May 24, 2011

Basically, we're trying to murder Gaddafi, right?

The WSJ reports:
North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplanes bombarded targets in Tripoli early Tuesday in what appeared to be the heaviest night of bombing of the Libyan capital since the alliance launched its air campaign against Col. Moammar Gadhafi's forces. 
The airstrikes, which struck around Col. Gadhafi's residential compound, came as the U.S. invited Libya's rebel leadership on Tuesday to open a representative office in Washington and NATO moved toward considering adding ground-attack helicopters to its military campaign in hopes of breaking a stalemate between the Libyan leader and rebels seeking to overthrow him. 
A spokesman for the U.K. Ministry of Defence said Royal Air Force Jets attacked a large military vehicle depot within Col. Gadhafi's Bab Al Aziziyah complex in the center of Libya on Tuesday, as part of a "major" NATO operation over Tripoli. 
Jeffrey Feltman, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said during a visit to the eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday that he delivered an oral message to members of the rebels' National Transitional Council from President Barack Obama that promised further support and reiterated America's position that Col. Gadhafi has "lost legitimacy to rule; he cannot regain control of Libya and he must step down immediately, thereby allowing the Libyan people to determine their own future."

If Obama really gets addicted to solving his political problems by killing his enemies, Osama, Gaddafi, etc., well, The Paw better keep on him at all times that pimp's knife.

On the other hand, I can't imagine Bibi has anything to worry about.

15 comments:

jody said...

it's just a no fly zone, steve. all those targets fly, so they had to be destroyed. gaddafi can fly too. well, i think he probably had a dream about flying at some point. he's in violation of the no fly zone! take him out!

all kidding aside. inviting representatives of the declared enemy of the existing libyan government to the white house, seems to qualify this as a war, and requires obama to get congress to approve further action.

he'll come up with more lawyer speak to explain why that's not true. but even if it were indisputably true, democrats at the national level are allowed to ignore the law. so obama doesn't need anybody's permission to do almost anything. well, he would probably need michelle's permission to eat the last tamale. you do not want to be between michelle and a tamale, obama assures us.

Wes said...

Yeah I've noticed this guy seems real comfortable with killing. I guess empires have to have ruthless emperors.

beowulf said...

And if Pawlenty makes it to the White House, every school child will learn the story of Paw and his pimp knife.
It will become a part of presidential folklore, like George Washington killing his sensei in duel but wouldn't say why.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbRom1Rz8OA

Nothing to See Here said...

bombarded targets in Tripoli early Tuesday in what appeared to be the heaviest night of bombing of the Libyan capital since the alliance launched its air campaign against Col. Moammar Gadhafi's forces. The airstrikes, which struck around Col. Gadhafi's residential compound

No, we're NOT trying to murder Gaddafi silly. We're the good guys remember?

Our stated mission is to prevent innocent civilians from being lost in the conflict. Isn't that a good thing?

Anonymous said...

The funny thing is that Britain and France, the two leading powers in the attempt to murder Gaddafi both make a great big show about their governments' supposed devotion to 'European values' that include passing an anthema on the death penalty.
Apparently no EU nation can ever re-introduce the death penalty again.The eurocrats used to get into self-congratulating paroxysms over criticising Russian use of the death penalty.The still do the same to the Chinese, and just love looking 'morally superior' by lecturing Americans, especially Texans.
Another consequence is that the foulest possible British murderers can look forward to living out a relatively pleasnt old age - it's very rare for any British prisoner to serve more than 12 years.

Anonymous said...

"it's just a no fly zone, steve. all those targets fly, so they had to be destroyed. gaddafi can fly too. well, i think he probably had a dream about flying at some point. he's in violation of the no fly zone! take him out!"

A No electron-repulsion-off-the-ground zone.

none of the above said...

The Obama administration has provided a great opportunity to find out which Democrats who used to complain about Bush's power grabs really meant it. (The Bush admin did the same for alleged small government conservatives.)

Just as with Bush's massive illegal warrantless eavesdropping, Obama's ignoring of the WPA is a direct violation of the written law, justified by some handwave about executive power. But laws don't really apply all that much to powerful people in the US anymore. We'll come to regret that sooner or later, but short term political logic makes it a bad thing to fight over at any given moment.

Chicago said...

When we bomb and destroy it's for humanitarian reasons. We are boy scouts with guns, missionaries with bombs. We are promoting people's rights with every bomb we drop.
Who'd have thought that the concept of spreading respect for human rights would result in it being such an overworked pretext for blowing up various countries?

Anonymous said...

It aint murder if it's a tyrant.

Anonymous said...

Yeah I've noticed this guy seems real comfortable with killing. I guess empires have to have ruthless emperors.

I guess this concept is shocking if you disingenuously consider 'limited' civilian casualties morally superior to assassination.

The Ghost of Christmas Past said...

Donald Young...

Lt Quarles Harris Jr...


.

Mr. Anon said...

The War Powers Act was itself a corruption of the constitution (can Congress legally give up powers reserved to it in the constitution? I would say no). None-the-less, it is the law of the land, as yet unchallenged in the courts. But even submitting to that very limited check on executive power is too much for the Obama administration.

And every subsequent President, Democrat of Republican, will cite this as precedent, and do the same thing.

Anonymous said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/house-approves-pentagon-authorization-bill-with-libya-amendments/2011/05/26/AGIzBGCH_blog.html

And Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has introduced a pair of bills on the subject. One would declare war on Libya. The other would declare that Obama has overstepped the bounds of his authority under the War Powers Resolution.

In a speech on the Senate floor Thursday, Paul said the attitude from the White House had been that “It’s just a little war.”

“But you know what? It’s a big principle,” Paul said. He added: “There darn well should be a debate in this body.”



Meanwhile this WSJ article says there are "major" NATO (aka US) operations going on. And McCain basically admits he is ignoring the law since he hasn't met a conflict he doesn't like yet.

Anonymous said...

True story:

On another blog I asked, innocently enough, what Gaddhafi had done to make "the people" revolt. What was his crime?

The answer I got was: he had committed the crime of killing some of the (armed) protesters. That's why he's a bad guy and must be removed from power.

Talk about crying out in pain while kicking someone.

Still not clear on what Gaddhafi's offense was. A very short time ago Libya was welcomed back into the congress of nations, and Gaddhafi was considered rehabilitated.

It couldn't posssibly have something to do with Israel, could it?

We'll never know, at least not from currently official sources.

Every revolutionary movement has a head, and the "Arab Spring" is not an exception to this rule. Strangely, though, the head of the "Arab Spring" does not look particularly Arab.
http://www.movements.org/

Anonymous said...

I would like to finally stop the war, this is definitely not right