Libya Unjustified
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By -
In spite of all his education and his collegiate degrees, I am still surprised at how President Obama has shown no capacity to learn from his mistakes or the mistakes of others. He still seeks compromise from those who won't. And now he foolishly gets us involved in yet another war involving an Arab country while we're still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and the cost of those wars escalates. So I'm not surprised that the rightwing has been quick to criticize him. Criticizing him is what they do best.
In fact three months after the GOP and their extremist allies took over the House of Representatives, we still have no jobs bill nor any mention of job creation. But they still have time to criticize even though many of them believed it to be treasonous to criticize a sitting war time president. And although the criticism maybe justified, because President Obama has seriously goofed on Libya, it still reeks of hypocrisy because of who the criticism comes from.
You see President Obama should have already known that justifying the military intervention in Libya as a humanitarian mission was not going to work. Despite the GOP proudly wearing their version of "Christianity" on their sleeves, the saving of innocent life from a brutal tyrant is not enough reason to use our military. These are the same right-wingers who didn't care about the Gulf coast after Katrina, did nothing as BP's oil poisoned the gulf coast shore, and turned their backs on millions of Americans who lost their unemployment insurance, insurance that the American worker needed because the GOP had done such a great job with the economy the last 30 years. So why would the GOP care about faceless Libyans thousands of miles away? Seeking compassion from the "compassionate" conservatives was not going to work.
What President Obama needed to do was what the rightwing did in 2003. He had to fabricate evidence that the Libyans were the ones behind 9/11 and were planning to attack us with mythical weapons of mass destruction. They should have found Libyans with an axe to grind against Muammar Gaddafi and pay them for falsified intelligence reports. Then the Obama administration needed to cherry pick those reports and bang the war drums while talking about liberty, democracy and apple pie for several months. The administration should then have talked about how force will only be used as a last resort while doing nothing to avoid the use of force. And finally the administration should have bribed other nations to create a "coalition of the willing" to show that action in Libya was necessary and justified. This strategy worked for the neo-cons when they wanted to go to war with Iraq. Why not work now? Oh yeah, the hypocrisy thing.
Now I don't agree with getting involved in every crisis in the world, especially when we are unable to deal with our own problems here at home, but the fact GOP leaders couldn't wait to criticize the president before they knew the details should have raised a red flag with administration. That Neo-Con Newt Gingrich has flipped flopped on this issue more than a gymnast with bare feet on hot concrete, and that he also has taken every possible side of the argument, showed the complexity of the issue and was just a sign of things to come. The administration should have prepared more appropriately.
The administration should have known that humanitarianism was not going to work on the GOP. The GOP saves that for their corporate sponsors who cry poverty at every turn while securing windfall profits. The administration should have made it about what the GOP really cares about, oil and profit. Because our history has shown us that for the GOP, oil and profit will override all other concerns including humanitarianism and democracy.
Robert Betances
Warsaw, via e-mail[[In-content Ad]]
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In spite of all his education and his collegiate degrees, I am still surprised at how President Obama has shown no capacity to learn from his mistakes or the mistakes of others. He still seeks compromise from those who won't. And now he foolishly gets us involved in yet another war involving an Arab country while we're still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and the cost of those wars escalates. So I'm not surprised that the rightwing has been quick to criticize him. Criticizing him is what they do best.
In fact three months after the GOP and their extremist allies took over the House of Representatives, we still have no jobs bill nor any mention of job creation. But they still have time to criticize even though many of them believed it to be treasonous to criticize a sitting war time president. And although the criticism maybe justified, because President Obama has seriously goofed on Libya, it still reeks of hypocrisy because of who the criticism comes from.
You see President Obama should have already known that justifying the military intervention in Libya as a humanitarian mission was not going to work. Despite the GOP proudly wearing their version of "Christianity" on their sleeves, the saving of innocent life from a brutal tyrant is not enough reason to use our military. These are the same right-wingers who didn't care about the Gulf coast after Katrina, did nothing as BP's oil poisoned the gulf coast shore, and turned their backs on millions of Americans who lost their unemployment insurance, insurance that the American worker needed because the GOP had done such a great job with the economy the last 30 years. So why would the GOP care about faceless Libyans thousands of miles away? Seeking compassion from the "compassionate" conservatives was not going to work.
What President Obama needed to do was what the rightwing did in 2003. He had to fabricate evidence that the Libyans were the ones behind 9/11 and were planning to attack us with mythical weapons of mass destruction. They should have found Libyans with an axe to grind against Muammar Gaddafi and pay them for falsified intelligence reports. Then the Obama administration needed to cherry pick those reports and bang the war drums while talking about liberty, democracy and apple pie for several months. The administration should then have talked about how force will only be used as a last resort while doing nothing to avoid the use of force. And finally the administration should have bribed other nations to create a "coalition of the willing" to show that action in Libya was necessary and justified. This strategy worked for the neo-cons when they wanted to go to war with Iraq. Why not work now? Oh yeah, the hypocrisy thing.
Now I don't agree with getting involved in every crisis in the world, especially when we are unable to deal with our own problems here at home, but the fact GOP leaders couldn't wait to criticize the president before they knew the details should have raised a red flag with administration. That Neo-Con Newt Gingrich has flipped flopped on this issue more than a gymnast with bare feet on hot concrete, and that he also has taken every possible side of the argument, showed the complexity of the issue and was just a sign of things to come. The administration should have prepared more appropriately.
The administration should have known that humanitarianism was not going to work on the GOP. The GOP saves that for their corporate sponsors who cry poverty at every turn while securing windfall profits. The administration should have made it about what the GOP really cares about, oil and profit. Because our history has shown us that for the GOP, oil and profit will override all other concerns including humanitarianism and democracy.
Robert Betances
Warsaw, via e-mail[[In-content Ad]]
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