End of the American Dreamreports that a Rasmussen poll found that 67% of Americans do not want war with Libya. 17% of them do.
HAH! As if that matters to anyone in power.
Yeah, I know Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, Barack Obama keep protesting they really don't want to go to war with Libya. Can’t you hear the reluctance in their voices these days? Look at their grave faces advising restraint! Especially Robert Gates'.
That is rich. Not since Tom Sawyer feigned so much pleasure in whitewashing the fence has such a perfect con been executed. Oh, wait. There were Gates’ assurances on the NewsHour that the military budget had been seriously slashed. Oh, all right. Then there was anything Obama promised pre-election. Anyway ...
“HOLD ON THERE!” argues the American corporate media. “Aren’t you listening? Clinton, Gates, Obama, McCain, Lieberman, Kerry (et tu, John?), et al. -- neocons and neolibs one and all -- can’t help themselves. They clearly care so much about the Libyan people. How can all these hyper-humanitarians turn their backs on even one person suffering and dying?"
HAH! (I can’t even dignify that with further comment it is so stunningly untrue.)
EOAD goes on:
Of course nobody in the mainstream media seems to be bringing up the fact that the United States has stood idly by and watched millions and millions of Africans be slaughtered in bloody civil wars and genocides over the past couple of decades.
For decades the U.S. has looked upon the suffering of millions of Africans with indifference but now they are trying to convince us that it is a "moral imperative" that we intervene in the civil war in Libya.
It is funny how things can change when oil is at stake. Libya is the biggest producer of oil in Africa and that makes it a very important nation to the global elite.
Even Obama-loving Guardian writer Michael Tomasky gets this one, this seduction down the proverbial garden path to war. Tomasky respectfully quotes from Mike Lind in Salon who has brilliantly compared a no fly zone over Libya action to a “gateway drug”.
The implication [of McCain, Lieberman, Kerry et al.] is that the enforcement of "no-fly zones," by the U.S. alone or with NATO allies, would be a moderate, reasonable measure short of war, like a trade embargo. In reality, declaring and enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya would be a radical act of war. It would require the U.S. not only to shoot down Libyan military aircraft but also to bomb Libya in order to destroy anti-aircraft defenses. Under any legal theory, bombing a foreign government's territory and blasting its air force out of the sky is war.
Could America's war in Libya remain limited? The hawks glibly promise that the U.S. could limit its participation in the Libyan civil war to airstrikes, leaving the fighting to Libyan rebels.
These assurances by the hawks are ominously familiar.
Tomasky:
Lind then traces us back through the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, arguing that each of these turned into wars of larger scale than intended (Afghanistan and Iraq were supposed to be quick and easy, remember?). Then he pounds the hammer right on the nail. Can't you just see these phases playing themselves out:
The lesson of these three wars is that the rhetoric of lift-and-strike is a gateway drug that leads to all-out American military invasion and occupation. Once the U.S. has committed itself to using limited military force to depose a foreign regime, the pressure to "stay the course" becomes irresistible. If lift-and-strike were to fail in Libya, the same neocon hawks who promised that it would succeed would not apologize for their mistake. Instead, they would up the ante. They would call for escalating American involvement further, because America's prestige would now be on the line. They would denounce any alternative as a cowardly policy of "cut and run." And as soon as any American soldiers died in Libya, the hawks would claim that we would be betraying their memory, unless we conquered Libya and occupied it for years or decades until it became a functioning, pro-American democracy.
Say it with me, now. The definition of insanity. "Doing the same thing over and over and ..."
[cross-posted on correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
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