Now the place is another Somalia, replete with tribal warlords and jihadist gangs and cells and no central government to speak of.
Warlords aren’t going to give up their power unless it’s taken from them, and in both cases the chaos allows terrorist networks to grow, train, and metastasize — and that nearly caused the fall of Mali, which the French finally prevented by putting boots on the ground to control the situation.The only way this situation will stabilize is for an overwhelming force to occupy Libya, disarm or destroy the militias, and re-establish order over several years while withstanding insurgencies and turmoil. If the West did not have the stomach to do that up front, when it would have dealt with much weaker militias, then it shouldn’t have forced the collapse of the existing regime in the first place. Instead, the US and NATO created a second Somalia on the Mediterranean, and now Europe will pay the price for it.
One more reason why the MEC regime's utter incoherence re: foreign policy gives everybody the jitters.
As your hero Rummie once mused, "that's what free people (aka hornets) do."
ReplyDeleteDon't you long for the days when we were strong, when the world feared us, when we were in control?
ReplyDelete"According to a January 2007 BBC World Service poll of more than 26,000 people in 25 countries, 73% of the global population disapproved of U.S. handling of the Iraq War. A September 2007 poll conducted by the BBC found that two-thirds of the world's population believed the U.S. should withdraw its forces from Iraq.
In 2006 it was found that majorities in the UK and Canada believed that the war in Iraq was "unjustified" and – in the UK – were critical of their government's support of U.S. policies in Iraq.
According to polls conducted by the Arab American Institute, four years after the invasion of Iraq, 83% of Egyptians had a negative view of the U.S. role in Iraq; 68% of Saudi Arabians had a negative view; 96% of the Jordanian population had a negative view; 70% of the population of the United Arab Emirates and 76% of the Lebanese population also described their view as negative. The Pew Global Attitudes Project reports that in 2006 majorities in the Netherlands, Germany, Jordan, France, Lebanon, Russia, China, Pakistan, Spain, Indonesia, Turkey, and Morocco believed the world was safer before the Iraq War and the toppling of Hussein. Pluralities in the United States and India believe the world is safer without Hussein."
From wiki
I'm not surprised to hear that majorities in Arab countries in 2006 had a negative view of us. Does the view of people in societies that make the women wear veils and refrain from driving cars and getting educated really shed any light on the merit of Western civilization defending itself?
ReplyDelete73% of the global population disapproved of U.S. handling of the Iraq War.
ReplyDeleteHow it was handled and whether the overall mission was noble and worthwhile are separate questions.
ReplyDeletePoll: Grim assessment of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan
ReplyDeleteSusan Page, USA TODAY 12:15 a.m. EST January 31, 2014
Americans continue to distinguish between the two conflicts when it comes to the justification made for using military force.
By 10 percentage points, 51%-41%, Americans say the U.S. made the right decision in using military force in Afghanistan, where the Taliban had provided safe haven for the al-Qaeda terrorists who planned the 9/11 attacks. Still, that narrow majority does reflect a significant shift in views. In 2006, two-thirds of Americans said invading Afghanistan was the right decision.
But when it comes to Iraq, support for the decision to go to war has crashed. The invasion was launched in March 2003 with Bush administration officials asserting President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, though they were never found. At the beginning, Americans by 3-1 called it the right decision.
Now, by 50%-38%, they call it the wrong one.
read more at http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/01/30/usa-today-pew-research-poll-americans-question-results-in-iraq-afghanistan/5028097/
Now it is quite expected for you to gripe about low info voters, cattle, sheep, dog dung, chicken shit, etc. when you parse the numbers
ReplyDeleteA good argument could be made - and has been, by Michael Ledeen since that time - that Iran was the more urgent of the Axis powers to address. And now the stakes of addressing that situation are inestimably higher.
ReplyDeleteOh gee, and this after a decade of a feckless war. And your camp seems to want more of it, decrying diplomacy at every pass.
ReplyDeleteWhat is there to talk about with people and nations bent on destroying you?
ReplyDelete