Sorry, but here's the real deal George and mark agree, amazingly enough:
Regime change not America’s job
The missile strikes that inaugurated America’s latest attempt at regime change were launched 29 days before the 50th anniversary of another such — the Bay of Pigs of April 17, 1961. Then the hubris of American planners was proportional to their ignorance of everything relevant, from Cuban sentiment to Cuba’s geography. The fiasco was a singularly feckless investment of American power.
Does practice make perfect? In today’s episode, America has intervened in a civil war in a tribal society, the dynamics of which America does not understand. And America is supporting one faction, the nature of which it does not know. “We are standing with the people of Libya,” says Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, evidently confident that “the” people are a harmonious unit. Many in the media call Moammar Gaddafi’s opponents “freedom fighters,” and perhaps they are, but no one calling them that really knows how the insurgents regard one another, or understand freedom, or if freedom, however understood, is their priority.
But, then, knowing is rarely required in the regime-change business. The Weekly Standard, a magazine for regime-change enthusiasts, serenely says: “The Libyan state is a one-man operation. Eliminate that man and the whole edifice may come tumbling down.” And then good things must sprout? The late Donald Westlake gave one of his comic novels the mordant title “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” People who do not find that darkly funny should not make foreign policy.
In Libya, mission creep began before the mission did. A no-fly zone would not accomplish what Barack Obama calls “a well-defined goal,” the “protection of civilians.” So the no-fly zone immediately became protection for aircraft conducting combat operations against Gaddafi’s ground forces.
America’s war aim is inseparable from — indeed, obviously is — destruction of that regime. So our purpose is to create a political vacuum, into which we hope — this is the “audacity of hope” as foreign policy — good things will spontaneously flow. But if Gaddafi cannot be beaten by the rebels, are we prepared to supply their military deficiencies? And if the decapitation of his regime produces what the removal of Saddam Hussein did — bloody chaos — what then are our responsibilities regarding the tribal vendettas we may have unleashed? How long are we prepared to police the partitioning of Libya?
Explaining his decision to wage war, Obama said Gaddafi has “lost the confidence of his own people and the legitimacy to lead.” Such meretricious boilerplate seems designed to anesthetize thought. When did Gaddafi lose his people’s confidence? When did he have legitimacy? American doctrine — check the Declaration of Independence — is that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. So there are always many illegitimate governments. When is it America’s duty to scrub away these blemishes on the planet? Is there a limiting principle of humanitarian interventionism? If so, would Obama take a stab at stating it?
Congress’ power to declare war resembles a muscle that has atrophied from long abstention from proper exercise. This power was last exercised on June 5, 1942 (against Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary), almost 69 years, and many wars, ago. It thus may seem quaint, and certainly is quixotic, for Indiana’s Richard Lugar — ranking Republican on, and former chairman of, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — to say, correctly, that Congress should debate and vote on this.
There are those who think that if the United Nations gives the United States permission to wage war, the Constitution becomes irrelevant. Let us find out who in Congress supports this proposition, which should be resoundingly refuted, particularly by Republicans currently insisting that government, and especially the executive, should be on a short constitutional leash. If all Republican presidential aspirants are supine in the face of unfettered presidential war-making and humanitarian interventionism, the Republican field is radically insufficient.
On Dec. 29, 1962, in Miami’s Orange Bowl, President John Kennedy, who ordered the Bay of Pigs invasion, addressed a rally of survivors and supporters of that exercise in regime change. Presented with the invasion brigade’s flag, Kennedy vowed, “I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana.” Eleven months later, on Nov. 2, 1963, his administration was complicit in another attempt at violent regime change — the coup against, and murder of, South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem. The Saigon regime was indeed changed, so perhaps this episode counts as a success, even if Saigon is now Ho Chi Minh City.
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Thanks for being first aboard the mark/George express.
Takeoff has begun.
Thanksgiving, a joyous celebration of genocide and smallpox infected blankets.
I've said this before, but it bears saying again: How does one know obama is lying? Just watch his lips move.
Bush lied, and one could tell, from his shifty or glasy eyed stare, speechless.
obambi lies with eloquent words, and straight face, bt, it's clear we've been three card montied (SP?).
Thanks for coming by.
It's always nice to see a new face appear aboard the good ship markinjapan, which is listing badly, AGAIN.
twenty-three minutes ago, there was a whole or break on the reactor - the one the government told us was under control.
This government's lying; obambi lies. Few governments don't lie - can't think of any off-hand!
If I could write, even one half as well as You, I wouldn't have to be, simply a reporter, scouring the net for newsworthy stories.
Perfect and inspiring.
Thanks, Jack.
I may become scarce here, very soon, as the crack or hole at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex has changed the status from dangerous to dire.
Be prepared, if we can find the way, for markinphuket.
First Pan Am 103:
"Time's April 27 cover story, written by veteran correspondent Roy Rowan, described a conspiracy involving U.S. agents of the CIA and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who allegedly collaborated, wittingly and unwittingly, in a Byzantine plot in which terrorists and drug traffickers bombed Pan Am 103 on December 22, 1988. It killed all 259 passengers and crew members as well as 11 residents of Lockerbie, Scotland, where the plane crashed."
"In the late 1980s the CIA operated a "freewheeling" unit in the Middle East, known as COREA, that trafficked in "drugs and arms in order to gain access to terrorist groups." The CIA and the DEA also was secretly cooperating with a Syrian drug trafficker and arms dealer named Monzer al-Kassar. In return for his help in obtaining the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon, COREA allowed al-Kassar to ship drugs to the United States on U.S. airlines. Meanwhile, the DEA was using al-Kassar's drug-smuggling ring in a sting operation designed to flush out drug dealers in Detroit, Los Angeles and Houston – cities with large Arab populations."
"At about the same time, Syrian terrorist Ahmed Jibril, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, was contracted by the Iranian government to avenge the downing of an Iranian Airbus by the U.S.S. Vincennes in July 1988. Jibril solicited and received al-Kassar's pledge to help by using his "CIA-assisted drug and arms business" to plant a bomb on an American plane. Al-Kassar was "reluctant" to get involved because he didn't want to disrupt his profitable smuggling operation, but he went along with the plan.
• Jibril had an additional motive for the bombing: He wanted to eliminate a U.S. "intelligence team" that was working on a plan to rescue American hostages in Beirut."
"According to the indictments and other government and airline records, a remnant from a microchip in the bomb's timer identified in mid-1990 showed that the timer was one of many acquired by Libyan intelligence operatives and that the suitcase containing the bomb was loaded onto an Air Malta flight and transferred twice : at Frankfurt Airport onto a Boeing 727 with the Pan Am 103 flight number, and again onto a Boeing 747, also called Pan Am 103, at London's Heathrow Airport. According to U.S. officials, the evidence was further buttressed by a Libyan government agent who defected to the United States last year.
The indictments generated some controversy, leading several critics to charge that the U.S. government might be engaged in a cover-up. Some victims' families alleged that the indictments of the Libyans – and the fact that no Syrians were named – were a reward for Syria's involvement in the Desert Storm campaign and an attempt to persuade Syria to help win the release of American hostages. President Bush rushed to claim that the indictments exonerated Syria. "Syria took a bum rap on this," he told reporters."
"Rowan's story was not the first time allegations similar to those outlined in the Aviv report surfaced just before judicial proceedings on the bombing. As David Leppard, author of "On the Trail of Terror," a book on the bombing, pointed out in an article he wrote for the Washington Post in late April, Time's "untold story of Pan Am 103" "appeared twice before under similar circumstances... In autumn 1989, in the midst of evidence-taking in Frankfurt that proved highly critical of Pan Am, the story surfaced in the British and U.S. media. A year later, on the eve of the 1990 inquiry in Scotland, an identical item was reported on NBC-TV."
Two days after the Time story appeared, attorneys for the victims' families, in a letter to the court, charged that Pan Am's attorneys were trying to sow confusion in an effort to influence the 550-member jury pool. In the letter, lead attorney Lee Kreindler stated that "false information..appears to have been given to Time by the defendants."
Nevertheless, the strategy didn't work. On July 11, a jury found Pan Am liable for "willful misconduct" in its sloppy baggage handling that allowed the bomb on Pan Am 103. "
http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=1314
This is a long, complicated story with twists, fabrications and erroneous reliance on irreputable sources, that will likely never be resolved to the satisfaction of anyone.
If this provision of our Constitution is deemed to be archaic than it should be removed or amended.
The last official war declaration by Congress came after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Subsequent conflicts were initiated by the executive branch.
Are You a strict Constructionist?
If so, You have failed in Your responsibilities: http://www.wattscookinblog.com/2010/09/strict-constructionists-failed-constitutional-responsibility-with-war-resolution/
With, at least three and one half mideast wars in which we are embroiled and the country awash in debt, we can hardly afford, another.
An argument You might proffer is bush's ill-begotten war powers resolution, however, as a strict constructionist (if You are one), this doesn't wash, and that dawg won't hunt.
As for me and the missus, things couldn't be worse, the main reactor cracked or blew a hole, and is s peweing radiation wildly.
Governments lie ALL governments lie.
At the time it happened, it flashed onto Yahell news as the headline story.
I read it to her.
She was shocked. She was at her adjacent computer, and checked Yahell.co.jp., the Japanese
Not 'til this morning did it appear on her computer.
To make our circumstance worse, the radiation is drifting slowly south, and the State Dept. ended the free airlift to Taiwan from Tokyo today.
Now it's pay ONLY all ways, and we hadn't even the funds to get TO Tokyo.
Endgame.
They want to rush in and perform miracles at every disaster but just for a week, then take their bows and move on. If it takes longer then they lose interest and move on to their next set of little heroics. When it comes time to pay the piper with their own money and their kids being killed then the whining will begin again. Same as it ever was.
I think the Republicans are very happy with what the President is doing, I was at a friends house the day we started in and a couple of them were glued to the TV thrilled to see him being so manly. Because of where I live I'm mostly exposed to conservatives, they're nice people but oddly suicidal. They always seem befuddled when the bill arrives.
So, will it be Hillary that's poised to be the next in line on the Blue side? She and her husband both have the morals of alley cats, and she's one of the best actresses I've ever observed. She's far too smart and manipulative for my liking. I'm suspicious of how much she's downplaying herself, brilliant but always having to play second fiddle to "the boys", she could easily get away with murder. She's like some modern day version of all the Doris Day roles.
I had a visceral reaction to her from the beginnng of her husband's reign. She will be impossible to stop if she gets it, women worship her blindly and men aren't attracted to her. I ask because you're very dispassionate and analytical as well as having a lot of historical knowledge, is she the next danger on the blue side?
I LOVE this section, and especially the words "morals of alley cats."
I couldn't agree with You more. I felt them to be unseemly, pre-his election.
Now he's pals with the bush's
His choice of Janet Reno confirmed my suspicions of THEIR sleaziness.
They could have, just, waited outside the periphery to wait for the Branch Davidians to concede.
The invasion of the compound could not have happened without, bill and hill approving.
They are opportunists and immoral.
NOTHING they were to do would surprise me.
Much to ponder in Your comment, l'Heure Bleue.
Your comment "love to be perceived as heroic and doing the right thing, wave the flag and blah-blah stuff.,"couldn't be more true, as with the Branch Davidians, their own countrymen, the perception of different than us is a sufficient reason for a call to arms and violence.
As such deviation You suggest must be decided, not by a unitary executive, but by the will and consent OF THE PEOPLE.
Isn't that the essence, of the fairy tale, of us being a democracy, or, actually, a republic?
Are You sure it wasn't J&J baby powder?
Thank You, Dr. Bramhall - ALWAYS my pleasure to have You, visit.
Earlier Bush planned to get oil from Georgia but Russians decided otherwise.
Gaddafi is as well a bit dangerous. So he must go before the war against Iran. Obama and his gang already changed the regime of Egypt. The new military regime there is more reliable than that of Mubarak.
Today's news are telling that rebels in Libya are already able to deliver oil to Americans.
Now Jemen is still a bit troublesome, Syria, too. But before long everything is ready. And then it is Iran's turn.
Please see my blog about other preparations for the war against Iran.
My own favorite is John Foster Dulles engineering the overthrow of democratically elected President Arbenz in Guatemala in 1953 for the benefit of United Fruit Company while at the same time Dulles himself was a major stockholder in United Fruit Company. A vivid object lesson for Che Guevara who was there at the time.
Who's the real terrorists? unmanned drones, rendition, torture genocide. 3 and 1/2 active wars, numerous covert ones.
Since WWII america has found justification to militarily intervene in the affairs of Iran (four times), Yugoslavia, Uruguay, Greece, Germany, China, the Philippines (three times), Puerto Rico, Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala (twice), Egypt, Lebanon (twice), Iraq (three times and ongoing), China, Panama (twice), Vietnam, Cuba (twice), Panama, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, Cambodia (twice), Chile, Angola, Oman, Laos, Libya (three times)), El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, Honduras, Bolivia, Liberia (twice), Saudi Arabia, Somalia (twice), Yugoslavia (twice), Bosnia, Haiti (twice), Zaire, Albania, Sudan, Afghanistan (three times and ongoing), Yemen (three times), Macedonia, Colombia, Liberia, Pakistan, and Syria. A record of shame, inanity, and greed unparalleled in history.
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html
Furthermore: If I recall correctly, the last two unequivocal triumphs for our "vaunted" military were Panama, where we blasted heavy metal music to get Noriega to leave the Vatican diplomatic mission in Panama City.
"Then came the Army's clownish boom-box bombardment - American soldiers drawn up at the Vatican embassy in Panama, playing rock music full blast around the clock to make life hellish for the Pope's emissaries.
Suddenly we seemed to be in Dr. Strangelove country. Punishing the Vatican with heavy-metal rock?"
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/03/opinion/observer-is-this-justice-necessary.html
The operation was dubbed "Just Cause," and the General Assembly of the UN voted 75-20 labeling the invasion a flagrant violation of international law.
The just cause for this invasion was that Noriega who had been on the CIA payroll was no longer cooperating in hiding the program by which guns were sent to various Central American death squads in return for cocaine being trans-shipped into inner-city america, and this illegal american activity had to be covered regardless of the circumstances necessary to do so. Needless to say, we don't stop at violating the laws of others. The Boland amendment forbade this whole travesty, but american exceptionalism allows us to ignore our own laws, as well as the laws of others.
And the band played on.
The terrorists have been unclothed and they are america's president, compliant democrats and immoral republicans in the congress, and a supreme court that is supreme only in its arrogance and resemblance to banana republic decisions.
The prior american victory was in Grenada, a country of 100,000 people, (with a democratically elected government) only days after a bomb in Lebanon at the marine barracks took the lives of 241 american servicemen.
The UN voted 122 to 9 that the invasion was a flagrant violation of international law.
The operation was named Urgent Fury, and the urgency was to get the 241 service members killed two days earlier due to another inept american intelligence failure off the front pages and preserve the delusion on morning in mr. reagan's america.
And the band played on.
If you were taken in by the mindless and continual lies about Iraq:
Presumably, You are aware that Gulf War one was contrived when Hussein's objections to america supplying slant oil drilling to Kuwait so that they could drill oil out of Iraqi territory in the Rumaila oil field was answered when Bush I sent his envoy April Glaspie to Iraq and gave him the green light to invade Kuwait.
Then, next in the progression was testimony given to congress by a tearful UNIDENTIFIED young girl proclaiming her eyewitness accounts of Kuwaiti babies taken out of incubators.
This was orchestrated by the republican PR firm Hill and Knowleton, who had been hired expressly to turn public opinion, which had been against war, to supporting it. Her testimony was key to rallying incredible support for war, which was lingering around and under 50% at the time to 90%.
Three months later, it was revealed that :
a. Nariyah had never even been in Kuwait at the time of the events she testified to having seen; and
b. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US
http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html
Even within this backdrop, the senate and house of representatives votes authorizing force were the narrowest since the War of 1812.
Then bush senior claimed: "Within three days, 120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks had poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia. It was then that I decided to act to check that aggression."[49]
The Pentagon claimed that satellite photos showing a buildup of Iraqi forces along the border were the source of this information, but this was later shown to be false. A reporter for the Saint Petersburg Times acquired commercial satellite images made at the time in question, which showed nothing but empty desert.[50]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War
The rush to war was so intense that we neither would allow the U.N. inspectors time to complete their task of searching for WMD's, nor provide adequate body armor for our soldiers, nor their vehicles.
At this point, 100,000 sorties were flown, dropping 85,000 tons of ordinance designed to destroy the Iraqi infrastructure, which has never since recovered.
After the official conclusion of hostilities, the no-fly zones were established and a harsh boycott put in place. At one point, sec. of state madeline albright was asked if the deaths of 1/2 million CHILDREN was worth our efforts, and she, unapologetically, replied affirmatively.
And the band played on.
As for Gulf War II, plans for this were already on the table months prior to 9/11, thanks to vp cheney:
Bush's critics have questioned whether he and his administration were focused on Iraq rather than terrorism when they took office early in 2001 and even after the Sept. 11 attacks. Former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill and former White House counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke have made that charge in recently published memoirs.
According to "Plan of Attack," it was Cheney who was particularly focused on Iraq before the terrorist attacks. Before Bush's inauguration, Cheney sent word to departing Defense Secretary William S. Cohen that he wanted the traditional briefing given an incoming president to be a serious "discussion about Iraq and different options." Bush specifically assigned Cheney to focus as vice president on intelligence scenarios, particularly the possibility that terrorists would obtain nuclear or biological weapons.
Early discussions among the administration's national security "principals" -- Cheney, Powell, Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice -- and their deputies focused on how to weaken Hussein diplomatically. But Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz proposed sending in the military to seize Iraq's southern oil fields and establish the area as a foothold from which opposition groups could overthrow Hussein.
Powell dismissed the plan as "lunacy," according to Woodward, and told bush what he thought. "You don't have to be bullied into this," Powell said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17347-2004Apr16.html
bush's approval rating prior to 9/11 were as low as under 50%. When highjackers, FIFTEEN of NINETEEN who were Saudis attacked the WTC, bush's approval ratings soared and then began the charade of WMDs, Al Qaeda/Saddam connections, efforts to obtain yellowcake from Niger; and successive shifting reasons to be there; all of which turned out to be lies.
And the band played on.
I agree. The real terrorists are coming from the big piece of the land located in the north between the Atlantic ocean and the Pacific ocean.
On the other hand I think that the recent turmoil in the Middle East is basically planned and orchestrated by Americans.
I was expecting that Israel would once again attack Gaza, Americans to do something in Egypt, in and much more in the Middle East , too.
I was surprised to learn that this all is going on so 'successful'. Frenchmen and British are doing the dirty work for Americans in Libya.
---
Russians seem finally to have given the green light to Americans to attack Iran... But what about India and China?
Thanks for posing those probing and crucially important questions.
My friend RW, and YES, he is my friend, as I've pointed out before, the far left (me) and the far right (RW) are so far, that they often meet and have congruent opinions.
I hope to hear from him, soon; and Your questions, Hannu, add depth to our discussion.
Thanks for that and many other things.