes time to determine the form of that future state.
Yes, but that doesn't mean the end-game is a bloody civil war between the rebels as they try to assert dominance over one another as was posited by the person to whom I responded. The point of fact is that we simply don't know, but assuming the worst possible outcome is as intellectually dishonest by the detractors as the proponents saying only the best of all possible worlds is sure to follow from intervention. A lot of people think they're inserting some shade of nuance by shouting TRIBES! when someone says there's a chance of a reasonable alternative arising from this mess, but all it does is show the same sort of shallow analysis as ignoring it completely because nothing you've mentioned exactly indicates that a peaceful government can't form, or that somehow the "fractures" are so enormous that they are irreconcilable.

By many definitions, the American revolution was severely fractured on regional, ideological and social lines. How can 13 colonies with unique identities form a united country? Preposterous. But that's the same sort of "analysis" being trotted out, over and over again. And of course, Libya may yet descend into a truly internecine charnel house, as the US did itself a little belatedly after the revolution. But we can't know that, and we shouldn't deny the rebels aid on that basis alone, which was the argument presented.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

There isn't much of an argument for the Libyan intervention being illegal, but the decision certainly was undemocratic as all hell. It's understandable that sometimes the executive will have to use military force without legislative consent because there is an emergency threat to the country, but that wasn't the case here. Based on what has come out in public, Obama clearly had the time for a lot of back and forth within his own administration over the extent and manner of American involvement, even whether it should have happened in the first place.

I think that the question of why this was never put up for legislative or public debate is a perfectly reasonable complaint against the president. Especially when Obama himself has decried executive overreach and promised a more democratic approach to the use of force.
If Kucinich actually manages to pass his motion to impeach Obama, then that would be the democratic mechanism for checking the executive. Congress could also refuse to fund the adventure; they could pass an act that would demand its immediate withdrawal (though that may not pass court scrutiny). Otherwise, there are a great many things that the executive branch does on a day-to-day basis in running the country that could scarcely be considered "democratic." The Constitution didn't set up the Executive branch so everything it does is scrutinized. The constitutional consensus is that accountability is held every four years at the ballot box, and particularly egregious acts can be tried by Congress -- if there is political will. You may not like examination of the president's decisions to be this coarse-grained and arguing as if it were not ignores reality.

You're welcome to try to change that, and god knows there's been a constant tug-of-war since Washington and the first Congress. But Kucinich is definitely not in the mainstream in demanding this level of oversight on the President in a case like this, and the way the rest of Congress views his motion here as a stunt than actual lawmaking tends to speak for itself.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

evilweasel posted:

True, but it's not one yet and although the repression sounds pretty horrible, it doesn't appear to have the same risk of large-scale civilian reprisals against entire cities.
On the other hand, if it does descend into civil war you can easily see it becoming a larger regional conflagration with implications for the security of Israel, the Hezbollah-backed faction in Lebanon, and Iran, which would draw a response by Saudi Arabia. It may be our modern Spanish Civil War, the mother of all proxy wars.

That would be really ugly and messy, and I'm not sure the US could stay above the fray in something like that, with so many interests being juggled.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Competition posted:

Stop this poo poo, people were claiming potential proxy civil war for Iraq which had ten times to potential than Syria does and that didn't happen.

Syria:
Ethnicity - Arab 90%
Religion - 75% Sunni, 15% Other Muslim, 10% Christian

Not nearly fractured enough for any true civil war, the Alawites (who share that 15%) would support the Ba'athists but that's about it.
Why would the civil war, if there is one (I was speculating, by the way, that's what it means to qualify stuff with the word "if") necessarily split along ethnic lines and not, say, the demands of a restive population demanding more rights and less poverty against a repressive government and its backers? You know, like in half the nations where this has happened already?

I also find it funny that you're saying that there wasn't elements of foreign manipulation in the Iraq war. Iran had a hand in there once the dust cleared, and while you're not going to go send armed troops to contest the world's largest military, you sure as hell can help provide monetary and material aid to a large and angry Shiite majority in a destabilized nation. Hmm, as if they were go-betweens or maybe, you know, proxies. Eh.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Competition posted:

Because half the people commenting on Syria are predicting some massive proxy war where Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Hezbollah, etc... will all pick a fraction and get them to duke it out, it betrays an utterly simplistic and lacking understanding of the country and the region. Syria quite frankly isn't diverse enough for these fractions to emerge, it has it's particular religious minority which holds power but is too small for an actual civil war to be sustained, even Libya isn't being called a civil war (yet) however it has far bigger ethnic divides and historical reasons behind the fractions we see (hint: go look up why Gaddaffi lost the East so totally).
That's just as simplistic, if not even more so. Qadaffi lost the east because he basically had no troops there, and what troops were there were deliberately undersupplied. He almost lost the west too, but since he kept his best and loyal troops close to the capital, massive protests in Tripoli were crushed forcibly before it could become the new Tahrir Square. Misurata is not far from Tripoli and it's being shelled constantly for its stanch anti-Qadaffi population. In short, this is a broad-based uprising that undercuts your simplified understanding of the situation.

quote:

I didn't claim there wasn't an element of foreign intervention, just that it didn't become this massive proxy war which people predicted which included Iran supporting the Shiites, Saudi the Sunnis, PKK the Kurds, along with a Turkish invasion, people were predicting an Islamic civil war which would spread throughout the Muslim world.
And I don't necessarily think this would happen either (like I disclaimed), but flatly going "no" is, well, simplified. Many things can happen, and most things won't come to pass. But ignoring the possibility because you're reading demographic figures off of wikipedia is not informed and nuanced analysis.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Competition posted:

Bull, if you knew the history of Libya you would see why the East is such a stronghold while the West has been a struggle (and it's got little to nothing to do with troop distribution).
So are you going to actually rebut the tactical situation in Miszuratu, or the past events where the streets of Tripoli practically ran red until everyone was cowed into toeing the party line? Or are you going to continue to wave ambiguously at "facts" that don't support your assertions? Oh, wait, you're going to say next that "West" Libya starts at the Qadaffi compound in Tripoli and ends two blocks over.

quote:

You idiots are citing Hezbollah having influence in this pseudo-Syria proxy civil war, it displays complete loving stupidity and can only come from glances at headlines associating the two.

Let me educate you: Hezbollah is a Shi'ite paramilitary stuck in the southern Ghettos of Lebanon, outside of those Ghettos they're loathed, utterly utterly loathed. Occasionally Syria gives them some weapons because they like to antagonise Israel, Hezbollah has no loving influence, connections, or sway in Syria.

Seriously of all the Arab countries undergoing protests Syria is one of the ones with the least amount of possibilities for civil war.
Um, what? Syria isn't a candidate for civil war at all because Hezbollah is hated? And not the inherent demographic and power imbalance at work or the social failures of a repressive government which is apparently widely detested? You have a weird way of "educating" us ignorant peasants.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Competition posted:

I'm going to state that Gaddaffi totally lost the East due to the historical resistance of Cyrenaica from the rest of Libya, his losses in the West of Libya have been less total and were caught up with the momentum of the total loss of the East and the general Arab revolts, historically understanding Libya is key to seeing which parts of it have fallen and have little to do with troop deployments.
So basically history says he should have lost the East and in the west, where he shouldn't have historically been challenged at all, we'll just handwave. Okay, got it, you don't have an actual argument, you're just making up facts as we go along.

quote:

It's what has been cited by those who started claiming civil/proxy war. Very few civil wars don't have any demographic elements in their divisions (I can only really think of one off the top of my head), for this fantasy proxy war to develop there would have to been deep and multiple divisions creating large fraction of which no-one has actually outlined yet (hint: because they don't exist).
YOU brought up specific demographics. I mentioned various national interests which while may implicate demographics, also involve basic political interests unique to nation states. Basic divisions like how power and wealth in a local polity, such as it is in every protest we've seen to date, have been ample fuel for "deep divisions" leading to civil war. We've seen it in the English Civil War, the American Civil War, the Shining Path uprising in Peru, FARC in Colombia, Sandinistas in Nicuaragua, the Chinese civil war between Communists and Nationalists, shall I go on? For someone who slams down history at every opportunity, this is an incredible oversight.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Competition posted:

Yes, by stating that there was a historical reason for the quick uprising in the East I am somehow stating that it is an impossibility in the West.

Are you stating that I made up the distinct historical reasons for the East being more willing to rebel/harder to put down?
Then your argument is entirely empty; "Why is the West easier to put down? HISTORY!" is pure sophistry because you can just attribute everything to history.

quote:

1. Wealth division is a demographic
2. Not all uprisings = civil war

You created this fantasy civil war where Hezbollah, Saudi, and Iran would get involved. It's pure Tom Clancy fantasy.
Wow, we've descended into arguing semantics now? The biggest divide in the Middle East at this moment is the demographic division of those with AK knock offs versus those that don't. There.

(By the way, the English Civil War was entirely about the right of a king to rule without the consent of parliament. Charles I lost that fight badly to a group of rich nobles and their bourgeois supporters. But but demographics.)

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

So Libya understands that Western intervention is categorically bad, so they invited them to intervene militarily on their soil for the purpose of...yeah. It's so logically faulty I can't finish the sentence, nothing would fit.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Jut posted:

Just realised, the 60 day limit on the War Powers Act is drawing near...then what?
Nothing. Congress won't push the matter and even if it wanted to the current legislative calendar is booked solid to the next election. Obama will, like all his predecessors, mark the date by avoiding anything which would create any sort of precedent for acknowledging the legitimacy of the resolution.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Fangz posted:

Makes you wonder if they haven't figured out a newer way of destroying documents these days. Shredders are hardly effective, and burning is pretty apparent from the outside (and documents can be recovered if improperly burned).
A level 6 security shredder will reduce documents to a fine 1*5mm dust, which looks like this (scroll down). Your local office supply store will have one or two models at least, so this isn't exactly esoteric hardware. If you're an actual government, you can pick up industrial shredders that will turn your entire archives into literal mulch, baled up and ready for pulping. Suffice it to say, the problem of document security nowadays isn't after it's been processed by the shredder.

Stroh M.D. posted:

All the pro-Gadaffi people accusing NATO of breaching Resolution 1973 by not sticking to the no-fly zone or protecting civilians wording of it got me thinking: how does this actualy work?

Pro-NATO as I am, I'm not going to deny that NATO has for some time clearly sided with the rebels and is actively working to end the civil war by ending Gadaffi. This should be a breach of the resolution. But on the other hand, the NATO countries recognize the NTC as the de juris legitimate Libyan state. This should mean that NATO is free to lend support in their struggle to secure their nation, as a proper nation-state, no matter what any particular resolution says about the conflict
If we're gonna be honest, the UNSCR was really just a statement that China and Russia will look the other way while NATO did what it thought best in Libya. We can talk about legality all we want but the only judiciary that would hear such a case is the ICJ, who in the past has simply deferred to the Security Council. If the matter was objected to and a SC member brings it up at a later time, this would be literally sitting the accused as juror and judge at its own trial.

In short, it's purely theoretical. The UNSCR says it's legal, and since the only entities capable of substantiating a resolution, both de jure and de facto, are the ones accused of violating it, there's literally no recourse to be had.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

farraday posted:


In point of fact both groups rather obviously did. Legalistic quibbling in this matter is entirely moot since the final justification for all sides was victory.
As a point of fact, Resolution 1970 9(c) explicitly carves out an exception in that "other sales or supply of arms and related materiel, or provision of assistance or personnel, as approved in advance by the Committee" are not prohibited. (The Committee in question being the UNSC as a committee of the whole, or in more practical terms, NATO.)

Whether or not arms sales to the rebels was "approved in advance by the Committee" is debatable, but really the loophole is that arms sales are illegal in Libya unless they're not. The quibbling might matter later when China wants to do something and this gets trotted out as "proof" that China doesn't respect the UNSCR's authority, etc., etc., etc.

And again, I'll make mention of my earlier discussion of what constitutes "legal" in the confines of international law: it's whatever is deemed legal by the nation-states that end up enforcing the resolution or the body that authorized it. The UNSC is the most powerful diplomatic body in the world and its imprimatur is more or less carte blanche legally since there are no higher bodies to challenge or appeal any legalistic determination it makes. That would mean China won't even get a slap on the wrist because it'll just veto any mention of such, but it conversely means that NATO will just say it's legal and will politely inform you into which orifice you can stuff differing interpretations.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Xandu posted:

Wrong, they are definitely not identical. Most unsc states didn't participate in the Libyan campaign.
The active participants of the Committee are gonna be NATO and in any event it was going to be whatever the veto powers says. Farraday saved me the trouble of pointing out the wording but the larger point of course is that the de jure formalism of the resolution is going to yield to the reality of the workaday politics of the body.

farraday posted:

As an organization representing democratic institutions I insist that they would give you your choice of orifices into which you could stuff your differing interpretation.
It's not my mind you have to change, I'm pointing out that trying to fashion this legal argument about how NATO is wrong, wrong wrong is not merely futile but within the legal framework of the UN, a complete nullity. They can't be wrong because there's literally no legal mechanism to prove it.

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

farraday posted:

I'm actually not sure we disagree at all, legally right and wrong are not really applicable given the structure. I've tried to use the term justification since I think that's probably the accurate way to consider state actors working under an umbrella of inherently faulty international law.
I dunno, that seems a little circular because you end up relying on the text of a document that admits to letting itself be defined by the entities charged with enforcing it. I know you're trying to make it so legality and justification aren't congruent, however given the foundation of your argument I'm not sure how it can be anything but the same. If the document is supposed to on its face strictly proscribe certain activities, but also in the same breath say that there are exceptions and delegates the determination of what's "right" to the same people as you're accusing of being hypocrites...then I'm not sure where this is supposed to go.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

kw0134
Apr 19, 2003

I buy feet pics🍆

Xandu posted:

The issue is that countries like BRIC and South Africa would not agree to arming the rebels, whereas NATO would. So while in practice it was NATO's decision to arm the rebels, it wasn't their decision to make according to the resolution. It should fall to the UN Security Council.

Obviously, when it comes down to it, the legality of such an action doesn't matter that much, but at the same time, NATO's activities in Libya will certainly cost it votes in the Security Council in the future.
Would you mind linking a source for that? As far as I know the only specific objection was that a No Fly zone was bad because of various reasons (largely self-serving). I didn't think BRIC cared either way about the arms embargo, and certainly it was within their power to flatly veto it via Russia/China if they felt that strongly about it. Otherwise there's just too much loose language in the resolution for me to really take seriously that they were adamantly opposed and then completely left enforcement of everything to NATO. Of course, Russia complained vociferously over everything NATO did anyway, so that's another ill-calibrated barometer.

farraday posted:

Accordingly, the argument that some states made to justify their supply of weapons to the rebels were simply that, justifications. The legalistic argument necessary to make it work is fairly weak, as evidenced by it's lack of acceptance even among coalition partners, but at the same time it is enough of a smoke screen to do what they were going to do anyways. With that in mind, my trying to pretend any superiority to a similar argument justifying sales to Gaddafi would be hypocrisy.
But that's the problem: even a weak justification is stronger than one that simply doesn't exist. You're going to have to do some even weirder mental contortions to spin the arms sales to Gadaffi that fits any sort of context within the resolution, whether textually or within the larger unstated understanding that was obvious to any international observer. Unless you can show that there is in fact a parallel logic that serves some part of the resolution, the Chinese argument is just a tu quoque fallacy. Clinton believed the arms would be legal because it would save civilian lives, which you stated would avoid the problem. Are you ready to make a similar argument for the Chinese in selling arms to Gadaffi>

As far as your distinction between the legal and the justified, I think you're misplacing the concern here. The domestic audiences weren't spending their days parsing 1973 looking for inconsistencies between policy and authorization; they were worried about budget cuts or unemployment or the debt crisis or how we're spending more billions on another foreign adventure. The dog and pony show, as you put it, was aimed solely for the benefit of the other nations who need to defend their own geopolitical interests or ideological stances. The domestic audience in the UK understood what they were going for because it was debated in Parliament and in any case were more concerned about austerity cuts; the US was more focused on how the Republicans were going to flip flop on the issue to try and make Obama look bad for brownie points. At no point I don't believe serious political questions about overstepping the UN's resolution were raised, versus any domestic acts (like the WPA) regulating any foreign action at all.

  • Locked thread