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I disagree on Libya
 
Bart,

As much as I love your site and find myself in agreement with you on most issues,
I have to take exception to your support for bombing the shit out of Libya. 

First, the link to the story about the BB player's wife is absolutely irrelevant
to the larger issue of the use of  military force around the world.   

I strongly disagree.
Why stand by and watch some lady get beat up (or worse) by some scumbag?
If it was my wife, I'd want somebody to intervene.
I thought the disabled player's analogy was spot-on.

Why Libya and not Bahrain or Saudi Arabia? 

Are we opening up a new topic before we finish this one?

If you're wife's getting slapped around at a Pizza Hut,
should I not intervene because what about some lady
across town who's getting slapped around at a Taco Hut?

Why should we be involved in the internal disputes of that country? 

If it was my wife, I'd want somebody to intervene.

Shouldn't they work out their own problems? 

Really?
The 110 pound girl should "work things out" with her linebacker attacker?

How would we feel if a foreign power intervened in out internal political disputes? 

Non sequitor.
Since that could never happen, why discuss it?

Our government kills people, discriminates against people regularly, imprisons
w/o judicial proceedings, kidnaps people, the president claims the right to assassinate
American citizens if he considers them a threat to whatever, and on and on and on. 
Shouldn't a foreign power step in and bomb the shit out of the White House to prevent those abuses?

They can't - I  don't understand why you'd ask that.
If sand were gunpowder, Gadaffy wouldn't be able to push people around.

When the only fucking tool we have in the box is a hammer everything looks like a nail. 

Who is that meant for? Surely not me.
If your wife's getting slapped around at a Pizza Hut, should I step in? 
Or should I explain the hammer/nails analogy to her while the linebacker kicks her ass - or worse.

Shouldn't we take a more civilized approach to world relations than simply brute force? 

Obama tried that - diplomacy is often useless with insane dictators.

Why do we refuse to recognize that most of the animosity directed against the US is blowback
for our policies in the past?  We are  not the goody goody nation that our politicians like to claim. 

Again, an off-topic discussion we could have at another time.

We have done some dirty fucking things around the world in the past 75 years. 
The American Exceptionalism we hear about is so much bullshit. 
We are no better than any other imperial power of the past. 

How does addressing that help your in-distress wife?

I keep coming back to that because if your town is being shelled,
and if Gadaffy's goons are raping every woman they can find,
what does it matter what Israel did in 1948?

Libya's URGENCY is what caused Obama to intervene.

If Gadaffy said he was considering bombing some Libyan cities in 2014,
we'd have plenty of time for that diplomacy you'd like to engage.

Claiming the right to use blunt force because are intentions are noble is crap. 

I don't think Obama (or England or France) has any intention of colonizing Libya.

Our intention is to sew up resources any way we can and we find that beating the shit out
of those that have them and won't give them to us is the easiest way to give Exxon/Mobil et. al.

When a Rethugs is in power, I agree with you.
Far as I know, Obama doesn't have 200,000 shares of Halliburton stock.

Article One section 8 of the Constitution was put there for a purpose.

I am not asking you to change your opinion on this militaristic bent in foreign policy. 
Just think about it.  Bombs are not good diplomatic tools.
 Vince

Bombs are not always good diplomatic tools.
Every tool has a purpose.

That's why we should elect wise men, not small-minded, warmongering oil thieves.

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