Not that I expect Scarborough to be any less of a gasbag than he is, but he’s got a column at Politico calling the “American Left” hypocrites for cheering the intervention in Libya after all those years of complaining about Dubya’s Iraq Adventure.
America invaded its third Muslim country in a decade. The American left meekly went along. Without the slightest hint of irony, liberals defended the president’s indefensible position by returning again to a pose of moral certainty.
Democrats streamed to the floors of the House and Senate to praise the president for invading Libya. It was, after all, a moral mission that would stop the slaughter of innocent civilians. Whether protesting for peace or calling for war, these liberals once again convinced themselves of the moral superiority of their positions.
Strictly speaking, I don’t think the Libyan intervention meets the literal definition of “invasion,” and even if it does, it’s not “America’s invasion,” IMO. There seems to be genuine and spontaneous international consensus that Qaddafi must go now. Further, the reaction on the Left has ranged mostly from suspended judgment to extreme discomfort to outright opposition. And a number of Democrats in the House, at least, have been openly critical of it.
The only “leftie” (I assume) blogger I can think of who genuinely supports the intervention is Juan Cole. And he wrote an open letter to the Left on Libya, chiding lefties for not appreciating the merits of the intervention.
And who doesn’t remember the moral smugness of those who urged us to charge into Iraq because Saddam Hussein was a bad man who was “gassing his own people” (15 years earlier)? Anyone who voiced caution was shouted down for not caring enough about the suffering of oppressed Iraqis. I’m sure if we looked around we could find some videos of Scarborough in morally smug mode back then.
That said — the most worrisome thing about President Obama’s speech last night may be that Bill Kristol liked it. Be afraid.
But Kristol seems to think the speech shows that President Obama has changed his mind on the use of military force, somehow. If you saw Maddow last night, you saw her explain that everything he said in his speech was consistent with what he’s said in the past about military intervention.
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The real flip-flopping, of course, is on the Right, which has suddenly noticed that wars cost a lot of money and kill people.
“The real flip-flopping, of course, is on the Right, which has suddenly noticed that wars cost a lot of money and kill people”
True, but the way I see it it’s awfully hard to be a partisan and not have moments of hypocrisy. I for one am completely against this use of force , and I do think Obama is being hypocritical given his previous statements about Iraq (specifically about getting the OK from congress stuff). I do however find myself at times defending this adventure purely out of partisanship, it drives me crazy to see the neocons chide Obama for doing something that we all know McSame would have done (though not near as skillfully). Political hypocrisy seems redundant to me!
The right is saying, “NATO, SHMATO! Never mind them, is Tonga with us? Will the Ukrainians, Poles and Lithuanians provide a handful of troop (sic)?”
The Conservatives are in a tough position, just like in Bosnia. They love war, attacks, battle, etc. But they hate it when we do something WITH other countries – and they hate when a Democrat is leading the effort.
I’m still a very reluctant supporter of our efforts in Libya. I wonder why there, since there are a lot of places with humanitarian issues, instead of Syria, Ivory Coast, Myanmar? But I know the answer – OIL!
But if William “Wrong Again!”
SafireKristol supports it, I have even more trepidations about it!I can’t find the quote offhand, but somebody calculated that the total cost of the Lybia campaign after a week was roughly 10% of a the cost of a single DAY in Afghanistan. Give me a break. Whatever issues there are, cost isn’t one of them. As long as we don’t put boots on the ground.
As I read it, a UN coalition was going to do the no-fly zone, with or without the US. On what basis could we NOT participate? Assume the revolution succeeds. A representative government where the people share in the wealth is the ideal outcome. We want a seat at the table that shapes the new government. Kinda hard to do if you defined yourself as a spectator when they were bleeding.
Yeah, that’s kinda where I come out, too. We’ll see.
A lot of Democrats supported going into Iraq. What they opposed was it being run incompetently, and being justified on WMD that turned out not to exist. What kind of a message do we send if we say that Presidents are not required to be competent or accountable during times of war? What do we think will start happening next?
I’m sure if we looked around we could find some videos of Scarborough in morally smug mode back then.
My first recall of Scarbrough was watching him on some talk show discussing the beheading of some poor hostage in Iraq. Scarbrough made the comment, ” Oh, that’s so yesterday” implying that the resistance to America’s invasion lacked creativity. It stuck me as such a callous and arrogant remark that was completely devoid of compassion and understanding. A typical wingnut armchair commando response to the suffering we caused in Iraq. I put Scarbrough in a box in my mind that day, and he hasn’t extricated himself from that box to this day. I’ve seen his colors.
“I’ve seen his colors”
Didn’t Scarborough lose an intern or something?
What kind of a message do we send if we say that Presidents are not required to be competent or accountable during times of war? What do we think will start happening next?
Well, I haven’t seen anyone here saying that; I have seen them express dismay over the U.S.’s sudden and complete involvement in the Libya air strikes. I’ve also seen reasonable arguments that the Iraq invasion cannot honestly be compared to the air strikes, and competing but not mutually-exclusive arguments that the differences don’t much matter.
I think the distinction is between complex or simplistic thinking; the Left certainly is capable of the latter, but the Right seems almost to have invented it. They never show anything but simplistic thinking, no matter how long we may hope for some improvement.
Well, they don’t need it to be true, or really, have any basis in reality… they just need it to be something to anger their people.
Bill Kristol “liked it” – Kristol’s seeming nonsense is not really nonsense. He has a motif, a theme, an agenda, a cause which he has been promoting for years – to ensure Israel’s continuing existence in the ME. He seems to believe that if the US can be convinced that every country in the ME is a threat to its existence, and to act on that conviction, it can only be good for Israel.
He desperately wanted Clinton to attack Iraq in ’98 and wrote him a letter to that effect. He and his fellow neocons have been harping on the evilness of Iran for years. He tried to get the US to attack Syria a few years ago ostensibly because Syria threatened the sovereignty of Lebanon.
The fact that he “liked” Obama’s speech was a pre-determined given.
Yes, Scarborough lost an intern, under circumstances I’ve never seen explained.
As for Libya, it’s yet another imperial adventure, of the sort that the USA has done dozens of times without note. What’s unusual is not that it happened (in fact this sort of thing has long been standard operating procedure) nor that it happened without the slightest Congressional input (ditto) nor that the outcome is a crap-shoot (ditto) but that it is being noticed as such at all.
The American Empire isn’t forming; on the contrary it is dissolving, and becoming visible in the process.
uncledad,
Yes, ‘Cup o’ Schmoe’ had an intern problem.
A dead one.
One who died in his office, if I remember right.
And also, if I remember right, Gov. Jeb Bush had something to do with bringing in a forensics team from out of state that said it was accidental. Which it might have been. But, who knows?
I’d google this to see if I’m right, but it’s too late, and he’s too entrenched in the MSM and Conservative politics (or do I repeat myself?) for anything to happen to him if the case were to be reopened – and I’m too lazy to look today.
I have really been out of touch on the Libya war, know very little about it.
I do know and deeply resent that I was deliberately lied to about Iraq. GW Bush and the cabal he fronted wanted war with Iraq and manipulated the public to get it. Despite my disconnect with events in Libya, I think it’s apples and oranges, but being able to make such discriminations is not the right’s strong suit.