No Fly zones over Libya?

[Caustic Logic]

The military action has eclipsed it. However until the coalition stepped in some of those innocent peole were still being shot.

Might be. I had the impression the unquestionable (government) shootings that everyone agrees happened was mostly in Tripoli in the first few days until control was firmly established. Though I admit I'm a little hazy on just how this started. In fact, to understand this better, can anyone help me with just when the first government shots were fired and had any armed revolt occurred yet? I'm not entirely sure the regime fired first.

If they did...

Why did Libya military or the mercenaries have to shoot peaceful protestors?

That's a good question with a good educated guess to answer it.

Back in the 1980s, some people like Gene Sharp and col. Robert Helvey made a project of, essentially, weaponizing non-violent resistance into what's been called "war by other means" and a "post-military weapons system."

Some version of this might have been involved in the 1989 velvet revolutions in the eastern bloc, and/or in China with the Tiananmen Square protests, and was in fact tested to bloody effect in Burma around then.

But it was at century's end, after some tinkering and identifying the best targets, did the Sharp/Helvey program take off with "spontaneous" citizen uprisings making the world a much freer and more Western planet. Each came with US funding, congressional and mainstream media support, occasional allegations of supporting conspiracies/provocations, etc. and sometimes direct military intervention of the type now coming down on Libya. Each also came with an associated revolution name (color) and a leading, well-branded youth group, which I'll name as I recall with the list of victories so far:
Yugoslavia, Bulldozer, 2000, Otpor!
Georgia, Rose, 2002, Kmara
Ukraine, Orange, 2004, Pora
Okay, from there I get more murky. 2005 was a crazy year, with such sponrevs attempted to some degree in most of the the Central Asian former SSRs (Uzbekistan's went poorly indeed), Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, and then the Middle East.
Lebanon, Cedar, 2005.
Some concessions to liberalism were won in the Gulf states with milder versions. Until recently I think that was it. (forgive me if I missed some in the middle years, I zoned out) Then something in Iran, haven't looked into the details there. And now the Arab Spring, Egypt, Tunisia, something in Algeria - all the successful ones happened around Libya. The ones that are failing are perhaps the copycats, the more spontaneous ones? They just get shot, or dispersed however is possible. Bahrain, Yemen, now Syria.

So anyway, when Gaddafi sees well-branded opposition groups courting CNN and Washington, taking to the streets for Enough Gaddafi, right after the surrounding non-violent overthrows, I think the government decided this was an outside attack.

Should he have surrendered to the wave? Taken a less extreme measure of dispersal? Probably, obviously. But it being stern and repressive is the only way to be effective against this kind of attack. And of course the five martyrs out of 10,000 killed by the rubber bullets in that retaking of control would also have been unacceptable enough to spring plan B into action anyway. Because one way or another, plan A didn't work. Plan B started with the armed revolt and the mass defections. Again, all spontaneous. Not a single back-door discussion involved by anyone, and certainly no non-Libyans.

This quickly turned it into a civil war, and YET we maintain that we're still at the point of repression of protesters. A one-sided cease fire demand has been the effect of our demand to stop shooting "protesters," and some crap about shooting them with planes (allegedly) led to a no fly zone that very quickly became full-on tactical air support as the protest seeks to change the regime and deliver Libya to the Western system, finally.

But of course, that's all an accidental side-effect of our unflinching support for freedom globally.

Incorrect. I do not have to add anything.

Of course you don't, unless you want to make the comparison meaningful.

 

[little grey rabbit]

I would say the rebels need that, plus some mortars or such to allow them to surpress fortified positions, plus maybe some light weasons: machine guns, assault rifles, hand grenates and ammunition.

That would at least give them a chance on the offensive. Right now they're almost entirely dependant on planes "enforcing the no-fly zone" for supression of fortified positions and anti-tank warfare, which means the moment the coalition wavers they're vurneable to attack and face annahiliation within days.

Now that the international community intervened on their behalf, the only acceptable solution is a rebel victory. I certainly hope they won't turn out to be the worse of the two evils.

McHrozni

Buyers remorse?
It appears Ajdabiya has been "liberated" and I am guessing with a combination of air power and jihadist militia no one is going to want to stand up to them until Sirt - and perhaps not there either.

Its worth wondering how much of the Libyan army went east and how many of them are still alive now. It was always hard to gauge how many people were killed in the initial French strike, journalists talked about a dozen or so bodies, but so much more equipment looked wiped out. Perhaps they withdrew down the road to Brega or Sirt. Perhaps they didn't.

The people who will own the revolution will be the people who did the fighting on the ground. The other thing to consider, and while I don't know the situation in Libya, the army is often seen as a national instituition and symbol of honor and respect. That was the case in Egypt. This may complicate consolidation of authority in the new regime.

Poor Libyans, I wonder how many guessed in January 2011 what terrible things we had in store for them.

 

[funk de fino]

Why LIE about what I posted?

Your imaginary "folks" can see though you.

No I did not. I gave no indication I thought that. I merely noted that this is "shades of Kosovo". And it is.

And there are other comparisons one can make between Kosovo and this.

They've gone into Libya on the pretext of *genocide* that may turn out to be false ... just as it turned out to be in Kosovo.

They've allied themselves with a group of *rebels* who may be aligned with terrorists (al-Qaeda), much like Clinton aligned us with the KLA (a terrorist group) in Kosovo.

They claim they are only attacking military targets. But are they? Afterall, they falsely claimed that in Kosovo.

Clinton claimed there would be no "boots on the ground" in Kosovo. Turned out when the Serbs folded we were only days from ordering an invasion involving perhaps a 100,000 Americans. Can we believe Obama's similar claim in Libya, given that there are already numerous sources saying US special forces are "on the ground" and reports that other US soldiers are on the way?

"Shades of Kosovo". Get it?

Keep your creepy Clinton off topic rubbish out of here.

 

[funk de fino]

And speaking of liars …

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/candidate-obama-2007-americans-have-righ

How long should he have waited and debated this time then?

 

[funk de fino]

Who is your party of choice as the Liberals, Labour and the Conservatives have all been very enthusiastic about "interventions" ie wars in the past. The Greens? British National Party?

None of those. My nationality should give you a clue.

BTW, is William Hague insane?

No, just a nasty Tory tosspot

Does he seriously think that coalition airstrikes have made life more pleasant for people in Ajdabiya?

There seems to be a lot of double speak that when the Libyan army defends itself by shelling advancing rebels from Benghazi that they are in fact shelling civilians in Ajdabiya.

I don't think anyone seriously believes this, but leaders keep repeating it so they have an excuse to keep providing air support to the insurgents.

Has there ever been more of a mockery of a UN Security Resolution? The Libyan Government made a massive mistake when they tried to implement a ceasefire on the outskirts of Benghazi - they should have gone straight in.

Countless lives would have been saved.

You support Gaddafi? Cool.

 

[funk de fino]

Might be. I had the impression the unquestionable (government) shootings that everyone agrees happened was mostly in Tripoli in the first few days until control was firmly established. Though I admit I'm a little hazy on just how this started. In fact, to understand this better, can anyone help me with just when the first government shots were fired and had any armed revolt occurred yet? I'm not entirely sure the regime fired first.

So you just admit you are ignorant of the seeds of this? You realize how that looks now eh?

If they did...snipped irrelevant ranting

Of course you don't, unless you want to make the comparison meaningful.

Incorrect. If peaceful protestors are being massasacred in any country what should the reaction be? Ignore it?

 

[funk de fino]

Poor Libyans, I wonder how many guessed in January 2011 what terrible things we had in store for them.

Crocodile tears from a holocaust denier. This gets better and better.

 

[Caustic Logic]

So you just admit you are ignorant of the seeds of this? You realize how that looks now eh?

I realized when I said it. You yourself have some historical blind spot, which I tried to help with. You asked why shoot protesters. I gave an answer. You called it an irrelevant rant. Nice. Explanation irrelevant, you win, with total logic.

So there is no excuse in your mind for a sovereign leader not just surrendering when an outside-organized protest-revolution seeks to overthrow him? That's fine. May Scotland suffer Libya's fate someday, shortly after winning its independence. May it be designed by tea-partiers from Texas, start with crippling strikes and marches under the banner Yes Union, with an opposition leader - the most vile Tory you can imagine - selected to be the new Prime Minister.

No, I don't mean that. And I didn't even include missile strikes, aerial bombardment, or forced acceptance of rule by Islamist fanatics.

Incorrect.

No. Refer back to the comparison in question, and think about it for just a dang second. Or don't, I don't care.

If peaceful protestors are being massasacred in any country what should the reaction be? Ignore it?

We should deal with this just like we always do when peaceful protesters are killed - just like we did with Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, and now Syria. Tactical air support until the protesters and whatever arms and allies they can gather into an ill-defined glob of takes over.

It's the only decent thing to do, right Funk?

Also, it'd be nice if we didn't help start these things that then require massive protection, but hey ... I can't prove we did, so ...

 

[funk de fino]

I realized when I said it. You yourself have some historical blind spot, which I tried to help with. You asked why shoot protesters. I gave an answer. You called it an irrelevant rant. Nice. Explanation irrelevant, you win, with total logic.

No, you made up nonsense approaching woo.

So there is no excuse in your mind for a sovereign leader not just surrendering when an outside-organized protest-revolution seeks to overthrow him? That's fine.

I am talking the peaceful protests and what happened to those people. You are jumping past those and looking at it from the rebellion point of view with more CT outside organised rubbish.

May Scotland suffer Libya's fate someday, shortly after winning its independence. May it be designed by tea-partiers from Texas, start with crippling strikes and marches under the banner Yes Union, with an opposition leader - the most vile Tory you can imagine - selected to be the new Prime Minister. No, I don't mean that. And I didn't even include missile strikes, aerial bombardment, or forced acceptance of rule by Islamist fanatics.

This makes zero sense at all. Care to translate it or give us a clue what the point is?

No. Refer back to the comparison in question, and think about it for just a dang second. Or don't, I don't care.

I did think about it and gave you the option to look at it from any country standpoint. When the goverment starts shooting peaceful protestors then that is wrong and someone has to put a stop to it. You seem to think that nothing sould be done and we let them get on with it.

We should deal with this just like we always do when peaceful protesters are killed - just like we did with Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, and now Syria. Tactical air support until the protesters and whatever arms and allies they can gather into an ill-defined glob of takes over.

There should a be a consistent reaction to all events like these. The fact there is not does not make what is haopening now wrong. We should be dealing with Bahrain for using external secuity against their own people for protesting peacefully.

It's the only decent thing to do, right Funk?

Never been to Libya? Not got any friends or colleagues in Libya?

If you want to leave the place in the grip of a mad murderous dictator then all well and good for you.

Also, it'd be nice if we didn't help start these things that then require massive protection, but hey ... I can't prove we did, so ...[/QUOTE]

We started the protests in the ME and Africa did we? I think you will find that this was the age of the internet that has shown these people that they should be disaffected with their lot and they want more and are prepared to protest despite the threat of death. More than you seem to do safe on your PC.

 

[little grey rabbit]

Well they seemed to get a lot of Libyan monarchy flags very early. That doesn't mean we started it, but does suggest it might not have been utterly spontaneous either.

I saw peaceful mass rallies in Benghazai - but no firing on them either.
I didn't see much evidence of peaceful protests in Tripoli.

 

[geni]

So anyway, when Gaddafi sees well-branded opposition groups courting CNN and Washington, taking to the streets for Enough Gaddafi, right after the surrounding non-violent overthrows, I think the government decided this was an outside attack.

Should he have surrendered to the wave? Taken a less extreme measure of dispersal? Probably, obviously. But it being stern and repressive is the only way to be effective against this kind of attack. And of course the five martyrs out of 10,000 killed by the rubber bullets in that retaking of control would also have been unacceptable enough to spring plan B into action anyway. Because one way or another, plan A didn't work. Plan B started with the armed revolt and the mass defections. Again, all spontaneous. Not a single back-door discussion involved by anyone, and certainly no non-Libyans.

Problem with the theory that non-Libyans were involved in that anyone which might have had the ability to pull it off was either pretty clearly caught out by events or activily condeming anything that could look like helping the protests.

 

[Bill Thompson]

oops someone already started this topic elsewhere

 

[Darth Rotor]

For anyone interested in a Libyan presentation on the various factions and divisions in LIbya, I offer up a tourist site's top level explanation of the various tribal and ethnic groups in Libya.

http://www.temehu.com/Libyan-People.htm

This doesn't delve into contemporary political fault lines, it's a travel site, but I found it useful to get some ideas on how "the Libyan people" are configured.

The media false dichotomy disgusts me, where the Western Media, and the UN, seem to have attempted to present to the world "Colonel Khadaffy (spell as you like)" and some mythical collection of "good guys" known as "the Libyan people" and even "civilians."

The lack of nuance, and detail, is pathetic.


It appears from the treatment of the two American airmen (after ejecting from their F-15E) by one faction that some foreign assistance would be welcome. Whether that welcome would be extended to any of Osama's people probably varies by region or tribal grouping, or local loyalty basis.

For Al Qaeda NOT to try and take advantage of the current unrest would be a surprise, and at the strategic level, in Al Q circles, an opportunity missed.

Cheers.

 

[geni]

For anyone interested in a Libyan presentation on the various factions and divisions in LIbya, I offer up a tourist site's top level explanation of the various tribal and ethnic groups in Libya.

http://www.temehu.com/Libyan-People.htm

This doesn't delve into contemporary political fault lines, it's a travel site, but I found it useful to get some ideas on how "the Libyan people" are configured.

The media false dichotomy disgusts me, where the Western Media, and the UN, seem to have attempted to present to the world "Colonel Khadaffy (spell as you like)" and some mythical collection of "good guys" known as "the Libyan people" and even "civilians."

The lack of nuance, and detail, is pathetic.

It's been poked a bit but no one really knows how significant those tribal ties are any more. You've got to remeber that enough oil money is floating around in Libya to pay for a fairly significant amount of development and it is unclear how well tribal links have held up during that process.

For Al Qaeda NOT to try and take advantage of the current unrest would be a surprise, and at the strategic level, in Al Q circles, an opportunity missed.

Well it's already in part an opportunity missed. They didn't manage to stamp their franchise on things on day one.

 

[McHrozni]

Buyers remorse?

Not really, I didn't make the descision to go in Libya. I don't know if I would have made it, had it been up to me alone.

That aside, the descision has been made and intervention in Libya is under way. It should be obvious to anyone I was explicitly talking about that and that alone.

Its worth wondering how much of the Libyan army went east and how many of them are still alive now. It was always hard to gauge how many people were killed in the initial French strike, journalists talked about a dozen or so bodies, but so much more equipment looked wiped out. Perhaps they withdrew down the road to Brega or Sirt. Perhaps they didn't.

The casulaty numbers of that assault seemed very low to me as well.

You really want Quackdaffi to win, don't you?

McHrozni

 

[BeAChooser]

Do you think the better option then would have been to go and go full out on this and wrest Qaddafi from power ourselves?

When? Weeks ago or now?

How would we make sure that whatever government is set up is something that doesn't support Al Qaeda?

Fine time to be asking that question, isn't it?

do you want the form of government to be an American one that serves US interest all the time?

Did I say anything to suggest that?

What if that's not what the people want?

As long as what they want doesn't involve imposing what they want on someone else. Doesn't involve supporting terrorism in the US, West or our allies. Doesn't involve using WMD against someone. Beyond that, they can pretty much want what they want. If they want a 14th century religion to control their lives, that will insure they remain poor and illiterate … fine. Just don't try to spread that religion to our lands. Because that would "smell of imperialism" too.

 

[BeAChooser]

Keep your creepy Clinton off topic rubbish out of here.

Yes, I know you don't like to hear the truth about Clinton or see comparisons drawn between Clinton and Obama.

 

[egslim]

The media false dichotomy disgusts me, where the Western Media, and the UN, seem to have attempted to present to the world "Colonel Khadaffy (spell as you like)" and some mythical collection of "good guys" known as "the Libyan people" and even "civilians."

The lack of nuance, and detail, is pathetic.

Add a domestically weak French President who probably needs to score some points by taking advantage of the media's false dichotomy, a few neocons who actually believe it, and that's where we are today - taking sides in a muddy tribal war.

 

[Darth Rotor]

Add a domestically weak French President who probably needs to score some points by taking advantage of the media's false dichotomy, a few neocons who actually believe it, and that's where we are today - taking sides in a muddy tribal war.

Wait a minute. Is President Obama now a neocon? Hillary (who was for this action while Sec Def Gates was against it) is now a neocon?

I don't see it.

For BAC: the only thing I see being similar between what President Obama is doing in re Libya and Clinton in re Serbia/Kosovo is that he appears to have let a French leader talk him into taking action. Chirac to Clinton, and Sarkozy to Obama ... but that's real thin, BAC.

Real thin.

Anorexic, even.

 

[funk de fino]

Well they seemed to get a lot of Libyan monarchy flags very early. That doesn't mean we started it, but does suggest it might not have been utterly spontaneous either.

I saw peaceful mass rallies in Benghazai - but no firing on them either.
I didn't see much evidence of peaceful protests in Tripoli.

Then you need to open your eyes.