The doctrine of Proportionate Response goes something like this: You hit me, I hit you back. You hit me harder, I hit you harder. You impose a cost for attacking, but don’t escalate. Ronald Reagan was a big advocate of this approach toward the Soviet Union.
Qaddafi appears to also follow that. The moment the Reagan administration walked in the door in 1981, they clearly wanted to topple Qaddafi. In 1981, Exxon pulled out of the Libya oil fields without warning or explanation – just walked away. [That was the answer to my history question on the prior blog – what happened in 1981].
In 1977, Libya started financing the opposition in a civil war in Chad, the country to the South of Libya. In the old days, the country was known as French Equatorial Africa. In 1960, Chad broke away from French rule and declared independence. In the early 1980s, Chad broke out in a civil war, with Libya supporting the opposition in the North and France sending in troops to arm the South. The US started overtly aiding the government in Chad – the man now trying to organize the Benghazi military was a former Libyan general who the CIA “flipped” – and has been living in Virginia for the past 20 years minutes from CIA headquarters.
Here is a pretty complete list of the sequence of events:
http://thebrokenelbow.com/category/reagan/
Reagan made it clear from the beginning that his goal was to topple Libya, then a client state of the Soviet Union. The Gulf of Sidra was the lever – Libya claimed it as territorial waters, Reagan claimed it as international waters and sent in the U.S. Navy to challenge Qadaffi. When Libya launched aircraft in response, Reagan ordered them shot down. The blowing up of Pan Pam 103 happened (accepting that Qadaffi did order it) came after the failed attempt to kill Qadaffi.
So it looks like last night, “NATO” tried to kill Qadaffi again. Maybe Libya has no friends or asymmetrical warfare assets left – but if I was living in France or England, I would be very cautious about what I did from this point on that could be vulnerable to attack by Libyan assets. The stakes are now at “Have nothing left to lose”.
To a large degree, the ball is now in Russia’s court, and to a lesser extent Turkey. NATO has clearly exceeded the scope of the UN authorization. It’s unlikely Russia would engage in a direct confrontation with the United States like having one of their subs try to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier, but they could do something like send tanks spilling into one of the former Soviet Republics and see just how weak the UN, NATO and the U.S. have become.
You’ll remember the Russian intervention in Georgia was based on the Duty to Protect civilians of Georgia of Russian ethnicity who Russia claimed were being abused by the Georgian government. I’m confident it wouldn’t be too hard to find other situations like that in Eastern Europe of perhaps some of the oil rich places like Kazakhstan.
Syrian tanks now are taking to the streets. Russia has an important base in Syria and is its ally. Your move, NATO. The former French colony of Lebanon is next.
President Obama is currently supervising the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn.
Supervising the Pagan holiday festival, while ignoring his Christian faith….
Quite frankly, I’ve been -against- the ‘rebels’ since this whole thing started (even going back to Egypt and Tunisia)… the entire Mideast is being setup for conflict.
IMO, the western liberal media was the source (tool) of provocation and agitation.
Later today I’ll post a link to a few photos (my server) which show the ‘media’ were blatantly inciting the rebels using the implied promise of ‘news coverage’.
Call me crazy, call me a traitor… but I really hoped the Russians would challenge the war-mongers inside NATO; either by open confrontation or supplying arms to Libya.
The U.S. is embarking on unchecked military adventurism and the citizenry has lost control to a rogue regime, as in 1939 Germany. The result will be disaster.
I have a similar take on this. At times I am put in the untenable position of having sympathy for Khaddafi (which is a bad place, because my alma mater lost a bunch of study-abroad kids in the Pan Am bombing some two decades ago). However, I wonder why NATO (and U.S.) has to get involved in these civil wars. Let the Middle East sort out it’s own affairs.
I smell Soros-Brzezinsky-Carter at work here. Look what happened the last time the last two were heavily involved in foreign affairs.
and Henry Kissinger.
If the rationale is this is payback for Pan Am 103, then we also need to push over the country of Iran for its apparent involvement in the blowing up of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon
Nothing like a good war to distract people from the collapse of the banking system.
Look for the announcment of the resumption of the military draft any day now.
Lookie here…. this was flying under my radar until now
South East Asia
Looks like Cambodia and Thailand have started a shooting war with each other.
Maybe Glenn Beck’s preaching about the end times being filled with “war, rumors of war” aren’t so far off. hehehehe.
When will we start calling this WWIII?
Historians mark the 1931 invasion of Manchuria as the start of WWII, but, until at least 1939…possibly 1940…it wasn’t always recognized as a single event. Once nations began aligning and after America was dragged into the wars, it was all crystal clear.
Living and observing the events in real time puts us at a disadvantage. Future historians may mark the War in Iraq or possibly the escillation of the war in Afghanistan as the start…maybe it’ll be the recent overthrow in Egypt…who knows. But, each little step places us closer to the “invasion of Poland” moment when it’s clear that the fuse has been lit and won’t go out.
Skirmishes breaking out in Cambodia & Thailand…Lybia not cooling down – but heating up…and nations starting to forge sides. All it will take now is one world power sensing the apprpriate weakness in the American empire to launch us into a Pearl Harbor moment.
I never thought I’d live to see this. But, I think I am seeing it.
My guess is Pearl Harbor will happen (if it does) via the foreign exchange markets.
$20 a gallon for gasoline isn’t out of the question if the dollar goes into free fall. I pretty much predicted this a long time ago. Certainly, the Atlas Shrugged movie assumes it to be the case.
The “thing to watch for” is any announcement that hints that Saudi Arabia will only accept payment for oil in something other than US Dollars. That would force importers of oil to pay in Euros (most likely, or Yen), which will cause the USD/Euro rate to zoom up (it’s at $1.46 per euro for future reference). The rush to dump dollars will feed on itself – the U.S. Fed and maybe the ECB will try to absorb all the dollars for a while – I think that happened today – sudden changes are almost always government intervention unless it coincides with breaking news.
More than likely, Germany will break away from the Euro and return to having its own currency and cut the moochers of Europe loose. England wisely never got involved. WIth the Euro worthless, Eastern Europe completely collapses, and the Russians will be more than glad to come back and “Save” the former Warsaw Block countries.
If you have viewed Tsunami videos from Japan, there comes a moment when people realize it is real and not a TV show, and the only option is to run away from the oncoming rush and hope you get to dry land.
If oil gets up to $300 or $400 a barrel as the dollar falls apart, Canada has some hard decisions to make – do they sell their oil to the world for Euros or to the US for dollars…. If they don’t sell to the U.S., the instability below their borders could become a national security issue for them.
U.S. farmers (aka Agrobusiness) will have a similar decision to make. Do they take the food grown in America and export it out to earn Euros, or do they sell it for inflated Dollars inside the United States and be accused of price gouging? How long before Emperor Obama bans the export of food? Once farmers can only grow food for domestic sale at regulated prices below the cost of production, why does anyone want to be a farmer? Then the government MUST take over food production and Fix it and then the mass starvation and random executions start.
Or maybe I have been listening to Alex Jones too much.
Alex tends to “crank it up”, but by-and-large he’s on target.
The problem is our ‘news’ media and the Press are accomplices in an insidious propaganda campaign targeted at Americans.
Anyone who questions their official line is ‘fringe’ or ‘extremist’, or a conspiracy theorist marginalized by the mainstream media.
They coined the term ‘Truther’ to discredit libertarians, liberals, or others who question the official 9/11 story.
They coined the term ‘Birther’ to discredit conservatives, libertarians, or others who question Obama’s birthplace.
Well, I’m a Truther and a Birther, so I’m double trouble!
It’s as if we’re watching the Ukrainian engineered famine, the Bolshevik revolution, Weimar Republic inflation, and the Third Reich plebiscites all rolled into one… right here in America 2011.