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| Africa North |
| Odyssey Dawn: the Obamacare of Military Operations |
| 2011-03-24 |
| Jim Geraghty, "Morning Jolt" from National Review ...on paper, military action to prevent a massacre and hit a dictator who has supported and ordered terror attacks against Americans in the past ought to be easy to support. But this administration manages to take even this and make it feel overcomplicated, internally divided, confused, contradictory, and emanates this aura of anxiety-inducing rhetorical muddle that suggests the folks at the top are making it up as they go along. For starters, apparently Gaddafi doesn’t have to go now?...“Asked by NBC’s Savannah Guthrie what the U.S. commitment is in Libya if Qadhafi remains in power but continues to pose a threat to his people, Obama appeared to leave the door open for political reforms.” Sure, he was talking about fighting to the last drop of blood, threatening to blow up airliners and ships in the Mediterranean, threatened to sabotage his oil fields, send droves of refugees across the Med to Europe, and pledged to wipe out those who oppose him “alley by alley, road by road.” But hey, guys, he’s talking reforms, now! Everything’s cool! I love how Hillary Clinton and Obama continually talk about Qaddafi stepping down and call on him to do so. Like that’ll happen. Have they heard any of his speeches during this crisis? He sounds like a cross between primal screams and a professional wrestler taunting his opponents. If he wanted to grab his fortune and flee to the French Riviera with his voluptuous Ukrainian nurse, he could have and probably would have done so a long time ago. How many times does a guy with the nickname “Mad Dog” choose a quiet exit, to a retirement of luxurious seclusion? This is my new worry: Obama will realize what a complicated mess he’s just charged into, realize that seeing this through would mean telling the American people things they don’t want to hear and require telling his own party to grow up, and he’ll try to find the military equivalent of voting “present.” My guess is that means after a certain number of air strikes, declaring victory and ceasing military operations, declaring that cause that got us into this, protecting civilians is now the responsibility of “the world community.” Our allies shrug, pointing out the obvious, that they don’t have the resources to continue operations anywhere near the current tempo. Most of the rest of the world yawns and turns away. Qaddafi resumes his offensive against the rebels, who start to feel like the Kurds after the Gulf War, and begin fermenting bitter anti-American feelings of betrayal as they retreat towards the Egyptian border. Oh, and then Qaddafi begins looking for payback.... |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #6 OK finally got the title of the Op. Dawn being an analogy for beginning... Odyssey being the classic book... Both Odysseus and Obama were supposed to be home but were instead far away beating the one-eyed monster. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2011-03-24 17:54 |
| #5 Hopefully it won't turn out to be another Somalia / Black Hawk Down... |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2011-03-24 17:13 |
| #4 I know many of you don't remember the Kosovo campaign/war/police action/etc, but this looks EXACTLY like that operation. Loose set of goals, shaky (if any nato support), and no boots on the ground. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2011-03-24 16:28 |
| #3 LOL about the title. COL (crying out loud) about the reality. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2011-03-24 14:01 |
| #2 Does that mean Gaddafi can file for a waiver? |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2011-03-24 13:55 |
| #1 "Quagmire". LMAO! |
| Posted by: Jefferson 2011-03-24 13:47 |