US forces in Europe on alert due to Libya unrest

[DonViejo]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior U.S. military official says Marines and other American forces in Europe have been placed on a heightened state of alert in response to a deteriorating security situation in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

The alert order applies to a U.S. special operations team based in Stuttgart, Germany, as well as a Marine group of air and ground forces based in Moron, Spain, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said Friday there is no immediate plan to use any of the forces, but a portion of the approximately 500 Marines in Spain have been notified they might be repositioned for a quicker potential response to trouble in Tripoli.

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Read more: http://www.salon.com/2013/05/10/us_forces_in_europe_on_alert_due_to_libya_unrest/

[jakeXT]

1. Maybe someday AFRICOM HQ in Stuttgart will be moved to Libya. /nt

United States Africa Command, (U.S. AFRICOM) is one of six of the U.S. Defense Department's geographic combatant commands and is responsible to the Secretary of Defense for military relations with African nations, the African Union, and African regional security organizations. A full-spectrum combatant command, U.S. AFRICOM is responsible for all U.S. Department of Defense operations, exercises, and security cooperation on the African continent, its island nations, and surrounding waters. AFRICOM began initial operations on Oct. 1, 2007, and officially became an independent command on Oct. 1, 2008.


http://www.africom.mil/about-the-command

[leveymg]

2. I think things are moving rapidly in the other direction > civil war in Libya

between the western-backed regime in Tripoli and the Islamicists in the East. That will mean civil wars, failed governments, or mounting religious conflict everywhere we intervened to carry out regime change in 2011.

Like nobody could have seen this one coming.

[jakeXT]

3. A part of Libya would be enough, I assume. /nt

[leveymg]

4. Militias and mercenaries hired by oil companies control the part that counts.

The east is a no-mans land of Salafists, arms smugglers, and organized crime families. The interior of the country around Sirte is Khadaffi's tribal area, while the capital is now crawling with armed opposition groups. That doesn't leave much.

[John2]

6. That is my biggest

criticism of Obama's Foreign Policy. The Democrats got tricked into this neocon Policy of Regime change in the Middle East just like they got tricked into Iraq. Both parties are competing with each other, whom can best carry out this flawed Policy of regime change. It is the same people doing the same thing. When the entire Policy is flawed, you throw it out and change directions. You don't double down on it.

[pampango]

7. "Obama's Foreign Policy" - "this flawed Policy of regime change".

It's just like Iraq and Afghanistan, isn't it? Other than a 100,000 troops here or there.

Tunisia? Egypt? Regime change courtesy of Obama? Should he have refused to let those dictators relinquish power (Ben Ali, you are not getting on that plane) and forced their armies to open fire on demonstrators (Mubarak, if the army won't shoot demonstrators for you, we will replace you with someone else)? Should he have backed Gaddafi (dictators have rights, too) and told the UN to 'go fly a kite' with its 'no-fly-zone'? (With all the disagreements among Libyan now, about the only thing they agree on how good it is not to have Mummar around anymore.)

And what has he done in Syria? He has said that Assad if a very bad man. Hard to argue with that. He has refused to supply weapons to the opponents of Assad for fear of the repercussions. Hard to argue with that. In March 2011 should Obama have told Syrian demonstrators to go home. "Assad is the best thing for you even if you do not know it." Perhaps he should have then vied with Russia for the arms market in Syria so Assad could have used American weapons and ammunitions, not just Russian. Could have made a few bucks right there.

"When the entire Policy is flawed, you throw it out and change directions. You don't double down on it." - Do we move back to the policy of supporting dictators around the world as long as they 'kept the peace' within their borders? And we weren't asking how they 'kept the peace'. We supported dictators in Central and South America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East for decades after WWII. We not only did not promote democracy in those countries, we resisted popular efforts to bring it about.

Protecting dictators would not exactly be a 'new direction'.

Or do we "progress" to simply not caring (or at least not doing anything about it) when the next Bosnia, Rwanda, Libya, Syria happens? The civilians being killed are, after all, not Americans? Why should we care? Let the Europeans and Canadians take care of such things.

[leveymg]

9. You assume that all the Arab Springs were created equal, and that none were, in fact, created.

Last edited Fri May 10, 2013, 11:13 PM - Edit history (1)

Both assumptions would be wrong.

Tunisia appears to have been the sole case of organic inception of rebellion and a reasonably happy outcome because nobody from the outside seems to have interfered, much, there really isn't a lot there, so nobody splashed a lot of gasoline around and played with matches. But, that just may prove how little I've actually studied the place.

Egypt is a series of a permanent revolutions from above that has eaten up Arab Nationalism, and Mubarek, the geriatric pretender to that obsoleted revolution. It was only inevitable that he had to be replaced by a newer pretender to true revolution, revolutionary Islam in the form of the Brotherhood, which was always the shopholders and CIA-endorsed alternative to the real thing.

The twin insurrections in Libya and Syria are all about exile groups calling for simultaneous Days of Rage, which were largely ignored by the masses and the regimes, until the snipers and burnings of government buildings set off an undertrained and overarmed police into a predictable frenzy of deadly overrreaction. Then the blood really started to flow. An eye for an eye, just the thing to set off latent religious and clan based vendettas going back generations. Very much according to Petraeus' insurgency and Clinton's regime change handbook.

The problem with these things is that once you blow the lid off of them by remote control, they just keep burning, like runaway oilfield fires. We really don't have a clue what to do to extinguish the blowout, other than to pour high explosives on it, step back, and pray that it doesn't blow back, again.

[arewenotdemo]

10. It's beyond belief that Obama isn't smarter than this.

But he clearly isn't. It's as if the malevolent stench of Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of the neocon scum is still motivating American foreign policy. Still trying to "roll up" the Russian "client states" in the Mideast.

On a side note, I just looked up Benghazi star Victoria Nuland's Wiki page.

I had no idea that she is married to neoconservative historian Robert Kagan, co-founder of a little something called "Project for the New American Century".

Kagan's book The World America Made has been publicly endorsed by US President Barack Obama, and its theme was referenced in his 2012 State of the Union Address.

We elected someone who actually admires neocons. Unbelievable.

[Ghost Dog]

11. It's as if...

Mmmmm.

[Berlum]

5. Meanwhile, Republicans fiddle with their diaries

[Bosonic]

8. Libyan militiamen attack anti-Islamist protesters

Libyan militiamen attack anti-Islamist protesters

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — Scores of Libyan militiamen descended on an anti-Islamist rally in the nation's capital, Tripoli, kicking and beating protesters who had taken to the streets Friday as part of a call for mass demonstrations against the country's unruly militias and Muslim radicals.

Rallies also took place in two other Libyan cities, Benghazi and Tobruk, with hundreds of activists denouncing the armed thugs and decrying what they describe as political maneuverings by the nation's Muslim Brotherhood.

For nearly two weeks, Libya has been gripped by fear of new armed conflict after militias stormed and surrounded government buildings in Tripoli, blocking access to ministries in an attempt to push parliament to pass a contentious law that would prevent members of Moammar Gadhafi's regime from serving in senior government posts.

The turmoil appears to have sent jitters beyond Libya's borders, with the U.S. and Britain expressing concern over the prospects of continuous unrest in the North African country.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/libya-activists-protest-militias-islamists