So who is the leader of the TEA party and how does the TEA party decide how to approach an issue?
Ron Paul is taking exactly the position you would expect. He opposes intervention in all military actions except those to defend the territory of the United States. A group of 20 TEA party people in Tripoli have said it isn’t the job of the United States to evacuate them from Libya.
Sarah Palin is congratulating the people of Libya for fighting for their freedom. In the past day, the “Provisional Government” has declared that the Eastern oil and gas fields are no longer part of the Libyan Oil company and belong to them. It’s not about freedom, it’s about control of the oil. It’s also about tribalism and ethnic differences.
One possible outcome of this could end up being that Libya permanently splits into two – the Eastern part merges with Egypt and the Western half merges with Tunisia. There is very little in between the major cities at either end of the country.
One of the NY Times stories described the capabilities of the “freedom fighters”. Most of them have never fired a gun – the one they focused on has 7 children, and had lived a big part of his life in England. 6 people like him hopped into a pickup truck and the guns they could scrounge up…. and drove West until they met the government troops. Two died, two were injured, and two returned home.
It’s one thing to help a side we sympathize with — maybe — but quite another thing to puts planes in the air, ships to sea and boots on the ground, not to mention the expenditure of billions of dol … er, yuan.
After giving it a bit more thought…. I think what is going on…..
Qadaffi is consolidating the West and putting down the resistance. Benghazi is the center of the actual uprising. There is very little in between Sirte (his hometown) and Benghazi other than oil storage tanks and ports. The “Rebels” are busy “capturing” them against token resistance.
One of the problems for Qadaffi is he has the world media playing a curious game of calling the same people “Civilians” and “Rebels”… Trying to military take over Benghazi would be diffidult at best, and would give fuel to those saying he was “murdering unarmed civilians in the streets” (standing right next to the “rebel” with a RPG launcher)
The untrained and poorly armed “Rebels” are being drawn out into the no-mans land with no place for cover and no logistics support. At the appropriate time, the Libyan military shows up and quickly disposes of them – with no claims that innocent women and children are being murdered. If the oil tanks get blown up, that’s unfortunate – but they can be easily rebuilt. Libya has $70 billion in their sovereign fund and $112 billion in their central bank.