Fools Rush In: the Accelerating Libya Crisis - David Loftus

Five weeks ago, I wrote in this space that the U.S. should stay on the sidelines as the crisis in Libya unfolded. President Obama has gone in anyway with missiles blazing, but I don’t see any reason to change my advice.

It can be very satisfying to watch an armed conflict from the far side of the globe and feel one has helped to even the odds if not boost the underdog to victory with massive firepower. It’s a little like seeing a slice of an ongoing Xbox game every night on the evening news. We’re safe and comfy in our homes, nobody’s brother or father or son is being sent off to die (we’ve seen how well that’s worked in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, so Obama has assured he won’t be doing that this time), and so far, we haven’t had to look at any gruesome photos of dead ragheads.

I haven’t seen any polls of the American public’s attitude toward our involvement in Libya, but I’m guessing it’s mostly indifferent to apathetic. The average American probably doesn’t know enough about Libya to have a strong opinion. I suspect the basic response would be “yah, Gadhafi looks like a real nutcase and a meanie, so it’s probably good that we’re shutting him down.” (It’s been interesting to watch the Obama-hating commentators respond to this latest crisis: Bill O’Reilly is all for sending in troops with guns blazing to save lives, while Glenn Beck is urging caution and wondering whether it’s a good idea to meddle in Libya, and Rush Limbaugh is decrying our knee –jerk dash to protect Europe’s oil—apparently to make sure they don’t run the risk of actually approving something the President has done.)

The problem (for the average American) is: We’re NOT shutting Gadhafi down. Just as the first President Bush did in the 1991 Persian Gulf War with regard to Saddam Hussein, we’ve joined in airstrikes to stop oppression but will not remove the oppressor from power. In this particular, Obama’s chosen the correct course, and most of our international partners (especially the five who abstained from voting for the UN resolution that approved the no-fly zone—Russia, China, Germany, India, and Brazil) don’t wish to set a precedent for invading a foreign country for the express purpose of toppling its government, however illegitimate or oppressive. Ultimately, that’s a justification for meddling in any nation’s affairs and even terrorism.

But going in at all was a mistake on our part, I would contend—for two reasons. First, it sets us up once again as traffic cop to the world, and if anything goes wrong (and trust me: most likely it will), we will be blamed as a bully, especially by the Arab and Muslim nations who have so far remained quiet, and in one or two cases actually supported action against Gadhafi. (The Arab League approved of the no-fly zone, and news reports say the tiny Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar has contributed planes to enforce it as well as recognized the rebels as “the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people”—something not even Obama is willing to do. If we had hung back, perhaps more Arab and Muslim nations would have rushed in to assist the French who were so eager to get in there. They would have their own reasons, probably having to do with oil—who has it, and to whom it will get sold.)

The second and bigger reason is that if the rebel forces prevail, we probably don’t know who would rule in Gadhafi’s stead or how. The CIA has candidates and theories, I suppose, but in the past Gadhafi was one of our allies, as were the Mujahideen, some of whom would later become the Taliban, in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The U.S. sold military weapons to both—armaments they later used to oppress and kill their own people. As for “armed humanitarian missions,” consider the CIA’s and U.S. military’s (and therefore our, as in all Americans’) past record:

·      Nearly 60 years later, Korea remains a divided nation, after a war that killed 33,000 Americans and roughly a million Koreans, with a succession of tyrants starving and bankrupting their citizens to the north of the 36^th parallel. It is as if we, as Britain, had intervened in the American Civil War, such that the South fought Lincoln to a standstill, and thereby earned separate nation status, with slavery and capital punishment, well into the 20^th century.

·      Vietnam is now our peaceful trading partner, after nearly 60,000 Americans and 1.5 million Vietnamese were killed in battle 40-50 years ago

·      In Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans and locals continue to die violently every day, with no stable native government in sight for either nation

·      On a much less vivid level, one could trace economic and sociological fallout from all these wars back home: boom fortunes for a few (contractors and weapons manufacturers), recessions and depressions for the rest of us, a legacy among veterans of divorce, spousal abuse, random violence committed by sufferers of PTSD, etc.

We haven’t saved anyone. Our muscle hasn’t created new, benevolent, democratic governments for any people anywhere in the world where they weren’t already prepared to take power and rule themselves without help. Armed assistance and incursions only prolongs death and violence, and perhaps even magnifies it over time; it clearly doesn’t end it.

So why do we keep doing it? In this case, the answer is probably oil. To keep proving Obama wrong, even Limbaugh is willing to admit that.

Why Glenn Beck is Destroying America - Jeff Weiss

Once upon a time there was a mildly successful cable TV host named Glenn Beck. Beck appeared each weeknight on CNN's HLN channel and commented on the news of the day, without much fanfare. Then, after a few years he moved from HLN to the Fox News Channel and all hell broke lose. Besides calling President Obama a racist and joking about killing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelsosi, Beck has made his television show a platform for fear and loathing in America.

Democrats and Republicans have never seen eye to eye, but thanks to cable TV commentators, the gap between the parties have never been so great and no TV host has done more to cause that divide than Glenn Beck. Beck uses his television and radio programs to promote hatred and distrust on a daily basis. When someone is trying to convince you of something and has absolutely no facts to back them up, they most often will use fear tactics to sway your opinion. And Mr. Beck is the King of Fear. He wants you to distrust your President, fear anyone who lives in America who wasn't born here, and hate anyone who isn't a “Christian.”

The scariest thing about Glenn Beck is that people listen to him. His show on Fox News Channel currently brings in more ratings than what CNN, MSNBC, and HLN air opposite him combined! His fear rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial brought in huge crowds (while Beck claims 600,000 people attended the event, other news organizations have stated the number to be under 100,000). As long as people pay attention to Glenn Beck, he won't be going away any time soon.

That sound you just heard was the great American melting pot exploding.

Are Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh Seditious?

Time Magazine Columnist Joe Klein suggested in an interview on The Chris Matthews Show that Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh's statements about the current administration could be considered sedition. According to the NewsBuster's article, "the legal definition of sedition is 'a revolt or an incitement to revolt against established authority.'"

Sedition was declared a felony by the Supreme Court in Pennsylvania v. Nelson, yet the Declaration of Independence states: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."

Also, according to the article, Klein charges that the only reason this is happening is because President Obama is African-American, his middle name is Hussein, and people are scared of the economy.

If a citizen believes that Congress has ignored the will of the people is it sedition to encourage the rest of the citizens to follow the Declaration of Independence? Does Joe Klein have a point or is this another example of people who disagree with the president being called racist?

Scott Hinkley:

Joe Klein appears to be picking a fight with American citizens he will never win. For any of you who have read my past political rantings, I am far from a fan of the Tea Party leaders and other right-wing politicians and media-celebrities. Having read several descriptions of the Tea Party's psudo-doctrine, I can't help but feel that the overall direction is small-minded, petty, and ignorant of the majority of problems facing most of our nation.

Having made my position clear, I think that Mr. Klein is a fool for entering into the name-calling and chest-thumping game. I think that along with so many other traditions in our young country, American's hold great reverence for the "power-of-the-people." This poorly defined and often misrepresented vision of independence and personal authority is none-the-less a critical representation of the insurance police America was forced to extend to it's future citizens in order to achieve an union of states and territories, in the first place.

I can't believe that educated taunting of Mr. Klein's ideological opponents will do anything to change the problems he is complaining about. Of course people are afraid that Obama has dark skin, of course they are afraid of his religious convictions, and of course, some of the people who feel this way are horrible racists trying nothing more that to undermine progress and preserve their personal pride at the cost of all other rights, but who wins now.

All Mr. Klein has achieved by these callous remarks is a spot on future protest posters as an example of another elite do-gooder ruining our nation. In my opinion, Sarah Palin has every right to sink her fangs deep into the xenophobic veins of her followers, and it is up to the rest of us citizens to hold strong against her well-laid (maybe?) plans. If you don't like the politics, join the cause of the opposition, but sitting judgement on television and declaring your opposition as essentially un-American, sounds like a page right out of the Palin/Beck/Limbaugh book.

I wish someone with a brain, AND a heart could manage to speak about these issues without thumbing their noses at hard working Americans. Don't win them over, don't crush them underfoot, just keep moving and make them keep up to survive. Speak to people with kindness and acceptance, and they just might listen.

David Loftus:

Technically speaking, and even philosophically, I think Klein has a point, but probably not a legal one; and I suspect he’s not really urging these loudmouths be taken to court. I read his statements as a strong hint to people who listen to Palin, Beck, and Limbaugh to stop and think a moment about the ugly, vehement, over-the-top language that these talking heads indulge in; and to consider whether it’s wise, dignified, or good citizenship to repeat everything they say to one’s friends and neighbors as if it were gospel truth (or even sensible). Palin is trying to pursue a career as a politician (I think), and I predict that she will never be elected to national office. Beck and Limbaugh are “unelected officials,” however, and they try to have it both ways: they want to be taken seriously as political thinkers, but the minute they got caught in a lie or realize they’ve overstepped the bounds of taste or dignity, they’ll say, oh, but I’m an entertainer, what I’m doing is satire.

The real point here is that opponents of the current administration are being hypocritical: they can dish it out but they can’t take it. Nobody ever openly and publicly wished for President Bush to fail, as Limbaugh has about Obama; we were merely unsurprised that he didn’t succeed. Nobody ever gave Bush a hard time for pretending to be as much of a Texan as he was a New England Yalie, let alone questioned his citizenship altogether. I don’t recall that anyone ever questioned President Bush’s patriotism, either; we merely disagreed with him on how best to express it.

More to the point, I strongly suspect many of the right-wingers who invoke First Amendment free speech rights today are precisely the ones who wanted to deny it to others in the past. I’ll give you better than even odds that many of them favored prosecution of flag burning, and lobbied not only to yank NEA funding from controversial artists but wanted them prosecuted for obscenity. Most telling of all, if you showed them the passage from the Declaration of Independence above (“it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it”), without telling them where it comes from, they not only wouldn’t recognize it but a majority of them wouldn’t endorse it. I know, because it’s been done before. In 1976, shortly before the Bicentennial, a survey did just that, and a good 75 percent of people questioned on the street thought the passage was un-American, “commie crap.”

I don’t see any way to account for the fierce opposition to the current elected President (who clearly attained office on a greater popular- and electoral-vote basis than President Bush for either of his terms) than at least partly because of racism. Hilary Clinton suffered similarly ugly attacks when her husband was president, because a good segment of the population is uncomfortable with women in or close to power, and they could deflect their discomfort with Bill Clinton’s policies onto her -- because they thought he was likable. I don’t really care whether you could make a case for sedition against the enemies of the President; what matters to me is that they’re being disrespectful to the office of the President; to their fellow citizens, a majority of whom elected Obama to that office; and yes, ultimately to their country. They do not, in fact, seem to know how to be good American citizens.