Ah, Libya and other stuff

I kind of ignored the Libya story because while it has some amusing moments (for example, Barack Obama has launched more cruise missiles than any other Nobel Peace Prize winner), there really didn't seem to be much to it. For all the problems with Libya, it is a jerkwater craphole even by middle eastern standards. As much as I like the idea of Khadafy catching a bullet, I didn't really care that getting involved was complete amateur hour (mostly by the Europeans), but now we have the mission creep where helicopters are being engaged. That means this isn't just a cost issue, helicopters are much easier targets. We could start seeing allies getting killed and if the helicopters don't work, next step could be ground troops. This whole situation has been handled ridiculously. Look at the quote where Obama says we're going to "finish the job", but we don't even know what the job is. We want him to go but every time we hit a location he may be at, we're told that killing him isn't a goal. Well, that's just stupid. Say what you will about Bush and Iraq, at least he let it be known that we were there to eliminate Saddam Hussein. Because unlike Obama and Cameron and Sarkozy, he probably noticed that a no fly zone didn't do squat about eliminating Hussein. They actually thought this was going to be short. And obviously it isn't. It's been proven over time that it's really hard to bust a dictator loose just with some bombing. Unless you have a solid ground force, he'll just wait you out. And the Libyan rebels have proven to be less than stellar soldiers even with NATO bombings. Which means the NATO bombings could have actually made things worse. The rebels aren't strong enough to beat Khadafy's forces and he's not able to finish them off. Now Libya is in a civil war which is could get bloodier the longer it goes on.

So why did we get involved? Well, they said to protect civilians. That was a joke then because there was no evidence that civilians were being massacred. Or massacred to a surprising level. This is the Middle East. Killing civilians is a hobby. Now, we're being told Obama and David Cameron would like us to think that they are supporting Arab uprisings but a bunch of dead Syrians may disagree. This happened for two reasons. One is oil. Surprise, surprise. All that criticism in the past about wars for oil and it's Obama who gets involved in one that is truly about oil. But it's not oil for the US. It's for England and France. They screwed up. France and England jumped in early and opposed Khadafy. Then the Arab League was all for it until they weren't. Of course the French and British were for it. They took the opposition side when they were on the outskirts of Tripoli. Gee, I wonder if it was because they thought Khadafy was going down and they wanted to get in good with the future rulers because getting oil from Libya is a short (cheaper) trip. But they were stupid. Khadafy hadn't used his mercenary army or air force. Suddenly Libyan government forces were kicking around the rebels. And Khadafy was talking about shipping oil anywhere but France or England. Gee, wonder if that had anything to do with the sudden desire to get rid of him. The other reason is they did it is because they thought it would be easy. Libya isn't Iran or Syria (who is allied with Iran) who are doing pretty much the same thing to their civilians (guess Syrian civilians rate lower than Libyan civilians). The rebels had been on the outskirts of Tripoli. No one outside of Venezuela and some poor African countries he gave money to liked Khadafy. The Arabs opposed him (although that diplomatic coup was based on Khadafy once trying to kill the Saudi Crown Prince). Easy? Not quite. Let's not be too stupid here. Khadafy has no incentive to leave. The only countries that would take him in are other poor jerkwater countries. He knows they might eventually sell him to the International Criminal Court.

But if the rebels win, isn't it worth it? Good chance it isn't. One of the biggest concerns has been that we don't know who we're dealing with among the rebels no matter how many people want to call them "pro-democracy". We have no idea if that is true or not. We do know some things about them. They like to summarily execute captured soldiers which may not be a good thing. Oh, and one of their military leaders was once held at Guantanamo after being captured in Pakistan. But no concerns. We've known for years that the rebel strongholds were actually one of the top recruiting grounds for al Qaeda in Iraq. Ooops. Of course the reaction to the Arab uprisings by diplomats in the West has been laughably naive. They really seem to think because the protests are against thuggish dictators that they are being led by pro democracy liberals. Sorry. Not the case. Just because Hosni Mubarak was a dick doesn't mean his absence is a good thing. Guess who is aligning themselves with the military rulers in Egypt and is considered the best organized political group in Egypt? If you said the very anti-western Muslim Brotherhood, you win a falafel. And it doesn't appear that the military is all that reform minded to begin with. Might explain the upsurge in anti-Christian attacks in Egypt. But it's not just Egypt. A lot of people think Iran is behind a lot of the protests in Bahrain. But I'm sure Iran has the best of intentions. It gets even better in Yemen. There is a possibility that al Qaeda could end up in control there. Wouldn't that be awesome.

I'm sure some might think that having an Islamic government isn't a big problem. Some sound thinking there. In Saudi Arabia, a woman was arrested for driving a car. Then re-arrested for posting a video about it. The scary thing is the ruling monarchy is actually one of the more moderate elements there. But some might argue that Saudi Arabia isn't a good example because of how Islamic it is. It's not a moderate Islamic country like ........say Indonesia. Nothing says moderate like caning a woman for "being in close proximity" to a man. No word on whether she drove to meet him.

Here is a heart warming tale about a man letting a 10 year old girl drive his car. Because he was apparently too drunk to which means he was sort of responsible. In a half assed way. Too bad it all fell apart when the car was hit by a train. Don't worry. No injuries. Obviously the man was totally irresponsible here. Letting a woman drive his car. What was he thinking?

But is 10 years old too young for a push up bra? Not if she's shopping Abercrombie & Fitch. Although in their defense, they don't sell the ones for 7 year olds anymore. At least not on their website. I'm not sure which is worse. That the company thought it was a good idea to sell something like that. Or the fact that it took people complaining to remove it. Which means idiots were buying these for their kids.

Ah, a story from my youth. A story about that poster of a woman playing tennis and lifting her skirt to show her butt. I remember it well. We would go into Spencer's Gifts just to see it. Probably where my perverted behavior all began.

I'm sure some might see me as being overly critical about the foreign policy direction of our country. And you would be right. But Obama did one good thing in the midst of all the stupid. He approved a mission to kill Osama Bin Laden. I'll give him credit for that, but it became absurd the level his flunkies in the media went in lionizing him by saying it was a "gutsy call". The most pathetic was the woman who essentially claimed Obama was just as brave in authorizing it as the guys who actually went in on the job. Seriously? Comparing a potential political embarrassment to flying into an armed compound with the potential to get killed? Actually the only reason this was considered "gutsy" is because of who the President is. I can't think of any President who would not have made this decision. Believe it or not, there were other special forces raids into Pakistan predating Obama. The fact is Barry is the only one that there was any doubt about doing it.

And the aftermath of the whole raid shows just what a bunch of clowns are part of the national security apparatus now. Everything was done wrong. They were in such a hurry to get the story out that they couldn't even get it right. Which caused them to look stupid as they backtracked to tell what really happened. There was conflicting reports about whether or not we'd get to see the photo of his body. How do you not make that decision beforehand? Here's a thought. Why not hold off making the announcement for........even a week. He's dead. That's not going to change. Get your story straight. Make sure every question can be answered. Maybe get the Pakistanis on board with your story so they don't rush headlong into the arms of China. Then we can't even dump the body in the sea correctly. Supposedly it was done in proper Islamic fashion (who cares? I would have dump his body in a pig sty and let the hogs eat him) even though it wasn't. And it was done to make sure there wasn't a grave for radicals to make a pilgrimage to, and that's working about as well as expected. But we also got a lot of intelligence information. We know because they couldn't wait to announce how many thumb drives and laptops (and porn) were found. Guess they never thought keeping that a secret would be a good idea. Maybe we could waited a little longer than a week to announce his death to go through this treasure trove of data. I doubt al Qaeda was going to immediately announce his death, and as decentralized as they had become, it would have taken time to get everyone notified. Maybe time to find and kill them too. But I'm sure they didn't stay around their hideawaysafter watching CNN.