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The lesson the West took fromIraq and Afghanistan, applied to Libya and is now looking to apply elsewhere.
Intervention: We're Doing It Wrong
By Steve Hynd While news of human rights abuses in Syria are burning up the headlines, it's worth remembering that Libya still has major human rights problems despite Western intervention there, thanks mainly to the plethora of militias run riot. And let us not also forget that Iraq, almost a de...
Hi Bill,
This planet. The "intervene without involvement" paradigm set by Libya has had a lot of play in the foreign policy set. Iraq and Afghanistan? Pshaw, those were last decade's model!
see "A new era in U.S. foreign policy" by Fareed Zakaria.
"What the Libya intervention achieved" by Marc Lynch.
And a whole load more with just a quick search.
And a sceptic: Intervention without responsibility
Regards, Steve
Intervention: We're Doing It Wrong
By Steve Hynd While news of human rights abuses in Syria are burning up the headlines, it's worth remembering that Libya still has major human rights problems despite Western intervention there, thanks mainly to the plethora of militias run riot. And let us not also forget that Iraq, almost a de...
Bill, just seen your comment on Agonist site issues. There's not a lot I can do about it immediately but we're working on a full site facelift and revamp that will solve it along with other problems so I can only ask for some patience. Thanks.
Steve
"You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" Part II
Commentary By Ron Beasley Probaly the smartest thing the British have done since WWII is not joining the Eurozone. Yesterday I posted a rant by the crazy Nigel Farage. But he's not alone. Here is a more reasonable MEP Daniel Hannan saying the same thing: Yes it's time for the Greek p...
Terrible news. Poor James, a good friend.
Kimberly Webb Joyner, 1970 to 2011
Commentary By Ron Beasley Send some kind thoughts to James Joyner and his two young daughters as their wife and mother passed away last night in her sleep at the age of 41. My wife, Kimberly Webb Joyner, died this morning in her sleep from unknown causes. She was 41. She leaves behind two littl...
Charles and Ron,
We touched on this question in the show last night, and we'll be revisiting it in later shows. At the end of the day, it's the one question that really matters. For myself, I don't see an alternative to trying to convince people to organize nationally but build locally (from dogcatcher on up), and assuming for the sake of samity that the world isn't going to end in the next decade. Suppose we didn't plan for the long term, thinking "A decade from now, we may no longer exist, the world may no longer be habitable, and there may be no right to dissent" and then the long term happened anyway. We'd be in the same or worse fix. Halting the American penchant for short-termist thinking, magical solutions and messiah political figures has got to be part of the solution.
Regards, Steve
Talking About Solutions
By Steve Hynd Over at his own blog, my Polizeros radio co-host Keith Boyea observes that we do too much kvetching. We’ve noticed that our discussions have sometimes degenerated into “bitch sessions,” so instead of complaining about things, we wanted to do an episode where we talked about potent...
Indeed, Lex. Hedges, in the piece I linked above, writes:
"Liberals bow before a Democratic Party that ignores them and does the bidding of corporations. The reflexive deference to the Democrats by the liberal class is the result of cowardice and fear. It is also the result of an infantile understanding of the mechanisms of power. The divide is not between Republican and Democrat. It is a divide between the corporate state and the citizen. It is a divide between capitalists and workers. And, for all the failings of the communists, they got it.
Unions, organizations formerly steeped in the doctrine of class warfare and filled with those who sought broad social and political rights for the working class, have been transformed into domesticated partners of the capitalist class. They have been reduced to simple bartering tools. The social demands of unions early in the 20th century that gave the working class weekends off, the right to strike, the eight-hour day and Social Security have been abandoned. Universities, especially in political science and economics departments, parrot the discredited ideology of unregulated capitalism and have no new ideas. Artistic expression, along with most religious worship, is largely self-absorbed narcissism. The Democratic Party and the press have become corporate servants. The loss of radicals within the labor movement, the Democratic Party, the arts, the church and the universities has obliterated one of the most important counterweights to the corporate state. And the purging of those radicals has left us unable to make sense of what is happening to us."
It's not swearing and cussing that we need, necessarily, but we do need some old-style radical straight talking.
Regards, Steve
Yes, take those sons of bitches out.
By Steve Hynd Well done, James Hoffa, for being unrepentant. Teamsters union president James Hoffa would say it all again if he could, he told TPM Monday. Hoffa riled up Fox News and the right wing Monday with a Labor Day speech in Detroit in which he called Republican members of Congress "sons...
Good response BJ. It's even longer than the OP though - you should have made it a post :-)
"I’m not in the habit of opposing the defeat of small evils just because larger ones haven’t yet been dealt with."
Nor am I. However, the evidence suggests that violence isn't the best way to go about it.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/24/think_again_nonviolent_resistance?page=full#
Regards, Steve
Where's The Billions For R2P Against Famine?
By Steve Hynd In comments to my last post on the dangerous precedent of R2P interventions that are really all about picking favorites, my friend and Newshoggers colleague B.J. Bjornson asked: How many thousands of civilians being in danger of massacre would be enough? If you believed that it ac...
Really good post, BJ.
The strategy in Libya was "bomb, bomb some more, wait, try diplomacy, bomb some more, hope it works." I fully expect the fall of Tripoli to be claimed as a stunning victory for this strategy - or more precisely the "bomb some more" bits.
Regards, Steve.
Is It Really the Endgame?
By BJ Bjornson It appears that the six-month long battle for Libya may be reaching a climax as the rebel forces have advanced into and taken control of much of Tripoli. Of course, this is significant, and has been reported as though it marks the end of Gaddafi's regime. I'm less certain of th...
Oops. Fixed. Sorry Cheryl. :-)
Regards, Steve
Dear Mr Sandoval, Consider Me Chastized
By Steve Hynd Oh noes, the firebaggers have been Sandovaled! An email sent by the New Mexico state director for the Obama campaign has attacked Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman as a “fanatic”, an “idealogue” and a "political rookie" compared to the President as well as bashing the "Firebagge...
You can apply the highlighted quote from Penny to Kenan Malik for a start off.
Regards, Steve
London Riots Links
By John Ballard The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. -James A. Baldwin “History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal.” -Mark Twain Readers seeking quick, clever explanations can skip this...
Thought provoking stuff, John, and thanks for bringing it to our attention. The opposite viewpoint from the far Right's cries of "Euro-peons" every chance they get.
Regards, Steve
"To see ourselves as others see us..."
By John Ballard Steve put up a post last week quoting Robert Burns. O would some Power the gift to give us To see ourselves as others see us! It would from many a blunder free us, And foolish notion:.. Americans for the most part care little about how the rest of the world sees us. I have gr...
Heh, nicely done as ever, H.
Regards, C
Rick Perry - Prophet Of God?!?
By Steve Hynd I've posted a couple of times recently about Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and his handshake with the bigoted, theocratic right as he makes ready for a presidential bid. It's pretty disgusting stuff, with Perry pretending to fiscal conservatism in an effort to become the compromise cand...
More speculation: The Taliban spokes I linked above is linked to the haqqani group. Today Fazal Saeed Haqqani says his group has left the TTP and won't attack Pak anymore - just NATO.
http://trunc.it/h6a9t
Coincidence, or one of those "let those who have ears to hear" messages from the ISI?
Regards, Steve
In Kabul, Shades Of Mumbai Attack
By Steve Hynd There's been a massive terror attack in Kabul, and a massive response by security forces. Four suicide bombers and four gunmen attacked a Western-style hotel in Kabul late on Tuesday night and police who went to the scene fought the assailants with machine guns and rocket-propelle...
A 2.6 degrees Celsius rise is equivalent to a rise of 4.7 degrees Farenheit.
Tipping point for severe climate change already reached
By Steve Hynd Here's where denialism gets us. Greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year, to the highest carbon output in history, putting hopes of holding global warming to safe levels all but out of reach, according to unpublished estimates from the International Energy A...
Indeed. Spot on post, guys.
Regards, Steve
Memorial Day: Remembering Those Who Didn't Have To Die in Afghanistan
By Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe Memorial Day is a national holiday dedicated to remembering Americans killed in wartime. This year, unfortunately, we remember war dead who didn't have to die, and unless Congress and the president act, we'll remember more needless deaths next year. As of to...
Thanks, empty. That article on Indian missteps is...well, way of the mark fits.
AFL-CIO's Rich Trumka Wants Labor For Labor's Sake
By Steve Hynd It'd be remiss of me not to note AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka's words of warning to the Democratic Party on Friday. The Nation's John Nichols has the best run-down: AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is stepping up with a plan for unions to declare “independence” and back candid...
Joe Cirincione: "Just got off phone w expert who fears the worst yet to come #Fukishima. Here's USC analysis of meltdown:
http://t.co/xJPu0QF "
Fukushima Has Become the Sequel to "Groundhog Day"
By Russ Wellen Remember that 1993 film in which the Bill Murray repeats the same day over and over again? The Japanese nuclear crisis has also become déjà vu ad nauseum (please excuse mixed romance languages). Fukushima news reports today aren't appreciably different from those shortly after the...
Here's the ACLU's "Comparison of 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) and Proposed Expanded, Indefinite AUMF (H.R. 968, Section 7)" in PDF. I think that's as close are you're going to find, Dr. K, since its an amendment to and extension of the 2001 wording.
Regards, Steve
Bi-Partisan Backing For The Forever War
By Steve Hynd Adam Serwer has the rundown on a new move to give Obama and future presidents an authorization to wage perpetual war. But you won't find a new AUMF on the Congressional agenda - it's being quietly "tucked away in the chairman's mark of a national defense authorization act as sectio...
Why do I think that Ford's motive in trashing virtual deterrence so that later he and other newocons can argue that Iran's virtual deterrent is just as much of a threat as a nuclear arsenal in being and should be bombed?
Regards, Steve
Could "Virtual Deterrence" Actually Increase the Chances of Nuclear War?
By Russ Wellen Virtual deterrence, while not new, has gained some currency in recent years as a means to both avert nuclear war and expedite nuclear disarmament. "Virtual," in this instance, means abolishing nuclear weapons, which the United States maintains primarily to deter, or prevent, other...
Colm, are you under the impression I'm American? No, I'm Scottish.
As to Pakistan's deaths: I have the greatest of sympathy for the victims and the common people of Pakistan - and yet it remains true that the bulk of those deaths have been caused by terror groups begun by the Pakistani deep state as its proxies, who then turned upon their patrons. That the same could be said of the US in no way changes the fact that Pakistan's elite must take a share of the blame for their own nation's dead or that Pakistan is now fighting a war on terror groups of its own genesis. Given that, I'd submit that the Pakistani state has no business playing the victim.
Regards, Steve
Pakistan's "Deep State" Fights Back
By Steve Hynd Last night I asked Pakistani ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, "What's the plan if the US now finds Zawahiri and Mullah Omar in compounds in major Pakistani cities?" I didn't really expect a direct answer from the ambassador - after all, who am I? But today's news brings an an...
I certainly wouldn't argue with you, empty and Tina - and we'd be wrong to follow Taylor's call to keep on short-terming the problem with bullying, as Bush did. I'm sure Bush and his folk didn't think in terms of repercussions for Armitage's threat a decade later, they just wanted to be seen doing something, anything, fast.
But empty, analyzing the behavior of the Pakistanis in terms of an alliance is exactly what I'm saying should stop.
Regards, Steve
Pakistan's "Deep State" Fights Back
By Steve Hynd Last night I asked Pakistani ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, "What's the plan if the US now finds Zawahiri and Mullah Omar in compounds in major Pakistani cities?" I didn't really expect a direct answer from the ambassador - after all, who am I? But today's news brings an an...
I got nineteen, although I confess I almost second-guessed myself on Oman.
Regards, Steve
Middle East Geography Quiz -- CS Monitor
Here is the link, posted by John, who missed one out of nineteen.
Hi Lee,
Do you have any supporting evidence for your assertions? I'm not saying you're wrong, but our traffic stats tell me you aren't posting from Libya, rather from the US. How do you know?
Regards, Steve
In Libya, No Western Boots On The Ground (Unless You Count...)
By Steve Hynd Various news agencies are reporting that Britain, France and Italy are going to send military advisers to Libya, to help train the rag-tag rebel militias. The reporting agrees that the US, France and UK already have special forces on the ground to assess strike effectiveness and h...
Agreed with Lex. Anderson, you should do more of this kind of stuff.
Regards, Steve
Bindloss
by anderson In my first summer of college, I did what most students do that first summer and went to the student employment center. I noticed a job advertisement requiring the ability to "ride a motorcycle." Wow. That's a cool job. Amazingly, no one else seemed to notice. I had never ridden a ...
Yep, Obama's definitely delegated his FP to Hillary and her faction.
I do think, though, that the GOP has the same problem the Dems had in 2004 and I think they'll go for the same solution: put up a "grey man" candidate who doesn't excite any part of the base against him too much but also doesn't excite the electorate to vote for him.
Regards, Steve
US General Agrees Libyan War Reaching Stalemate
By Steve Hynd Who could have predicted this? (Ummm...) General Carter Ham, head of U.S. Africa command, told a Senate hearing Washington should not provide arms to the rebels without a better idea of who they were. Asked if there was an emerging stalemate, he replied: "I would agree with that a...
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