Originally Posted by Populus Romanus
What a precedent to set - straight out of Assad's playbook.Originally Posted by TuffStuff
I don't understand the breathless rush to personalize this conflict and make it our own. We are not at war with the Gadaffi regime, and the man is not our enemy. It would be amazing if the loudest voices in the West in favor of intervention in Libya could focus some of that energy on Afghanistan - you know, that conflict in a small, third world nation where the fate of freedom loving people hangs in the balance that we actually have a stake in.
Un-freaking-believable. Now it's our responsibility to win this moment for the Libyan people?Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, told me that he tends to favor a no-fly zone — along with the jamming of communications — as soon as is practical. “The last thing you want is a 20-year debate on who lost this moment for the Libyan people,” Mr. Kerry noted.
This is exactly the same trap Bush fell in to. Iraq II was in many ways the direct result of a 10-year debate on who lost that moment for the Iraqi people. We somehow owed them freedom too, and they surely thanked us for the favor.
Also, the cowboy in your article is engaging in some highly misleading commentary.
...and they were engaged almost daily by Iraqi anti-air forces and were forced to return the favor, destroying thousands of Iraqi anti-air assets. It would be nearly impossible to eradicate all air defense systems in any nation, but that does not mean that significant bombing or such installations is not a precondition for such an operation.And, in any case, he noted that the United States operated a no-fly zone over Iraq for more than a decade without systematically eradicating all Iraqi air defense systems in that time.
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