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A War is a War is a War and It Ain't Gonna Be Cheap
If you ask liberal talking heads like Ed Schultz and other Nattering Nabobs of Progressivism, who would support Dick Cheney if he was a Democrat, they'll tell you, "Well, this is a cheaper war, a Democrat war and besides, it's not a war."
Libyan jet shot down. Watch Jon Stewart discuss Obama's justification for the war in Libya--America at Not-War.
"War is the trade of kings."--John Dryden
"History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap."--Ronald Reagan
You have to love Jon Stewart's take on U.S. military intervention in Libya as "America at Not-War." http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/24/...myths And the rationale is just another version of the same cynical sham repeated by every U.S. president since Harry Truman.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-29-2011/ame...sions "All Obama has done is laid bare the shining spread sheet on the Hill that has always been the real force behind presidents' foreign policy decisions despite all our soaring freedom rhetoric...Obama just gave us a little less poetry and a little more long division." Stewart also points out the hypocritical nature of U. S. intervention, something that anyone who has any memory or experience with war in Vietnam should know inside and out.
http://cambridge.academia.edu/TarakBarkawi in his essay for Al Jazeera entitled, http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/20....html"> and other ../2011/03/the-nattering-nabobs-of-progressivism/, who would support Dick Cheney if he was a Democrat, they'll tell you, "Well, this is a cheaper war, a Democrat war and besides, it's not a war." Cheap?!
We can debate about the wisdom of current U.S. military engagement in Libya forever. The debate about the righteousness of any war--the spin, the sleazy sales job--always obfuscates any real discussion of the cost of war. It's not cheap. Just check the http://costofwar.com/en/ for Iraq and Afghanistan on the lower left corner of this site. There went your kid's education. There went your healthcare. Now there's is a third shooting war in Libya to add to the running total.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/costs-o...10321 Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, told the House Armed Services Committee that the conflict had cost $550 million as of Monday, March 28 and that the U.S. commitment is winding down as NATO takes over. He said he expects the cost going forward to be about $40 million a month. Right, does that include our overall NATO funding? CIA with a classified budget?
What would you do with $40 million a month? Or how could $400.00 a month benefit 100,000 families?
Not to go all California on you Mr. President, but I feel like you're not listening to me. I feel like you're not treating me with the respect I deserve when you spend my money without fully consulting me, especially at a time when my money could be saved for better purposes like when I have to start paying my health insurance premiums that you didn't bother to cap when you required me to buy it. I want you to get that I'm feeling a bit insecure right now. I feel like my security is threatened rather than strengthened when you spend my money on another war.
Then there's the endgame, the outcome that nobody bothers to talk about. What if the Libyan rebels succeed? What will their freedom look like? Do we honestly think that a desert paradise will emerge and we will be routinely treated with, la, la, la, la, la, images of cherubic, happy and free Libyan children skipping merrily through the sand?
Are we going to get our money back? You bet can bet your ass we are. Except that "we" isn't "you and me" any more. The profits will be collected by private corporations endowed with public subsidies (more of our money) to "rebuild the nation." Like disaster capitalist version of Iraq as described in http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780312427993?aff=RoyBatty, by http://www.naomiklein.org/main: with "a public sector reduced to a minimal number of employees, mostly contract workers, living in a Halliburton city state, tasked with signing corporate friendly laws drafted by KPMG and handling duffle bags of cash to Western contractors protected by mercenary soldiers, themselves shielded by legal immunity."
Wait a minute, we didn't have to invade Libya. They asked for our help. We won't need protection from mercenaries, right? Look at it this way, when the U.S. and its allies insist upon installing some exiled Libyan oil executive like http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/wikileaks-c...ratic as a transitional president, the rebels may regret asking for our assistance. Will they simply lay down their arms?
At the very least the http://www.state.gov/s/crs/, where "[c]orporations and consultants are lined up on 'pre-signed contracts' so that they are ready to leap into action as soon as disaster strikes" will deploy their "reserve corps of contracting personnel who are trained to execute rapid relief and reconstruction contracting during contingency actions." (http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780312427993?aff=RoyBatty, page 483) Or as Ms. Klein might put it, the U.S. model for privatized war and reconstruction is export-ready-to-roll in Libya.
Get ready to open your wallet again.
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Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4..that nobody points out that these 'rebels', with a slight geographic shift (say, east to Saudi, source of Wahabi fundamentalism),would immediately metamorphose into terrorists?
All those peaceful protests, but it took the ARMED uprising to engage NATO.On the side of the armed 'rebels'.
Funny they never put a no-fly zone over Derry after Bloody Sunday, or Gaza after Cast Lead. Its a bit like Israel, founded on cordite(Chaim Weizmann gave Balfour&Co the recipe for acetate, a placticiser for WWI weapons, and got his 'homeland', and its presidency as reward). With a foundation like that its hard to expect anything other than the ethnic cleansing that flows from it still. Ya cant go admitting your homeland actually was occupied when you invaded. And now they want the UN to declare the coming flotilla illegal. Prepare for dirt. Oh, and they want the UN to retract the Goldstone report. Anyone remember what the collapse of the League of Nations foreshadowed?Nope, not the Ryder Cup.
Incidentally, when Free Derry was established in 1969, following successful defence of part of the City of Derry against RUC, B Special and Loyalist incursion in August of that year, regular talks/meetings took place between the Free Derry leadership and British officers commanding the troops that came in when the RUC, B Specials etc were withdrawn. The purpose of the meetings/negotiations was primarily demarcation of those areas of the city which had, in effect, broken free of UK/British sovereignty. That is, the purpose was to prevent unnecessary clashes between the newly arrived British troops and the defenders of Free Derry. One of the issues was keeping British aircraft (surveillance helicopters etc) out of the "Free Derry Airspace". I'm not sure to what extent Free Derry succeeded in this. Free Derry was eventually over-run by the British Army, using large amounts of armour and many soldiers, causing many deaths, in Operation Motorman a couple of years later.
Isn't it great to see people power in action, peaceful democratic protests...backed up by...stinger missiles, mobile missile launchers, fighter jets, as much ammunition & weapons as they can carry, strange that no other arab state 'rebels' had such murderous weaponry....but hang on Libya has some OIL doesn't it? Could this be a thinly disguised war waged by outsiders??
But wait! America told us they are freedom fighters! pro-democracy activists!! Heros!!!
US/NATO wouldn't lie would they?? Or maybe they would, seeing that they are happy to drop bombs on towns & cities indiscriminately killing men, women & children... "We kill for peace"
..but it fits my read.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24146