Merged Libya: People's Revolution / Criminal Imperialism?

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Libya was 53rd on the UN's Human Development Index last year out of almost 200 countries, well ahead of countries like Russia and Brazil. It is a combination of a number of things, including standard of living, education, literacy, child welfare, etc.

http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/Lets-Talk-HD-HDI_2010.pdf

Iraq was well ahead of them, even after the Iran-Iraq war in the years around 1990. Now after our glorious overthrow and occupation, they are 178th. Anyone opposing that invasion/occupation had the same kinds of epithets hurled at them.

Yes, children - the only politically correct thing we are allowed to consider is that Saddam has been overthrown and executed. Soon Qadaffi. As long as he's killed, Libya can sink to dead last and mission still accomplished.

Yes, children - this is a baaaaaad man unlike our good men with far more pernicious dictatorships like Saudi Arabia & etc. How it can be called a popular revolution when the entire air and sea campaigns were run by NATO, along with the arming, training, coordination and planning of combat operations like Mermaid Dawn and Siren Signals for the attack on Tripoli- is beyond me. It remains to be seen what is going to happen there, but the propaganda out of our government, especially the abject lying of Obomba regarding our air war on Libya cannot be believed.

The great thing about being a warmonger is that you can flit from Afghanistan to Iraq to Pakistan, to Somalia, Yemen, Libya, etc. - always staying on the offensive with new bombing campaigns to hail as the harbinger of freedom and democracy, never having to look at the devastation and killing you have left in your wake.

It's appalling to anyone with a decent grasp of history that the question of overthrowing a country can be reduced by propaganda to whether Qaddafi is "good or bad". You don't even have to know who we are arming and funding, like the Al Qaeda linked Benghazi rebels. The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group for example has been a designated US State Department Foreign Terrorist Organization since 2004, but since the power elite needs them like they needed Al Qaeda in Afghanistan while the Soviets were occupying - they're freedom fighters today.

 

[Pardalis]

So you would have preferred 40 more years of dictatorship. Hey, as long as they're on the "human development" chart, there's no problem eh?

Good to know.

 

[Alt+F4]

In related news, the Israeli press is reporting today that in Quaddafi's house were found his son's stash of homosexual porn and his own album of pictures of Condi Rice.

So what? Who cares? Homo porn, oh noes! Someone who got their kicks from Condi, again, oh noes!

 

[trustbutverify]

So what? Who cares?

Maybe some of the oppressed LBGT community in Libya living under the "purification" laws?

OH NOOOOOOOES!

 

[Skeptic]

Maybe some of the oppressed LBGT community in Libya living under the "purification" laws?

But they're #53 on the development index. If you have to hang a few gays to do that, it's a price worth paying, surely.

 

[Pardalis]

But they're #53 on the development index. If you have to hang a few gays to do that, it's a price worth paying, surely.

The US is in the top 5, so maybe they could start bombarding entire neighborhoods and killing dissidents, and no one could say anything, because they're on the index.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Anyone opposing that invasion/occupation had the same kinds of epithets hurled at them.

Yes, children - the only politically correct thing we are allowed to consider is that Saddam has been overthrown and executed. Soon Qadaffi. As long as he's killed, Libya can sink to dead last and mission still accomplished.

Yes, children - this is a baaaaaad man unlike our good men with far more pernicious dictatorships like Saudi Arabia & etc.

Thanks for the assist. I'm not surprised, but it can still be frustrating.

But they're #53 on the development index. If you have to hang a few gays to do that, it's a price worth paying, surely.

They got high on the index by keeping their oil wealth at home and giving people good educations, good medical care, good nutrition, and so on.

They adopted conservative Islamic values for a mix of reasons, not least to placate the hardliners in their society. But they didn't go far enough. The extremists in the east, between funneling record per-capita fighters for al Qaeda in Iraq, urged Sharia rule and Gaddafi's overthrow. One of the common ideas: He wasn't truly a Muslim, but an apostate. Another: He was secretly a Jew and part of a Zionist plot. Another: he wanted to have his Africans rape Libyan women and dilute their Arab identity.

All these were big factors giving the current freedom fighters some of their "Allahu Akbar!" zeal. Horrific sometimes in effect, but useful in the takeover.

So how does helping the hardliners and lynch mob types take over the whole country help the situation for gays there? You were implying some trade-off, right? Where Gaddafi's prosperity was in exchange for some Gaddafi-origin evull hatred of gays?

The US is in the top 5, so maybe they could start bombarding entire neighborhoods and killing dissidents, and no one could say anything, because they're on the index.

Killing dissidents - okay, in a 42 year rule, I surely wouldn't contest that. But that "bombing neighborhoods" thing just makes you look a bit behind, like you're stuck in the panicky moments of late February's "genocide!" mania.

Neighborhoods - of Tripoli, correct? Fashloum, Tajoura, Souq al-Juma (IIRC). There was never any evidence presented. Two phone calls said there was bombing, placed to al Jazeera Feb 21 within an hour of each other. A third call in the same span said they were being shelled from the sea. One, Adel Mohamed Saleh, a "political activist," said relentless repeated bombing, killing hundreds, and ranting about the world ignoring him. It was moving, and completely at odds with the evidence. No video. No photos of damage. No specific victims named even that I've seen. Very little logic. Sky News was allowed to go anywhere they wanted. They saw nothing, got bored, stopped trying, called it inconclusive.

So unless there's something else you can show me that's any more convincing than these calls (the other two, both also from political activists with over-activist imaginations), I'm calling this just one of the ways you were duped big time this year.

 

[Pardalis]

I'm calling this just one of the ways you were duped big time this year.

You've been duped for 40 years bubba.

You lose.

 

[Pardalis]

I'm sure you'll say that didn't happen, or that, or that.

You're in denial. I'll give you a few weeks to face reality. I know it's hard to find oneself realizing that you've wasted a lifetime in support for a lost cause.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

Thanks for the assist. I'm not surprised, but it can still be frustrating.

Look at all the one-liner logical fallacies used against anyone who questions the official propaganda line. You are a boot-licking Qaddafi fan and anyone he harmed is YOUR fault.

You face every tactic in the book: selective attention/memory, villification, denial, evasion, diversion, shaming, etc. - so yeah of course it is frustrating.

The literature says there are two kinds of people who use all of these tactics. The first is people are trying to protect themselves from harm, and in that context the tactics are called "defense mechanisms".

So for those who cherish the fantasy that Americans are the Master Race with this benevolent American Exceptionalism, bursting that fantasy with the Indian massacres, the enslavement of blacks, the millions dead in Viet Nam, the depravity of the death squads we employed in Central and South America, the millions of dead and refugee Iraqis living in unconscionable squalor and disease from our war crimes against them... it's too much for their fragile ego to take. So they attack with invalid tactics.

Others though are simply people without conscience. They're going to fake it of course by trotting out people they could not care less about themselves. Where were they during these 40 years of qadaffi crimes they are only now pretending to care about? Were they in some charitable organization to adopt out children of qadaffi victims? No, they were busy trotting out yet other people they could not care less about in order to justify killing slant-eyes or whoever it is we were killing at the time.

And you dutifully agree to their demand that you acknowledge Qadaffi did bad things. Since you have a conscience, you do so. But since they lack a conscience, they refuse to acknowledge the atrocities we are actually currently engaged in ourselves.

Since this bullying tactic works, they'll never stop using it. Instead of justifying the bombing, the Apache helicopter strafing, the killing we are doing - you have to keep apologizing for anything Qadaffy did because that takes all the attention off what WE are doing right now.

The burden of proof is on the warmonger, but it is the last thing they will ever do. Our constitution had been constructed to make war extremely difficult because of the disasterous consequences of war for the people. There is no greater threat to our own liberties than the war party, let alone the millions of innocents we kill.

They adopted conservative Islamic values for a mix of reasons, not least to placate the hardliners in their society. But they didn't go far enough. The extremists in the east, between funneling record per-capita fighters for al Qaeda in Iraq, urged Sharia rule and Gaddafi's overthrow.

Article I of the "constitution" of the Transitional National Council establishes Islam as the official state religion and shariah las the foundation for all law. The same thing happened in Afghanistan, so no surprise that our pretense about global jihad against shariah law by the United States has done the exact opposite: enshrined shariah as the law of their land.

 

[Rolfe]

http://www.scottishreview.net/JudithJaafar162.shtml

For interest.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Not without the right medication I fear. Weren't you the guy that thought Matt Damon was sending him sooper sekrit troother messages in his films?

No, I have no idea who you';re talking about. Thanks for insulting my sanity, since we're enforcing civility rules here. All these questions you guys pose about my sanity and intelligence are just really nuanced and fascinating. I look forward to reading more. What else is wrong with me?

Nevermind. I get it, mods. I'm the crazy guy, so I have to be civil. The others are just being duly skeptical.

 

[Caustic Logic]

You've been duped for 40 years bubba.

You lose.

I haven't been alive for 40 years, for starters.

Next, you lose. The challenge was to provide evidence for the specific claim you made. None of those articles does that. There is no evidence you or I know of, yet you believe(d?) that this war was justified, in part, by the government "bombing neighborhoods."

For review, the links you gave in response:
- Rocket attacks on Misrata - yeah, it was a war, which the rebels started. No bombing of neighborhoods.
- Human shields - voluntary said some, held prisoner, say others. I'm going with the former, or possibly a mix. Voluntary human shields are known, in a country where many supported the government. You go with the latter exclusively, I'm sure. No bombs falling here, except from NATO.
- the last one, the Telegraphs epic Feb 19 piece: "140 'massacred' as Gaddafi sends in snipers to crush dissent. Women and children leapt from bridges to their deaths as they tried to escape a ruthless crackdown by Libyan forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Snipers shot protesters, artillery and helicopter gunships were used against crowds of demonstrators, and thugs armed with hammers and swords attacked families in their homes as the Libyan regime sought to crush the uprising." Is there even anything else in the article supporting these claims? Anywhere else? Inaccurate alarmist by-line and opening paragraph as evidence?

Either way, no bombs on neighborhoods. But that wasn't even alleged for two days more.

There is a video there, undeniable proof that "protesters" were shot and carried away from some funeral that was, by the location shown in the video, right around the north gate of the Katiba barracks, roughly 24 hours before their attacks there paid off with a suicide bomber at that gate, the opening of the barracks, a slaughter of soldiers including at least one beheading, and a huge score of heavy weapons and tanks to attack other cities with.

Tell me this isn't the locale of that one dead "protester" and the direction of travel of the injured one being carried:

So thanks, there's another way yet you've been seriously snookered this year, by the Libyan rebel liars.

 

[bikerdruid]

Libya: The criminal face of imperialism

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/pers-a27.shtml
from the piece:
NATO’s assault on Libya, a criminal imperialist war from its outset more than five months ago, has descended into an exercise in out-and-out murder as special forces operatives and intelligence agents hunt down Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.......NATO warplanes carried out over 20,000 sorties, destroying schools, hospitals and homes and slaughtering untold numbers of Libyan soldiers, many of them young conscripts.

 

[JJM 777]

At least Gaddafi made (the mistake of making) it look like he is the aggressor and NATO is the defender of human rights.

Libya hardly was a democracy, so the system was hardly worth maintaining from anyone´s ideological perspective.

 

[bikerdruid]

At least Gaddafi made (the mistake of making) it look like he is the aggressor and NATO is the defender of human rights.

Libya hardly was a democracy, so the system was hardly worth maintaining from anyone´s ideological perspective.

that was not for you or me to decide.

 

[timhau]

A thuggish dictator falls, and the usual suspects are lamenting his demise. Now isn't that a surprise.

 

[Aepervius]

Personaly, I am not lamenting the fall of that guy, i am lamenting that somehow when we "free" or "help free" an opressed population from a dictator lately it always seems to be from countries with oil, while the country without oil with as bad or even worst dictator , well, are seemingly ignored.

 

[little grey rabbit]

A thuggish dictator falls, and the usual suspects are lamenting his demise. Now isn't that a surprise.

No, we are lamenting the 20 000 dead and a country where now one half loaths the other half for having called in air strikes on them and both sides fear each other. At the moment only a handful of people called Gaddafi have died - and most of them were children.

Not something really to celebrate

 

[RandFan]

Wouldn't it be great if there were only good guys and bad gays and only good actions and bad actions? I can't say that this was only good or only bad. I'm sorry for the people who have died.