BF2S Forums The Situation in Libya

Mekstizzle wrote:

11 Bravo wrote:

Jay wrote:

I'm just sick of the whole 'they're rebels, so they must be right' mentality displayed by people in their teens and early twenties.

They weren't rebels to begin with, if you followed this earlier as soon as it started. They were just protesting like they did in Egypt, except the violence that hit them back was like never seen before. They had to become rebels/armed militia, or die.

When it comes to real dictators and people like Gaddafi, it's hard to not sympathise with those who want him gone.

He keeps saying the same shit, bringing up irrelevant crap about Sandanistas and things as if it correlates with this shit. He doesn't even know what he's talking about, it seems like he's barely bothered to see what the situation is and is instead using history to jump to silly conclusions in order to justify whatever opinions he holds.

Mek, you're a noisy ignorant child. One day, when you've earned some wisdom and perspective, you might look back on this thread and go 'holy shit, he was right all along'.

Everyone goes through their rebellious stage where flipping the bird at those in power is cool. You sympathize with the rebels in Libya because of this. I get it. Most of the older folks on this board get it too. We're just past blindly assuming that change is always better than the status quo (most of us anyway).

Last edited by Jay (2011-03-24 08:42:07)

It's not even a rebellious stage, you think I sympathise every time I see a protest around the world just "coz dey r rebelz lol"? Get over yourself, you're no wise man, you're a twat. With your piss poor attempts at dismissing people...honestly, why don't you grow the fuck up and tweet another tune before you bother posting more.

Shocking wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

I'm glad we agree on the UN.  It is pretty useless.

We do have a choice.  We always do.  It's just that the choices we make are most palatable to our leaders of industry.

Granted, I'm not really complaining.  I don't really expect us to operate any differently.  Libya is just another notch on our belt.  Whatever we learn from this will just be forgotten in another decade, and things will continue as usual.

Well, yeah, there's always a choice - it's about consequences. To word it better I suppose the consequences of not helping out are less desirable.

Possibly...  I can definitely see the interests involved for Europe (oil and immigration issues), but American involvement seems a bit excessive.  We really don't have that much to gain from this.

I guess we can test out a few new toys though.

al-Qaeda apparently supports the rebel movement in Libya, lemme find the source hang on

Poseidon wrote:

Why, Gaddafi said so?

Can't wait for the Fox News link.

Nah, a large ammount of foreign fighters captured in Iraq were from Eastern Libya.  Al Qaeda does have a strong influence there.

http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/pdf/CTC … .Dec07.pdf

page 7

I'd like to know why the US, again, as usual, is doing most of the military work.
The UN, the Arab League ("they were for it before they were against it"), and the EU were crying about the humanitarian angle in Lybia.
Let THEM handle it.

Another middle eastern country?
Fuck off, we're busy helping allies that'd actually appreciate the help. Like Japan.

Obama wants Quadaffi out?
Really?
Send in a SEAL team to find his ass, then a B-2 on standby to take him out.
Done.  Over.  Out.  Buh-Bye.
Let the natives figure out where to go from there.

Send the Army to Detroit.  Fuck Lybia.
Send the Corps of Engineers out to rebuild our own interstate infrastructure.

rdx-fx wrote:

I'd like to know why the US, again, as usual, is doing most of the military work.
The UN, the Arab League ("they were for it before they were against it"), and the EU were crying about the humanitarian angle in Lybia.
Let THEM handle it.

Another middle eastern country?
Fuck off, we're busy helping allies that'd actually appreciate the help. Like Japan.

Obama wants Quadaffi out?
Really?
Send in a SEAL team to find his ass, then a B-2 on standby to take him out.
Done.  Over.  Out.  Buh-Bye.
Let the natives figure out where to go from there.

Send the Army to Detroit.  Fuck Lybia.
Send the Corps of Engineers out to rebuild our own interstate infrastructure.

Assassinations of world leaders are frowned upon by other world leaders.  They'd rather send their people to die for them.

Ilocano wrote:

Assassinations of world leaders are frowned upon by other world leaders.  They'd rather send their people to die for them.

Oh.  Right.  Forgot about that for a moment.

Okay.. nix the B-2 on standby, send a SEAL team in to grab him, then hand him over to a nice tribunal of his countrymen, then hang him.

Like Saddam.

Even better.
B-2's are enormously expensive to operate, anyways.

Shocking wrote:

You'd have to round up his entire tribe which is spread throughout important functions within the government. From what I've been reading Libyan culture seems to be almost identical to Afghani, tribes everywhere.

Same with Saddam's regime though.

Not alot of people that have the odd mix of insanity, brutality, shrewdness, intelligence, and charisma to be Saddam, or Quadaffi, or Hitler.

Take out that one man, and the rest of the power players set to killing each other off quite efficiently.
All of them have the traits to be a 2nd string power player in his regime, none are him.

In that case, eliminating one man is eliminating the offending governmental system.

rdx-fx wrote:

I'd like to know why the US, again, as usual, is doing most of the military work.

I'll concede to this, after looking over everything again it seems that the US is providing a little more than half the air power and the most significant naval contribution.

The question, indeed, is - why? Then again, in Iraq and Afghanistan combined there were more than 100.000 non US coalition forces - helping eachother out I guess?

Last edited by Shocking (2011-03-24 15:14:00)

rdx-fx wrote:

Helping appreciative allies, that have a reasonable chance of reciprocating and helping us out in times of need, makes sense.
Japan, Korea, the EU, the UK.  Help them.  Spend money investing in their infrastructure and economy.

Fuck the middle east. 
Could give the middle east a pile of gold coins, and they'd bitch that it'd been handled by infidels, and counted by Jews.

To make things clearer, why is the West again providing the vast majority of the military work, to sort out a middle eastern problem?

I'm a fan of the Weinberger Doctrine.
Go in, do what needs to be done, GTFO.  No piddle-fucking around, no forming debate clubs, no knitting circles.

We should've just flattened Saddam's palaces in 1991.
If the one man is the clear and present danger to world affairs, eliminate him. 
Don't make the soldiers and civilians take the suffering, just so some tin-pot dictator can live in luxurious exile in the UAE for the rest of his life.
If that makes heads of state and second-level government wags uncomfortable, let them pick a new career.

We also should be telling the kingdom of Saud to get bent, backing the Persian people in a revolt against the religious wingnuts running Iran, and telling the Israelis and Palestinians to STFU and sort it all out or we bomb both of them back into the biblical ages they're so fond of.

But I'm just in a particularly foul mood today anyways...

I myself am having a very hard time justifying this whole no fly zone intervention as well. Being a little more critical of the things I've been saying, there really is no clearly defined goal in Libya. It doesn't make sense. I don't see how it's going to help us in the relevant ME conflict which we are involved in (Afgh), or how spending massive amounts of money on intervening in Libya may give us a positive return.

That's from EU point of view as well, some nations here have economic interests in Libya but by intervening in this particular way we may end up damaging those more than if we were to simply stay on the sideline.

The humanitarian argument, maybe? A PR stunt? I would consider our politicians to be a little more thoughtful than to buy into the whole "genocide atrocities" crap without even trying to think things through. I assumed this was just the point which they used to sell the war to the public, not the actual reason.

It was a 'damned if you do damned if you don't' kind of thing, but what exactly are we trying to do here.... I don't think not intervening would have had actual, major consequences for our relations with the ME or on the international stage. Most of the ME dislikes us anyway regardless, as proven by the statements the arab league has been making through this whole ordeal.

That leaves payback for the lockerbie bombing but so many years on I don't see why, or why now - especially since France was the main driving force in this whole intervention and not the UK.

So what's the point?

I agree with everything you've stated.

Last edited by Shocking (2011-03-24 16:33:00)

Shocking wrote:

rdx-fx wrote:

Same with Saddam's regime though.

Not alot of people that have the odd mix of insanity, brutality, shrewdness, intelligence, and charisma to be Saddam, or Quadaffi, or Hitler.

Take out that one man, and the rest of the power players set to killing each other off quite efficiently.
All of them have the traits to be a 2nd string power player in his regime, none are him.

In that case, eliminating one man is eliminating the offending governmental system.

Politically it's going to be very hard to try and justify assassination, or attempts to do so. Going to make our reputation on the international stage much worse than it already is.

Besides, how are you going to get through the layers upon layers of security a country's leader has? There were like 40 attempts on Hitler's life, all of them failed.

Do you really gotta ask why? Why would any other nation risk lives, equipment,or judgement for anything they believed in, when the US is will to act.
If it goes right, they will contribute a token presence so they can be on the winning team, if it goes wrong, they can sit on the sidelines and point fingers and tell us how terrible and intrusive we are.

lowing wrote:

BALTINS wrote:

Kmar wrote:

Yea.. or as Winston Churchhill said, "History is written by the victors".

After reading up on the American civil war I actually wonder, compared to Libya where the rebels wanted a change of government and America where the south tried to secede from the Union, it actually sounds like the Union was more in the wrong than Gadaffi. I mean, the Unions existence wasn't threatened like Gadaffis government. Ignoring the whole tyrannical regime thing.

There was no civil war in the states, it was the second war for independence.

?