OK, I'm confused. What is the "It's America's Problem" litmus test??

Let's start with what we know the litmus test is not:

- We know it's not genocide. Although we did intervene in the former Yugoslavia in the Clinton years to stop ethnic cleansing, we did basically nothing about Darfur or Rwanda.

- It's not being a leftist, because we would have removed Hugo Chavez.

- It's not necessarily all about oil, because we would have removed Hugo Chavez

- Fidel Castro is a leftist, and may very well have oil, and has done his share of killing, and he's still in power.

- Iran has oil, and has sponsored terrorism, and we don't seem to be showering them with cruise missiles

- Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are autocracies (I'll be charitable), and they are having rebellions, and they have oil, and we're not screaming "lay off the rebels or face the wrath of the UN."

- North Korea is...well, I don't have to tell you. You know.

Ronald Reagan tried to kill Quadaffi, but failed, and then we pretty well left the guy alone from 1986 to yesterday.

So why is Libya suddenly our problem?

And I like the way you have demonstrated that the "oil" reason is BS.

You hated my last post on this topic, and I read your post on Mohammed Nabbous. It seems like you support the rebel cause here. Is that a fair statement? If it's not, please set me straight on this.

Why is this rebellion worth NATO intervention? Why did the US find it necessary to shoot off $50M + worth of ordinance?

different threads of logic one could follow that my head hurt - and if I had the time, I would have responded to each of them but did not (Btw, I had to search for the post because I did not remember it.)

I typed up this post, because it explains my position.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x692212

I have followed the protests in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Fortunately or unfortunately I have a job that allows me to listen to webcasts, newscasts on the internet during the day, and during breaks when I am running a long compile, I can also read tweets. Emotionally, the protesters became like family on the other side of the world.

Thus, when the carnage by Gaddafi started accelerating I became more and more horrified, and on the afternoon of the UN vote, was holding my breath hoping it would pass.

(Btw, I also followed the Wisconsin protests, and listened to Michael Moore live, and then replayed the video a few times.)

However, I did not know that cruise missiles were going to be used - and that is one heck of a $ tab.

One can argue as to what is the price of a life? but saving people over there means short-changing people over here. But the short-changing of people over here is not necessary because we have such a corrupt financial and political system. So the questions are many and the answers are few.

I am a great supporter of freedom for people; I saw it first hand growing up, where blood was also spilled. I did not support the action in Iraq. It affected me physically - I would wake up in the morning thinking in despair about the carnage that was happening in Iraq. I guess the carnage in Libya affected me, too.

Also, the US's energy requirements are too high - once again the rich are mostly to blame. I have a very small carbon footprint, and don't necessarily think that the rest of the world should follow our excessive consumptive, wasteful and destructive habits. I am an environmentalist, and when I looked at the first ordinance being used, I thought to myself, we just screw up the environment left and right, in war and in peace, all the damn time. This undertaking is going to gobble up tons of gas, that could have been used better if there had not been such a stubborn dictator. And on the other side of the world, we are destroying the environment again because of energy requirements again. Japan has 53 reactors and wants tons more!! The crap never ends.

Second, I too am a supporter of freedom. I also suport the notion that human beings ought to be able to live in societies where they are not routinely beaten, raped, or kiled because of their ethnicity or religous beliefs. If "making the world safe for democracy" or "making the world free from terror" were truly the litmus tests, I'd support it. However, what I see is a foreign policy that has become both expedient and cynical. We pick and choose our fights. We upbraid nations for human rights violations that we ourselves commit. It's just frustrating.

Your post paints a very simplistic view of the world. There is often not a "litmus test." There are often many factors involved, and the cost/humanitarian-benefit analysis is often difficult to discern and widely disputed.

Cost in a variety of ways. If you look at this only from the perspective of the humanitarian benefit (and leave the cost and likelihood of success out), of course the result would look strange.

But this is sort of besides the point. While consistency may be desirable, the lack of consistency is certainly not an argument not to intervene. If intervening is the right thing to do, the lack of intervention in another country does not change that (and has nothing to do with that).

We just woke up and felt like it? It passed the "truthiness" test? Why are we intervening in Libya's civil war, but not intervening in Mexico? What has Quadaffi done that warrants the US doing anything?

"put his CIC power where his mouth is" now (not to look bad, to the rest of the world, if you know what I'm saying).

Jeb signed some of the PNAC stuff early on.

But more than a dozen former GWB administration senior officials signed it. IIRC, Libya was one of the countries targeted by PNAC over a decade ago.

A desire for fresh war just comes up and has to slaked. Every addict knows that how that can be. Its like an alcoholic that wants to fall off the wagon - he can always find a reason.

I think that every Commander In Chief gets the itch to use the power just because it's there. It must be exhilarating to be in command of the most powerful military the world has ever known.

It's one reason that many countries choose not to maintain a large standing army, both now and historically. They cost a lot of money and there is always the temptation to find them a war.

1) The rebels in Libya look beat back, but are backed by Egypt and others and would be coming back with force over time, making for long term instability in Libya that would be resolved with a decisive win.
2) The revolutionary narrative in the middle east is ill defined, and could easily move in an Islamist direction. Intervention helps that narrative remain in a pro-democracy "new generation" direction.
3) Anti-western revolutions on the Saudi peninsula that threaten the kingdom itself would DESTROY the US and European economies, so the interest in the revolutions moving in some kind of positive direction is a really big deal for all involved.

So in summation its a wildfire that could go anywhere, and this is something like a controlled burn.

I'm not sure it destroys our economies. It makes our lives far less convenient. Short term, it's very bad. Long term, the US has options, including, but not limited to: more drilling, more fracking, running more cars on CNG, building wind farms as fast as we can, replacing our oil burning electrical plants with coal (I'm sorry - "Clean Coal") or nuclear or NG co-generators. Mind you - I think over half of those are bad options, but they are preferable to continuing to fight wars in Asia and Africa.

You know you'll feel a lot better after you get through those few months, but man its tough to get through those few months. Its the transition we're afraid of, and it will not be pleasant. But ultimately SO worth it.

After we "take out" the bad guy it's a simple matter to intall our good guy.

Maybe.

You're not going to find any other consistent, underlying narrative. If the regime plays ball with US business interests and is stable, we are "friends". If either of these elements is missing, we are not "friends" and may employ military force to ensure the country is run by "friends". The personal desires of individual politicians to invade here or there are almost meaningless. They may be motivating factors for those individuals, but if the underlying business interests weren't served by such actions, they would not be an option.

The US did try to get rid of Chavez, by the way. It ended up costing US business interests a fair amount of money, so our tactics immediately changed.

soon after they started giving our banks more access to loot do business in their markets.

would be expensive and difficult, and likely several Latin American countries would also become involved. Much easier to pick a country where there is already a civil war in progress - like Libya, and they don't have allies with enough wealth to intervene. Iran is likewise too dangerous, because they sell oil to China. Bahrain doesn't have a lot of oil, and Saudi Arabia sells us most of ours. North Korea has nukes and would be too dangerous.

Libya became a viable target when a civil war started, because then the contracts with oil companies became void. A year ago, Qaddafi negotiated contracts that were more favorable for Libya.

Fidel Castro has too much popular support, and would end up being a PR nightmare if we attacked Cuba, not to mention it would likely arouse Russia and China to intervene, not to mention other Latin American countries.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken