Saturday, October 22, 2011

The World's Level of Insanity Just Dropped a Notch or Two...

The Iraq War ended again Or, more accurately, will end again. This time the president didn't land a Lockheed S-3 on the USS Abe Lincoln. There was no "Mission Accomplished" banner hanging in the background while he dipped his Cohiba in a fine Port and propped his feet up on the head of one of those Saddam statues that had been ripped down by an M1 Abrams.

This time there was a speech that simply said the troops will be home by the end of the year. No mention of the failure to reach an agreement concerning troops staying in Iraq. We did all the heavy lifting and now it's time to call it a day. Turkey and Iran will stomp down hard on the Kurds then shift their focus into carving up the rest of Iraq. And in the next 15-20 years, we will be back over there killing and being killed over another Big Nothing. I'm a bit conflicted over how to feel about all this. I remember watching Colin Powell make a fool of himself in front of the UN. It was supposed to be the "Boo-Ya!" moment of our time. The equivalent to the Adlai Stevenson address to the UN during the Cuban Missle Crisis (one of my all-time favorite moments in history). Instead of giving clear cut proof, Powell presented some pictures of trucks in a desert. They could easily have been a semi full of oranges parked in Barstow. Skepticism filled me in at that moment and it never left. I'm for war under the right circumstances, but if your reason's aren't even clear to yourself... But for now let's try to enjoy the fact that a soldier's family can rest a little easier in the coming months.

Qaddafi. I awoke the other morning, turned on my laptop and saw the "Breaking News" banner next to a picture of Ole' Moammar. The initial reports of his capture gave me a strange sense of excitement. I was already looking forward to his trial when moments later "capture" turned to "killed." The ideal scenario was not to be. The man said he would die in Libya. A dictator to his own fate.

It would have been nice to march him in front of the Human Rights court, but in reality Libya would hand him a death sentence and nobody would bark about it. A lot of people on TV were wondering why he was killed. They seem to forget that this is an armed revolution of the people. These fighters aren't trained military. When this fight started most of them didn't even have guns. Now everyone is worried about the country falling into a civil war. I think that's unlikely. A number of the NTC higher-ups are members of the parlimentary government that Qaddafi allowed to operate to ease the fears of the West so they would do business with Libya. They wanted a voice and Qaddafi needed a smokescreen. There is already talk of votes in the summer. Sec. Clinton is offering the almighty aid dollars to help rebuild. An interesting stat I learned yesterday: NATO bombers (mainly French and British) dropped so many bombs during this intervention they ran out and had to buy some from the US stockpile. I don't know if the income from that is calculated into the news reports about how much the US spent on pounding Moammar into submission, but it is an interesting point. Even though we are active in two wars of our own (Iraq and Afghanistan. Not to mention "operations" in Pakistan, Somalia, etc.), we still have enough bombs to go around.   

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