To arm or not to arm Libya. That is the question.

President Obama has a signed a secret presidential finding authorizing covert operations to aid the effort in Libya where rebels are in full retreat despite air support from U.S. and allied forces, a source tells ABC News.

The finding does not direct covert operatives to provide arms to the rebels immediately, although it does prepare for such a contingency and other contingencies should the president decide to go down that road in the future

The White House press office issued a statement saying it does not comment on intelligence matters.

Read more at:http://abcnews.go.com/International/president-obama-aut...

We should know who the rebels are first. Who is their leader? Who supports them?
Maybe they're worse than Gadhafi (as hard as that might be to imagine).

Don't we arm the rebels and then at some point in the future those arms are used against United States interests?

And someone says.."Billy, they killed those hostages with American provided machine guns."

Haven't we seen this movie before?

I'd much rather we just dropped a bomb on Qaddafi...go "oooops" and then hope for the best.

I think.

Middle east is very confusing.

It just seems like tic tac toe...no winners however you play.

The middle east is exhausting.

At this point, like it or not at the beginning, we've made a decision. Remember how for the first few months of his Presidency, Obama was vilified by his opponents for not making decisions? For not "getting things done"?

It's not much different from George H.W. Bush attacking Saddam Hussein back in 1989. Once you do something like that, you need to take care of business. Bush didn't, and we wound up with his son embarking on a fool's errand in 2003 as a result, which we continue, every day, to pay for.

Obama has stated, flatly, that Gaddafi needs to go. Anything short of making that happen will be a defeat, and should be treated accordingly in the political arena. What the Libyan rebels actually represent (which is probably a bunch of things), we've taken their side. We need to make that stick, accept the outcome, and deal with that situation when it gets established.

blacbird said:

At this point, like it or not at the beginning, we've made a decision. Remember how for the first few months of his Presidency, Obama was vilified by his opponents for not making decisions? For not "getting things done"?

It's not much different from George H.W. Bush attacking Saddam Hussein back in 1989. Once you do something like that, you need to take care of business. Bush didn't, and we wound up with his son embarking on a fool's errand in 2003 as a result, which we continue, every day, to pay for.

Obama has stated, flatly, that Gaddafi needs to go. Anything short of making that happen will be a defeat, and should be treated accordingly in the political arena. What the Libyan rebels actually represent (which is probably a bunch of things), we've taken their side. We need to make that stick, accept the outcome, and deal with that situation when it gets established.

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Okay. That works for me.

billythrilly7th said:

Middle east is very confusing.

It just seems like tic tac toe...no winners however you play.

The middle east is exhausting.

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Blair's doing a bang up job as Middle East Peace Envoy, isn't he?

The US is likely to be in breach of the UN security council's arms embargo on Libya if it sends weapons to the rebels, experts in international law have warned.

After Hillary Clinton said it would be legal to send arms to support the uprising, lawyers analysing the terms of the UN's 26 February arms embargo said it would require a change in the terms for it not to breach international law.

"The embargo appears to cover everybody in the conflict which means you can't supply arms to rebels," said Philippe Sands QC, professor of international law at University College London.

His view was backed by other experts in international law who said they could not see how the US could legally justify sending arms into Libya under the current resolutions.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/30/arming-liby...

William Haskins said:

The US is likely to be in breach of the UN security council's arms embargo on Libya if it sends weapons to the rebels, experts in international law have warned.

After Hillary Clinton said it would be legal to send arms to support the uprising, lawyers analysing the terms of the UN's 26 February arms embargo said it would require a change in the terms for it not to breach international law.

"The embargo appears to cover everybody in the conflict which means you can't supply arms to rebels," said Philippe Sands QC, professor of international law at University College London.

His view was backed by other experts in international law who said they could not see how the US could legally justify sending arms into Libya under the current resolutions.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/30/arming-liby...

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Can I just take a minute to howl at the moon or something? I hate the UN with a blinding passion, I think.

I'm really with Billy's earlier post here, btw. I'm sick of the same old movie, for the US. That's not to say I don't support the European actions. But the 'take no sides' bullshit by the UN led to unimaginable horror in the Balkans. It still pisses me off. All of this is mho, of course.

Fight a war or draw up new bylaws for your cigar club, but don't think they both work the same way. You think the UN would have learned its lesson by now (imho).

billythrilly7th said:

Don't we arm the rebels and then at some point in the future those arms are used against United States interests?

And someone says.."Billy, they killed those hostages with American provided machine guns."

Haven't we seen this movie before?

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Yes, absolutely. That's what happened with the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan.

Heck, it's happening in Libya even right now, because the U.S. had armed Qaddafi awhile back.

Upthread, Greg was asking some questions about the rebels: who are they? who is their leader? who supports them?

I wrote a post recently about the first question, so I'll link to that rather than writing it out again.

The question of support is another interesting issue. Here's what al-qaeda has to say about the matter:

A statement released Feb. 24 on the al Qaeda-affiliated al-Fajr media website quoted the group known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) as saying: “We declare our support for the legitimate demands of the Libyan revolution. We assert to our people in Libya that we are with you and will not let you down, God willing. We will give everything we have to support you, with God’s grace.”

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Here's a link for that statement.

Al-Qaeda may already have a presence in Libya, and that presence could grow depending on what happens. There's no question that U.S. involvement in Iraq opened the doors to Al-Qaeda there.

And to make things worse, I've been looking at reports that claim Libyan fighters make up a large portion of the insurgents whom the U.S. is fighting in Iraq.

http://articles.cnn.com/2007-12-20/...ic-fighting-group-libyan-fighters?_s=PM:WORLD

http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/12/19/us-iraq-saudi-fighters-idUSN1962918820071219

So yeah, the decision to arm the rebels should have other considerations besides the fact that they don't like Qaddafi. Because Billy's right - we've already seen this movie before.

One of our Members of Parliament pointed out yesterday that the U.S. had armed the rebels in Afghanistan back when the Soviet Union invaded and that those weapons were now being used against British and U.S. soldiers. Given that there is a possibility that Al Qaeda is involved in supporting the rebels, supplying them with weapons is a monumental mistake.

Destroy the Libyan air force, take out Gaddhafi via CIA covert ops, yes...but don't give the buggers weapons.

There are so many ironies here in the US. We fight NK, which really winds up a very expensive stalemate; then we takeover the Vietnam "war," which we lose; we manage a win in Kuwait - which at least was a clearcut mission to stop an invasion - but it's kind of a pyrrhic victory. Because we parked so much of our military in Saudi Arabia at the time - only we didn't really leave - that annoys Bin Laden which prompts him to reduce the Twin Towers to rubble and kill three thousand Americans. So we're after him, now, in Afghanistan, where - after over a decade - we have yet to find him. In the mean time we take on another undeclared war in Afghanistan - not against Al Qaeda - but the Taliban and are we winning?? Of course not. The Taliban has our weapons thanks to our meddling during the Russian invasion. And then, of course, there's our fifty thousand troops stationed in Iraq, where concrete walls separate neighborhoods and routinely, civilian shoppers are blown up. That's been ten years, too. No victory there, either.

So, now we're after Libya. After all, it's run by a guy that gave up his nuclear ambitions in a clear gesture to the Bush administration that he wanted to be on same team. Of course, we didn't know he had nuclear ambitions, which prompts the real question: did he ever give up anything?? So now, the goal is to arm people against him - because we're capricious as hell - and start meddling in another country with no clue as to who we are arming. Another civil war: like Vietnam. Another CIA operation: like Vietnam and Afghanistan; another expensive foray that we don't have the money for; another big miscalculated ego-trip for another warmongering, over-his-head, exploitive, selfish president.

But the best part is this. If our meddling in Libya had begun with a Republican president, the Democrats would be all over him like a cobweb, with anti-war slogans echoing across the great halls of Congress. But nope, the Democrats are thrilled that we're "intervening." Why?? Because it's their guy that's committing our borrowed money and American lives. If it wasn't their guy?? They'd no doubt object. It's all partisan. It's a joke, really, but a very, very sad joke indeed. . . .

Bird of Prey said:

There are so many ironies here in the US.

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One of the stranger ironies is, no matter how much the US tries to arm various islamic insurgencies, they always end up with Russian or Chinese weapons. It's very odd. I suppose what happens is that they sell every nice US weapon they get and buy 20 12.7mm machine guns and 20 pickups to put them in. They aren't even American trucks. You can bet if those islamists were driving Chevys they would have taken over the world years ago.

We didn't really save Kuwait because we cared about Kuwait, either. Sorry We kind of set that up a bit, frankly.

Isn't it awful??

That's not to say that there weren't national interest/security issues that were very important in these things. Some yes, some no, imho. But how to do it right when you are right? Man, that's the hard part, eh?

Maxx said:

You can bet if those islamists were driving Chevys they would have taken over the world years ago.

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or at least drove them to the levee even it was dry and had some whiskey and rye.

backslashbaby said:

We didn't really save Kuwait because we cared about Kuwait, either.

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I cared about Kuwait. Sniff. I think for the first and only time, I really cared about a small desert kingdom. And look what happened.

Maxx said:

I cared about Kuwait. Sniff. I think for the first and only time, I really cared about a small desert kingdom. And look what happened.

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Were you all for 'protecting their democracy', too? Ah, I miss Papa Bush

backslashbaby said:

Were you all for 'protecting their democracy', too? Ah, I miss Papa Bush

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I kinda liked the idea of blasting Saddam's armed forces. After all, they had just spent eight years beating on Iran for no reason and shooting missiles all over the Persian (note Persian, not Iraqi) Gulf. The 80s were a mess in that area, thanks mostly to Iraq. The 1990s were less bad since Iraq was boxed up. I'm not sure why things could not have stayed that way.

Maxx said:

One of the stranger ironies is, no matter how much the US tries to arm various islamic insurgencies, they always end up with Russian or Chinese weapons. It's very odd. I suppose what happens is that they sell every nice US weapon they get and buy 20 12.7mm machine guns and 20 pickups to put them in. They aren't even American trucks. You can bet if those islamists were driving Chevys they would have taken over the world years ago.

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AK47s: They're deniable and reliable!

Torgo said:

AK47s: They're deniable and reliable!

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Sure, but if people had learned to use the incredible virtues of the 30.06 thing properly, Islam would have taken over the Papacy and the Pentagon a few decades ago and have moved on to Alpha Centari or Beta Puppis.

Believe in the 30.06 and they will come (and then move on to Alpha Centuri or Beta Puppis):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-06_Springfield

Maxx said:

I kinda liked the idea of blasting Saddam's armed forces. After all, they had just spent eight years beating on Iran for no reason and shooting missiles all over the Persian (note Persian, not Iraqi) Gulf. The 80s were a mess in that area, thanks mostly to Iraq. The 1990s were less bad since Iraq was boxed up. I'm not sure why things could not have stayed that way.

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Oh, I agreed with going in, yeah. Hell, I agreed with giving signals to the Iraqis that we wouldn't care if they invaded Kuwait. I just didn't agree with not coming up with a believable cover story But it worked.

They sell us oil, we sell them weapons.

They attack us with the weapons, and we attack them, increasing the demand for oil.

IT'S THE CIRCLE OF LIFE!

Maxx said:

I kinda liked the idea of blasting Saddam's armed forces. After all, they had just spent eight years beating on Iran for no reason

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There's another irony, Maxx, a very big irony, right there. . .

The 80s were a mess in that area, thanks mostly to Iraq. The 1990s were less bad since Iraq was boxed up. I'm not sure why things could not have stayed that way.

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Because of George Bush and his phonied-up WMDs??

Sarpedon said:

They sell us oil, we sell them weapons.

They attack us with the weapons, and we attack them, increasing the demand for oil.

IT'S THE CIRCLE OF LIFE!

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Or the swirling of a flushed toilet bowl. . .

Bird of Prey said:

There's another irony, Maxx, a very big irony, right there. . .




Because of George Bush and his phonied-up WMDs??

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Among the ironies is the one that that a World-class superpower could not figure out that Iraq was the problem in the 1980s, not Iran. Backing Iraq against Iran in the 1980s was absurd. Iraq was the aggressor and was busy oppressing the Kurds and Shiites. Letting the Iran-Iraq war run for 8 years when Iran could have wrapped it up in 1984 if the US has not orchestrated support for Iraq (though Ironically Oliver North was trying to help Iran -- unconsciously?-- go figure) was pure mess-making on a huge scale. Even more Ironically Iranic is only one letter from Ironic and not that far from Iconic and Ionic.