You know what, I wouldn't have cared who was president--the UN action in Libya is just

Even if this happened when Bush was president, or Clinton, or the other Bush or whatever. The actions in Libya called for a united UN action, and I would have supported it regardless of who had been in charge. Politicizing what is/was happening in Libya is nonsense. Like it or not, the US is part of the global community, and we need to act as if we're part of it.

We complained, rightly so, when Bush "went it alone" in Desert Storm. I would be complaining just as vehemently if the US "stayed behind alone" when the rest of the world acted on the insanity in Libya.

Gadaffi brought this on himself.

Right after 9/11, Afghanistan was the right thing to do. Prior to that we had no legal justification to go after OBL. Bill Clinton has said that his very first thought after hearing of 9/11 was OBL.

However, Afghanistan ceased to be a just war when Bush let OBL go at Tora Bora. That's when we should have turned around and gone home. In Libya, there should be no more strikes after all the air defenses are taken out.

In, Out, Done - bring in the UN to help cleanup the mess.

That is why Kosovo was done so quickly.

Iraq we should have never even gone in there - we were lied to about why we needed to invade.

"In, Out, Done". So far, we've done pretty good on the "In". Hopefully, we're "in" as far as we're going to get.

I'd love to see us "Out" and "Done" with it. And out/done in Iraq and Afghanistan, too.

I hate these wars. All of them.

I hate them too but sometimes they are a necessary evil. Kosovo is a good example of an action that had a plan, took minimal amount of time and made great strives towards bringing peace to the area. Ten years later Kosovo was listed as a 'hidden vacation treasure' I found on a travel website that I was reading. Sure there are minor issues here and there but Kosovo has a bright future.

and I think a hell of a lot of people will be killed. Reports are that Gaddafi is shelling the western city of Misurata and that civilians are being killed.

organization to form a coalition to attack an independent country should be questioned as to the merits of such action

No use of force to stop mass murder? Genocide? Civil war prevention and peacekeeping? People don't matter eh?

arguments could be made?

In my view the reason has nothing to do with stopping mass murder, civil war or genocide. It has to do with oil and politics, and also the enemies that Kaddafi(sic) has aquired throughout the years

China has lot of interests in Sudan, and because of those interests they would NEVER authorize UN force, and thus, this action would NEVER occur their

Likewise, governments that are friendly to the U.S. who commit atrocities, the U.S. would NEVER authorize UN force.

This is all about politics and oil, very little to do with humanity.

Very similar to the justification for going into Iraq

but a responsibility."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect

R2P focuses on preventing and halting four crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.

1. States have the primary responsibility to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity (mass atrocities).

2. The international community (should) provide assistance to States in building capacity to protect their populations from mass atrocities and to assisting those, which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.

3. The international community has a responsibility to take timely and decisive action to prevent and halt mass atrocities when a State is manifestly failing to protect its populations.

If the UN has no intention of following through on R2P, just repeal it and reestablish national sovereignty as the overriding principle in international affairs.

If that were so the UN would have taken a more active roll in Sudan or other areas, where far more people have been slaughtered by their own governments.

This is entirely about oil and politics

Sometimes, military actions are appropriate. We look like fools if we can't or don't distinguish between legal, sanctioned, justified uses of force and war crimes.

I was supportive of the UN trying to protect Burmese civilians no matter who our president was.

I'm glad Obama didn't "go it alone" in Libya and undertook no action until it was authorized by the UN.

although the way it was done was wrongheaded IMO. When Iraq was about to be attacked, I went to antiwar protests because it was completely unjustified.

If Bush had taken the same set of actions in Libya, I wouldn't have had a problem with it, although the level of suspicion would have been higher. Gadaffi was virtually begging the outside world to intervene.

Though everything Bush did from that point on strikes me as the worst kind of cowboy mentality.

Would you agree that Qaddafi's tyranny is matched in many other parts of the world?

Should we be consistent, or at least define conditions under which military intervention would be undertaken? Do you think the UN's actions could be perceived as arbitrary and unpredictable?

Do you think the US should continue to shoulder the majority of financial burden for our multinational military adventures by virtue of the size of our military budget, or should we find a more equitable way of distributing the cost?

Do you believe that the MIC consumes too much of our national discretionary spending, or is it about right? Do you think that our multiple military endeavors serve to perpetuate the obscene girth of our military spending?

- Injustice in other areas doesn't mean that we can't answer injustice in Libya. I hate the assumption because x is happening elsewhere we can't do y here. Especially, again, when it begins with the actions of the UN.

- UN action is not arbitrary or unpredictable. A dictator turned a Egypt-style "revolution" into an armed rebellion. He then went further and decided to turn his actual war machine against his own people. I'd damn well say the UN had to act.

- US wants to be perceived as an international leader, it should act like one.

- I hate the term MIC and feel it weakens anything that follows. It is a catch-all for every conspiracy theory out there with regards to military action.

Although I don't share it, I do have respect for it. I was hoping to have a conversation in broader, more generic terms.

I would submit that your second assertion contradicts your first. And you declined to comment on the budgetary impact and ways that we might confront that because I dared invoke a term that you consider to be a "conspiracy theory" cliche. I guess you don't share my sentiment that war profiteering is problematic in the US.

Passions are high. We are committed in Libya now, so our conversation is academic. You have already won the argument in concrete terms. For me this isn't about our President or his policies, it is about our national and international character which spans multiple administrations.





Edit: I'm not fleeing after picking a fight. I'm taking my grandkids to the playground. Will check in later.

And really, at the root of all this, for me, is that the global community through the global organization decided to act. As a result, I feel, strongly, that the US needs to be a part of that. Refusing to do so would have crippled the legitimacy of the UN.

or we garner no moral gains from our actions. That's what forces people into questioning our motives. If we only assist when it personally causes our country the least discomfort, or is the most beneficial in a geo-political way, then all the rhetoric about compassion, humanity and the need to protect the innocent, ring hollow.

then are supporting Obama and Libya. Bush got Congressional approval (from a Democratic Congress), Obama said a big FU to congress.

Keep being hypocritical.

Looks like 48 supported the Iraq War. I am now curious how the 2 stack up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing

Remember that Bush abandoned the idea of getting explicit UN authorisation for invading Iraq. It seems there would have only been 4 Security Council votes in favour:




The 22-country Arab League supported it: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-12/arab-league-asks-united-nations-for-no-fly-zone-on-libya-egypt-tv-reports.html

And the EU supported it: http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/libya-unrest-un.95b

So I think this does have more support than Bush had for Iraq.

we just tagged along and agreed to help.

12 countries have vocalized direct material support for Libya.

But I have seen members on DU advocating the US shouldn't have gotten into World War II (thus continuing Auschwitz). Strange place this has become...

...and acted right at that moment to stop him, then I would have approved of that.

The movement against the war in Iraq was largely based on the fact that our government lied to justify it. If they had gone into Iraq and found warehouses full of WMDs and credibility to back up the notion that Saddam was about to annhilate a bunch of people, then we probably wouldn't be having this conversation right now. But thats not what happened. And because of the stigma generated by what Bush did with Iraq, it seems like anything a President does in regard to a military operation, noble or not noble, is going to be treated as if its the same thing when its not even close.