April 17, 2011

"Was Obama Stampeded into War?"

Patrick J. Buchanan writes in The American Conservative:
On March 26, over a week after [Obama] ordered the strikes on Libya, hitting tanks, anti-aircraft, radar sites, troops and Gadhafi’s own compound in Tripoli, 600 miles away from Benghazi, Obama told the nation he had acted to prevent a “bloodbath” in Benghazi. “We knew that if we waited one more day, Benghazi — a city nearly the size of Charlotte — could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.” 
White House Middle East expert Dennis Ross reportedly told foreign policy experts: “We were looking at ‘Srebrenica on steroids’ — the real or imminent possibility that up to 100,000 people could be massacred, and everyone would blame us for it.”

By the way, until leaving in 2009 to join the Obama Administration, Dennis Ross was chairman of the Israeli government's Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. I doubt if that fact is terribly relevant to America's latest war, but it is fascinating how the very existence of the JPPPI, much less the JPPPI's highly interesting publications, is almost never even acknowledged in the U.S. press. As far as I can tell, I'm the only American journalist to review JPPPI's 2010 book, 2030: Alternative Futures for the Jewish People
A hundred thousand massacred! And our fault? But that is seven times the body count of Katyn, one of the Stalinist horrors of World War II. Was Benghazi truly about to realize the fate that befell Carthage at the hands of Scipio Africanus, at the close of the Third Punic War? How did the White House come to believe in such a scenario? 
In this low-scale war, the cities of Zwara, Ras Lanuf, Brega, and Ajdabiya have changed hands, some several times. Misrata, the only rebel-held city in the west, has been under siege for seven weeks. Yet in none of these towns has anything like the massacre in the Ivory Coast taken place, let alone Srebrenica. The Guardian’s Saturday report read, “Fierce fighting in Ajdabiya saw at least eight people killed.” 
True, on March 17, Gadhafi said he would show “no mercy.” But as [Stephen] Chapman notes, he was referring to “traitors” who resisted him to the end. And Gadhafi added, “We have left the way open to them.” 
“Escape. Let those who escape go forever.” Gadhafi went on to pledge that “whoever hands over his weapons, stays at home without any weapons, whatever he did previously, he will be pardoned, protected.” 
Perhaps Gadhafi is lying. But there is, as yet, no evidence of any such slaughter in any town his forces have captured. Nor do the paltry forces Gadhafi has mustered to recapture the east — Ajdabiya was attacked by several dozen Toyota trucks — seem capable of putting a city of 700,000 to the sword. 

If the U.S. hadn't started the war a month ago, the most likely thing that would have happened is that the core group of rebels would have done what they had been doing for the previous week: jump in their cars and flee on down the road from Benghazi to the next city (probably Darnah).

Now, what would have happened to the regular folks who stayed in Benghazi? Well, down through history, bad things often happen to the residents of a city after a long siege, even when the man in charge wants them to be treated well, as Gaddafi claimed to do. But, President Obama's rationalization for his starting his war immediately, without any public debate, was that there wouldn't have been a long siege of Benghazi, that it would have fallen within a day or two. 

As for the hard-core rebels, well, there are two possibilities: Kaddafi would have come after them, so they would have fled from Darnah to Tobruk, and from Tobruk they would have headed for the Egyptian border, becoming the problem of the new "democratic" government of Egypt. Or Kaddafi would have bogged down in Benghazi, his supply lines hugely long.

48 comments:

Anonymous said...

After victory, Gaddafi restarts his WMD program.

Anonymous said...

Steve, as I've said before, the men responsible for this war are the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and the British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Obama (whom you seem to have a personal beef about), was merely the stooge, the patsy - granted a wiser, stronger man would have seen through Hague and Cameron's bullshit, and kept a cool head.
Anywat, it's frightening that poor old UK is run by two such utterly untalented, clueless trigger-happy jerks like Hague and Cameron - I first had doubts about them back in 2008 when they made bellicose noises about helping Georgia during that nasty little spat with Russia (if they were actually in power then, then God help us!)
Those two jerks are massively overrated politically, they are just that jerks, with no depth, intelligence, nous, talent or experience - nothing like old school Tory statesmen of the Harold MacMillan 'born to rule' mould.
In the early days of the Libya debacle, William Hague really showed his immaturity and stupidity by making all sorts of erroneous claims (ie Gaddafi had fled to Venezuela).
Anyway, if this jerk keeps acting idiotically, he'll soon by fund out and kicked out.Tories are quite ruthless ike that.

bjdubbbbs said...

Is anyone going to ask Obama about the "massacre in Bengazi" line? Not that it would change anything. They have a tough press in the UK and the vote for this non-war was sadly lopsided. The best that you can say is, Obama has got the war he deserved.

Anonymous said...

Short answer Yes.

Sarkozy bounced Cameron and Sarkozy-Cameron bounced Rice and Sarkozy-Cameron-Rice bounced Clinton and the four of them bounced Obama with the US military and NATO being 100% opposed all the way.

Alternatives are Sarkozy-Cameron bouncing Rice or all three in it together but however the first stage came about Clinton and then Obama were both bounced.

The reason? If it all starts with Sarkozy then it could something as minor as his internal polling for the French Presidency.

The other possibility is some of the neocons put Cameron and Sarkozy up to it because they wanted to take advantage of the situation in the Arab states to get back to "The Plan"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXS3vW47mOE

The refusal of the US military to play ball and them then pulling a reverse Suez on the UK and France will probably lead to Libya becoming a further middle east embarassment and a further blow to the neocon agenda.

Currently the biggest obstacle to the neocon agenda is the US military so expect to see them trying to change that somehow.

Christopher Paul said...

Steve, did you catch that splashy A1 story on John Stanton in Sunday's NYT? It "mentions the word immigration," to say the least of it.

Eager to hear your take on it.

Anonymous said...

Is it strange that 85% of Obama's cabinet is Jewish?

beowulf said...

"After victory, Gaddafi restarts his WMD program".

And goes to the Federal Reserve discount window to pay for it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/31/federal-reserve-gaddafi-owned-bank-disclosures_n_843400.html

Big Bill said...

Let Dennis Ross and the Jewish People's Policy Planning Institute send in the Jewish army and not the American Army to "heal the world" in accordance with their God-given duty to us poor benighted savages. After all, and as every Jew knows, the Jewish Army has "purity of arms" unlike us nasty old gentiles.

I am sure they could bomb the living sh!t out of Tripoli without killing a single child, just like they do in Gaza. So why take the chance with smelly, dirty, stupid, violent ol' goyishe fundamentalist troops? Let's show the world we truly care and send the very best!

It really is touching that Ross and other Israeli Jews are so concerned about "our" reputation and "our" obligation to go to war ultra vires.

Surely Netanyahu could similarly send a few battalions of Jewish ground troops without asking the Knesset or the Jewish nation, couldn't he?

After all it was Netanyahu that said Israel is "America's aircraft carrier in the Middle East". What's the point in having an aircraft carrier that never gets dirty?

bud said...

Obviously the intel fed to Obama was wrong. Just providing a little air support for 'the rebels' has not been enough to make Gaddafi go away. This intervention was supposed to be a confidence builder: The US/NATO intervene and a week later a brutal tyrant is gone. No loss of life on the US/NATO's side. Next stop: Syria. Next stop after that: Iran.
On the subject of matters not discussed in American media, Ross was in on composing the 'Clean Break' strategy.

Chicago said...

Makes me wonder how much of this is actually the work of Clinton, which in turn gets approved by the lazy and prone to delegate Obama. She has a history of liking to intervene and bomb other countries and this current affair seems like something right up her alley.
So what is plan B or C since Gaddafi didn't cooperate by folding up right away? This action taken in Libya seems to me to be treacherous and incompetent. We'll now have mission creep so these two can save face.
The supposed rebels have no credentials to run the country. We'll just end up making the place chronically unstable. Perhaps the plan all along was to partition Libya. It's hard to say since our own government is in the practice of lying about everything, and for Clinton in particular lying has been a way of life the whole way through.

Anonymous said...

Americans need there own government affiliated JPPPI. Maybe it could be called the WAPPPI?

Anonymous said...

Kadafi, not Kaddafi. What are the double Ds supposed to indicate in terms of different pronunciation?

Difference Maker said...

"After victory, Gaddafi restarts his WMD program."

After his victory after we got involved.

Arthur Conolly said...

I'm still straching my head over the rationale for our Libyan assault.

Usually such a patently baseless attack costing billions, disrupting oil supplies, destabilizing an already unstable region and further undermining the credibility of Western politicians or MSM directly benefits someone.

The winners seem to be:

* Globalist one world liberal interventionist like Hillary

* Military-Industrial complex in search of perpetual war and sabre rattling neocons

* Financial commodity speculators

* Oil Company and oil producing countries

* Islamic fundamentalist

The problem is that there are far better and easily justifable targets than Libya to achieve these same ends. Targeting Libya in particular seems to harm both a fragile global economy as well as the security of Israel.

Can it really all be written down to incompetence at the top?

Anonymous said...

"Steve, as I've said before, the men responsible for this war are the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and the British Prime Minister David Cameron."

Hague and Cameron are also stooges of the international bankers.

Brent Lane said...

Meanwhile, precious little relative attention is being paid to the countries where more encouraging signs of revolution are taking place - where the divisions between the two opposing sides are fairly clear, and there's little doubt, in my mind anyway, as to who the " good guys" are. What's more, these revolutions are via the ballot, not the bullet.

I'm referring, of course, to Iceland and Finland Perhaps Ireland will be next.

Anonymous said...

the real or imminent possibility that up to 100,000 people could be massacred,

Clearly, 100,000 is a magic number. Remember "up to 100,000 Kosovars feared dead" lie?

Anonymous said...

Check this out, Steve: aging surgeon, highly-respected leader in his field, indiscreetly writes politically-incorrect editorial, gets Watsoned...

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/sexism-charges-divide-surgeons-group/

Anonymous said...

"the real or imminent possibility that up to 100,000 people could be massacred"

The Holocaust trope of 'we didn't do enough to save Jews' is invoked time and time again to justify US foreign policy.

Gaddafi is a thug and terrorist but has never been a mass murderer on the scale of Hussein, Hitler, or Stalin.

Anonymous said...

Same way Obama was 'stampeded' into the presidency. "If we didn't make him president, America was doomed!!!! He was the political NO-HATE-ZONE force to finally sweep away all 'racism'. We needed him to swoop down and save us from the evil tyranny of GOP."

Ironically, the very people who support the rebels in Libya hate the Tea Party rebels, but they prolly see TP people as akin to Gaddafi loyalists.

Anonymous said...

Same way Obama was stampeded into bailing out the banksters. No-jailtime-zone for the crooks.

Anonymous said...

"Check this out, Steve: aging surgeon, highly-respected leader in his field, indiscreetly writes politically-incorrect editorial, gets Watsoned..."

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/sexism-charges-divide-surgeons-group/

"While women now make up almost half of all entering medical school classes in the United States, fewer than a third choose to go into surgery, in part because of a perceived male bias, negative attitudes of surgeons and a lack of female mentors. Once in practice, studies have shown, well over half of all women surgeons report feeling demeaned, and nearly a third say they have been the objects of inappropriate sexist remarks or advances."

Whiny whiny whinism all over the place. Oh, boo hoo hoo. Could it be women generally have less stomach for gut-wrenchign surgeries?
And the very women who watch stff like SEX AND THE CITY are bitching about stereotypes about the opposite sex as 'sex objects'?

Anonymous said...

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/sexism-charges-divide-surgeons-group/

"For some, the controversy is less a matter of Dr. Greenfield’s fate as president-elect and more a reflection of what some see as a deep disconnect between the old guard and its respect of hierarchy and professional omerta, and a newer generation of surgeons and leaders who embrace a culture of transparency in the age of the Internet."

This is MIND-NUMBING!!!!! Greenfield didn't get into trouble because of omerta--code of silence--but because he candidly expressed his views. It is PC that imposes omerta by shrieking and whining about every 'controversial statement'. It is PC that tells people to Shhhhh, shut up or you'll lose your career.

I'm sure if a gay doctor said semen up the anus makes people happier and more intelligent, it would have made the headline of NY Times.

none of the above said...

Anon:

Just for God's sake don't share that result with Amy Chua. Her kid had to put up with enough as it is....

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Is it strange that 85% of Obama's cabinet is Jewish?

And female.

I wonder how comfortable Obama really is around full-blooded black men? Granted, there's the paper-bag hued Holder rattling the civil rights tin cup on behalf of black men. But other than that, Obama seems far more concerned with advancing Jewish-cultural Marxist, feminist and gay interests.

Anonymous said...

It's a bad idea to make classical references if you don't know the actual history.

It wasn't Scipio Africanus who destroyed Carthage but rather his later relative Scipio Amelianus. Africanus was the Roman hero of the Second Punic War. He's the one who defeated Hannibal - something that Romans had despaired of ever happening. The other great Roman hero of the Second Punic War Fabius Cunctator (the delayer) had created a strategy of harassment but non engagement. No one dared to face Hannibal in the field - until a Roman military genius comparable to Hannibal finally emerged - Scipio Africanus.

Africanus was criticized at the time for his merciful treatment of Carthage and the Carthaginians after his victory at Zama..

Carthage quickly recovered, paid it's indemnities and became more prosperous than ever. This commercial rivalry led Cato the Elder to end every speech with the words "Cartago delenda est" (Carthage must be destroyed). And Scipio Amelianus did exactly that at the end of The Third Punic War - pulling down the buildings and salting the fields.

Albertosaurus

Kylie said...

From the article: "...well over half of all women surgeons report feeling demeaned, and nearly a third say they have been the objects of inappropriate sexist remarks or advances."

Oh, good grief. I've been in otherwise all-female environments when a man appears. The women generally do everything they can to make him feel uncomfortable and unnmanned. Somehow, that's OK.
If a female surgeon can't 1) shrug off tacky remarks/advances 2) put an end to truly offensive remarks/advances and 3) tell the difference between the two in the first place, she really needs to find another line of work, preferably in an all-female environment.

All I know is no man has ever made an inappropriate remark/advance to me when I've been at the range. I feel sure it'd be the same if I had a scalpel in my hand. ;)

Anonymous said...

Well if Sarkozy did bounce Obama into this war, the Sarkozy is definitely getting his comeuppance big-time.
The news is that 1000s of Tunisian 'refugees' who have foisted themselves on Italy, are doing their damndest to enter France under EU 'free movement rules'
Makes a mockery of repeated claims by French politicos like Sarkozy that they will 'end immigration'.

Anonymous said...

I'm just curious. Suppose there were a race or nationality of people with an average IQ of 130. And suppose these people tend to stick together and don't particularly care for Jews. Would American Jews be for opening our borders to such a people who will surely, in time, take power from the Jewish elite?
I think Jews are somewhat okay with Asian immigration cuz Jews think, 'they'll be working for us'. But if Jews had to think, 'we'll be working FOR (another group)', they might be so crazy about open immigration.

Severn said...

The Holocaust trope of 'we didn't do enough to save Jews' is invoked time and time again to justify US foreign policy.

Which is a crock. Saving Jews, or anyone else, is not America's role in the world.

Anonymous said...

"The problem is that there are far better and easily justifable targets than Libya to achieve these same ends."

The advantage of Libya to Sarkozy was it should have been an easy in and out job if the US military weren't dead-set, rightly, on avoiding another war. Now him and Cameron have been left in the lurch by the US military pullback because they don't have enough planes, or the right kind, or the carriers to make sure they can stay on station for more than five minutes.

Whiskey said...

Israel prefers Khaddaffi over the Muslim brotherhood, for obvious reasons. Meanwhile most US Jews love Obama because they are so deeply assimilated they'd rather see their cousins destroyed than violate PC/Diversity/Multiculti, etc. This is why Jews in the US love Obama and hate him in Israel (where they suspect they will be destroyed).

The war was sold by Sarko and Cameron who feared mass refugees in their countries and have toy militaries, and Rice/Powers.

Whiskey said...

Sarko and Cameron are reaping the result of decades of social spending and no military spending, and Rice/Powers want to use "R2P" as a precedent to fill Powers fantasy of invading Israel to destroy it and "protect" Hamas.

Trump is right, go in and get the oil, or don't go at all. Steyn suspects at least part of this is Obama's desire to make the US impotent and hobbled and ineffective, he hates America (which is still mostly White) that much. Sentiments shared by Wright, Farrakhan, and I would argue a strong majority of the Black population (looking at military volunteering rates, combat presence, toleration of Farrakhan/Wright, etc.)

Unknown said...

Kylie, what constitutes "truly offensive"? Isn't "offensive" necessarily in the eye of the beholder?

dearieme said...

Do remember that the mass flight of the Kosovo Albanians started after we (the West) started the bombing, not before. So that was another war fought because of predictions that things were bound to turn very nasty, rather than their having turned very nasty. And the Iraq war was fought because otherwise SH would have used his WMD against ... - oh, someone. I detect a pattern.

Anonymous said...

http://rt.com/news/sarkozy-libya-backfire-france/

Sarkozy and Libya. Well, Napoleon met his first big failure in North AFrica--Egypt--too.

Anonymous said...

"Do remember that the mass flight of the Kosovo Albanians started after we (the West) started the bombing, not before."

Based on what happened between Serbs and Croatians and in Bosnia in the 90s, there was ample reason to believe another massive bloodshed was in the offing in Kosovo.

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Meanwhile most US Jews love Obama because they are so deeply assimilated they'd rather see their cousins destroyed than violate PC/Diversity/Multiculti, etc.

Yeah. Poor Uncle Moishe, fleeing Russia a step ahead of the Cossacks with his well-thumbed volumes of Adam Smith and John Locke hidden in his renzl, only to end up in America and see his children so deeply assimilated.

Nim M said...

If this Libyan fiasco has taught us anything it's that Obama will yield to European hectoring

Anonymous said...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/15/60minutes/main20054397.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

A real hoot. Obama gave this dude $100,000!! More embarrassing than giving $20,000 to Wright.
But then Obama gave a trillion to bankers and handed over healthcare to 'people who really care'.

Svigor said...

Israel prefers Khaddaffi over the Muslim brotherhood, for obvious reasons. Meanwhile most US Jews love Obama because they are so deeply assimilated they'd rather see their cousins destroyed than violate PC/Diversity/Multiculti, etc. This is why Jews in the US love Obama and hate him in Israel (where they suspect they will be destroyed).

Whiskey's a real laff with his Ashkenazi Supremacist talking points. American Ashkenazis don't think Obama's going to destroy Israel. That's Occam's Razor, Whiskey, try it some time.

If Ashkenazi Americans didn't have both parties locked down vis-a-vis Israel (in Whiskey's universe they don't, back on Earth they do), Whiskey's pig might not look so silly wearing all that lipstick. Buuut they do. I know it's hard to imagine, but Ashkenazi-Americans aren't always truthful in politics, especially when it comes to Israel. Shocker, I know. Who could imagine a few Ashkenazi-Americans playing up Obama's anti-Israel tendencies for political gain? It's ANTI-SEMITISM!!! to even think such a thing, I know.

No one EVER calls Ashkenazi-Americans on their "the sky is falling! The sky is falling!" routine, so there's no immediate reason for them not to use it.

But Ashkenazi-Americans do have both parties locked down vis-a-vis Israel. So their goes Whiskey's lipstick-wearing pig, right out the window. Forty floors down...still not flying...splat...

Check the pig's pockets and you find Whiskey's silly "Jews are more SWPL than SWPLs" thing, too. LOL. No, if that were true, Israel would have been toast a long time ago. And Ashkenazi-American identity wouldn't be so thoroughly self-serving and -congratulatory.

But Whiskey's not all bad. He was talking about "White Zionism" over at Mangan's, something I've thought to be a great idea for years now. Obviously he left out the active ingredient - that "White Zionism" is a winner because it's the logical name for the fact that whites have the right to have for themselves what Jews have for themselves in Israel - but nobody's perfect.

Svigor said...

Trump is right, go in and get the oil, or don't go at all.

Right. So why are you in lockstep with the Neocons, who seem eminently satisfied with not getting the oil?

We agree that we shouldn't go in unless we take the oil, and we're obviously constitutionally incapable of taking the oil, and yet, your line doesn't reflect any of this.

Bizarre.

Kylie said...

"Kylie, what constitutes 'truly offensive'?"

Reread my post, if you are in doubt.

"Isn't 'offensive' necessarily in the eye of the beholder?"

Of course. I hope you aren't implying I said otherwise. Your questions are silly enough as it is.

Kylie said...

"Kylie, what constitutes "truly offensive"? Isn't "offensive" necessarily in the eye of the beholder?"

Oops, I just inadvertently replied to this comment, thinking it applied to another post of mine, in which I thought my context was quite clear and these questions therefore were silly.

Now that I'm on the right page, I still think they're silly. Nevertheless, I'll answer them.

"Truly offensive" is--or should be--a question of degree, not type. For example, calling a woman a c*** is truly offensive. Calling a woman a "broad" or "dame" is not, or shouldn't be. Not all mildly derogatory terms are truly offensive, unless one is--or is taught to be--hypersensitive. Thanks to the left, feminism in this case, these distinctions have been lost.

I remember when McCain referred to Obama as "that one" and the left tried to spin the phrase as offensive, even racist.

Google: Obama +"that one" +racist +McCain.

Silly to the point of stupidity.

Yes, what is offensive is necessarily in the eye of the beholder. The mistake is in thinking that that is the only place in which offensiveness resides. There are--or should be--reasonable norms and standards in place.

When I worked in an otherwise all-male environment, I had to listen to dirty jokes I would have preferred not to hear. But they weren't meant to offend me nor were they directed at me. So I shrugged them off. Had a male coworker called me as a c*** I would not have shrugged it off. (And I daresay he wouldn't have done it twice. I'm the kind of woman men feel free to tell dirty jokes in front of but otherwise treat with extreme respect.)

Choose any of the following and life will be a whole lot easier and more pleasant, even if you are a woman:

"If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

"Don't sweat the small stuff."

"Pick your fights."

"When in Rome..."

Now that I've belabored the obvious, I hope I've answered your questions to your satisfaction. But somehow I doubt it.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YqLiJUVt-0

The last hurrah of the black bourgeois.

neil craig said...

The Srebrenica analogy comes up regularly. The evidence is not only that the "official" Srebrenica massacre is a fraud but that maintaining it has involved censoring a very real massacre that took place there.

The official story has changed many times but it is a matter of record that 7,000 troops from there did reach Moslem lines, that at the time the Moslems said the garrison was 7,000 (one of the story elements subsequently changed) & that all of them were missing. It happened immediately after the US representative had told the Moslem (former SS) leader that he needed a massacre story to get US intervention. The total number of bodies found us under 2,000 which fits well with acknowleged casualties from fighting during the siege.

The censored massacre was of 3,400 Serb villagers in surrounding villages when the officially disarmed Moslem Nazis were allowed through the UN "peace line" to go a murdering. This has been acknowledged even by the NATO side (NATO commander there General Marrilon under oath at the Milosevic "trial").

On the other hand this may make the comparison between the "Srebrenica massacre" and this allegedly forthcoming massacre used to justify a pointless and murderous war more apt.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget who stampeded the so-called rebels. (According the Lynn and Vanhanen, the average IQ in Libya is 84.)
http://www.movements.org/

>After victory, Gaddafi restarts his WMD program.<

LOL. Well, that will be the claim, won't it? Mushroom clouds over Topeka. Will anybody bite this time? Probably.

Not the Official Line said...

neil craig said...

The Srebrenica analogy comes up regularly. The evidence is not only that the "official" Srebrenica massacre is a fraud but that maintaining it has involved censoring a very real massacre that took place there.


Never knew that. Various sites show that there was indeed a big coverup and manufactured evidence and extremely slanted coverage to give the West a causa belli.

Not only was Slobodan Milošević scapegoated and railroaded. A five year trial without any direct evidence presented nor verdict until he died in custody. He appears to have been denied a critical medical procedure and even poisoned by his UN guards at the Hague!

Although a pro-Milosevic website, the quotes by French UN commander Gen. Morillon makes it appear the trial had little to no substance about it.

Are there no wars that we can jutify without hamhanded propaganda and outright lies and fabrications anymore?