Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
CBC, July 27th - Britain is expelling all Libyan diplomats and unfreezing assets to help fund the National Transitional Council, the group now officially recognized by Britain as the legitimate governing authority in Libya.
Politico, July 25th - The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs' pronouncement today that Libya is a "stalemate" would, I think, have gotten a bit more attention but for the debt debate.
Get our pilots out of there.
Related: Forget Gaddafi outlasting Obama. At the rate things are going, the Lockerbie bomber is going to outlast Obama.
NATO rules!
Kate, January 19th, 2007 - "If you support the troops, support the mission. You cannot have it both ways. To withhold support for their mission is to advocate their - and our - defeat."
Kate, July 27th, 2011 - "Get our pilots out of there."
This isn't a war, it's a humanitarian effort to "protect civilians", remember? Nobody's picking sides, remember? Otherwise, Libya would require congressional approval, right? Pay attention, Davenport.
Another NATO FUBAR. Get out of Syrian and seriously rethink our role in NATO. Time we picked our own battles.
As the USA reframes their foreign policy Canada seems to be helping clean up the mess. Afganistan has turned into a fiasco and Libya never was something we should have been involved in. If the Euros are worried about their oil then let them carry the load. It is actually in Canada's interest for the ME to descend into more anarchy than it already is. (Short term perspective only). It would ensure Keystone XL and a pipeline to the west coast.
Occam: Totally agree with you. The Conservatives keep saying they want Canada to be a 'super' power. The only way that will happen is thru oil. Canada's national interest do not lie in the ME or Europe for that matter. Our geopolitical interest are; a) a stable USA economy, b) access to Asian markets, and c) a secure northern frontier which is threatened by Russian and USA claims and incursions. We can negociate with the Americans but I have no faith in the Russians.
According to Peter McKay, we're now a "go to" nation for military action...fighting for the imperialistic ambitions of other countries without giving a thought about what it actually means for Canada and what the costs will be.
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/06/02/canada-a-goto-nation-for-military-engagements-minister
Kate's right. Get them out. They should never have been in there in the first place. The Liybian people have tolerated him for this long. If they hated him this much he would be gone by now.
'the Lockerbie bomber is going to outlast Obama.' Thanks to Gordon Brown.
"This isn't a war, it's a humanitarian effort to "protect civilians", remember? Nobody's picking sides, remember? Otherwise, Libya would require congressional approval, right?"
Yeah, everyone here's well aware that that's the official White House position.
Everyone's also well aware that you think those semantic contortions are BS, and that you readily link to commentators who argue that it is indeed a war. So unless you're now conceding that the Obama administration was right all along that the Libyan intervention is not at all like the Iraq intervention, then your point is just a red herring.
More to the point, "war", "kinetic action", "humanitarian effort" -- what does it really matter to (a) the Canadian pilots flying over hostile terrain, and (b) the Gaddafi supporters who would happily shoot them down if they could? DND considers it a NATO mission; no doubt those on the CF side are treating it with the same operational seriousness. Are you saying that "if you support the troops, support the mission...but only if the mission is a full-fledged war and not any other type of sanctioned military action that puts our men and women in uniform in harm's way"?
Bottom line: when other people, believing that a military mission that you happened to support was in fact ill-advised/illegitimate, called for an immediate withdrawal, you cynically and unfairly attacked them by questioning their support for individual troops -- as though to question the wisdom of civilian war planners and their policies was to spit on individual front-line troops. Now, with those same military personnel engaged in a military mission that you believe is ill-advised/illegitimate, you're calling for their withdrawal. What to think? Either you were wrong then, or you're spitting on individual front-line troops now. You can't have it both ways.
But I realize that it's SDA policy to never admit being wrong about anything, so I guess we'll just leave it at that.
The Libyan intervention has been a gong-show right from square one. We're fighting on behalf of a group of people about whose motivation we know precious little. I suspect that the planners thought Gaddafi would disappear after just a few aerial sorties. That reminds me of Harold Wilson's famous prediction that Ian Smith's declaration of Rhodesian independence would last not months, but weeks.
I'll make a prediction of my own: the outcome of this conflict will be to partition Libya permanently, which is pretty much what is happening right now, with the non-Gaddafi portion under the permanent protection of NATO air power.
This is what happens when foreign policy is guided not by rational principles but by range-of-the-moment "humanitarian" concerns where every conflict is seen as a monumental crisis requiring the immediate and unthinking sacrifice of blood and treasure from Western taxpayers and soldiers.
Wow. Dave is even more stupid than he seemed.
Sure Davenport, just like you have not commented on the fact that SDA commenters overwhelmingly offered sympathy to Jack Layton and wished for a recovery while your leftist pals wished for a speedy death for Tony Snow and cheered when he passed away.
I hope McKay's only blowing smoke about Canada becoming the "go-to Nation" for settling world conflicts.
Like many feel-good schemes, it can turn into a costly exercise in futility,kind of like building windmills.
We can't afford it,we have a massive debt load. It's time to look out for Canada first and cut the dreams of being the big kid on the block,especially when the politician's glory is paid for with our medicare and pension and infrastructure dollars.
We should back our allies, like Israel and the Commonwealth Countries,to the hilt,but leave the little foreign wars to the locals and let them exterminate each other if that's their desire.
The world has changed from the good old days where we could be big brother to all the less developed world,now we're in a position where we are staggering under a debt load and barely able to carry our own citizens.
Enough,already!
When you remember that 4 months ago K-Daffy's military was only 21+ thousand strong and he has fought the 'rebels' and 6 or so NATO nations to a stalemate, it must be making genuine potential enemies think that NATO, being constrained as it is by waffling politicians, is really weak and encourages these enemies to discount NATO in their plans for aggression.
Far from making the world a safer place, this Libya action is doing the opposite.
Canada out of the UN and out of NATO.
But I realize that it's SDA policy to never admit being wrong about anything
~Davenport
When you realize that it's your own practice to never admit being wrong about anything then that will be something.
I hate to find myself keeping doing this, nor am I wanting to play Davvy's Advocate, but I'm going to have to agree with Davenport's basic argument @11:06 on this one.
I have no doubt that most of the people who "supported the troops" but "not the war" when Dubya was in charge were full of it; those sorts of people usually hate the military and its members altogether, they were just pandering, and poorly too. But you can, as an abstract thing, dislike a military action without hating the troops involved. (I approved of the engagement in Iraq BTW, I thought it was justified then and I still do.)
It's sort of like Israel: I am quite sure that most hatred for the Jewish state is anti-semitism by another name, but it is possible, logically, to disapprove of the actions of a country without being motivated by racial or religious hatred for the population.
Recently Charles Krauthammer wrote an excellent piece about the issue of U.S. lanched war and congressional approval, his basic point being that "No one declares war anymore"; it's just outdated. Vietnam wasn't a declared war, and neither was Korea.
What the hell President narcissist is doing sending soldiers to Libya - vanity, lunacy or some hidden agenda I haven't been made familiar with - I don't know. I have less than zero faith in this "Arab Spring", and we should indeed get our troops out of there.
I hate to find myself keeping doing this, nor am I wanting to play Davvy's Advocate, but I'm going to have to agree with Davenport's basic argument @11:06 on this one.
I have no doubt that most of the people who "supported the troops" but "not the war" when Dubya was in charge were full of it; those sorts of people usually hate the military and its members altogether, they were just pandering, and poorly too. But you can, as an abstract thing, dislike a military action without hating the troops involved. (I approved of the engagement in Iraq BTW, I thought it was justified then and I still do.)
It's sort of like Israel: I am quite sure that most hatred for the Jewish state is anti-semitism by another name, but it is possible, logically, to disapprove of the actions of a country without being motivated by racial or religious hatred for the population.
Recently Charles Krauthammer wrote an excellent piece about the issue of U.S. lanched war and congressional approval, his basic point being that "No one declares war anymore"; it's just outdated. Vietnam wasn't a declared war, and neither was Korea.
What the hell President narcissist is doing sending soldiers to Libya - vanity, lunacy or some hidden agenda I haven't been made familiar with - I don't know. I have less than zero faith in this "Arab Spring", and we should indeed get our troops out of there.
(I had a comment. Actually 3, trying to tweak the mysterious filter system. Sussayin'. If Kate releases one of the 3 I'll totally send her a fiver :-)
Why are we even there. The reason escapes me.
Was one even given?
"No one declares war anymore"; it's just outdated. Vietnam wasn't a declared war, and neither was Korea.
True, but the issue concerning Obama's use of forces in Libya is about him ignoring the U.S. Constitution regarding the use of sustained force beyond 90 days which states the President has to have Congressional approval for a state of war because War powers are the exclusive purview of Congress.
Clearly Obama and NATO didn’t understand that K-Daffy isn’t reviled by the majority of the Libyan people whom they mistakenly believed would help NATO and the 'rebels' overthrow K-Daffy before the 90 day expiry date.
K-Daffy couldn't have survived and kept fighting this long without the support of the Libyan people.
We are there cause the Muslim Brotherhood needs to use us....... for now.
And who is using the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Taliban, and all they other Islamic proxies including Iran?
Russia and China are the puppetmasters using the brown men with SKS/AK-47s in their hands as proxies just as they have been since Korea.
The Cold War never ended.
"Tactical Exercise With Live Enemy Troops": it's good training, and it rotate our war-stock munitions.
Cheers
Heinrichs @ 7:38:
Sure. That is why I supported Afganistan as we had no ground troops in Iraq which was more justified. It allowed a upgrading of the Canadian military and as you suggest some actual fighting.
Time to rein the boys in and move them back to Canada. Re-focus on real Canadian national security issues.
I don't know. It looks to me like our pilots are receiving excellent training, gaining valuable experience, and making connections in allied forces that might one day be valuable. So I say, let's keep it up.
It would be different if somebody was fighting back, of course. I wouldn't send them into harm's way for nothing. But they seem to be as safe as they'd be in Cold Lake. Maybe safer than in Edmonton. Can't speak for Bagotville.