Reply #16: Like everything else in this deplorable episode, it is very complex, deceptive and collusive

[PurityOfEssence]

Let's take a look at Congress' inaction: there are many things at play here, and it's greasy and cowardly to an extreme. I would also characterize our President's actions as such: sneaky, misleading, weak and power-grabbing.

The sad truth is that many in our government want to ratfuck Qaddafi and get a better deal on the oil. The endlessly repeated rejoinder to accusations that this is about oil has been that he was a reliable provider, so there was no motive. This is patently false: he rewrote contracts for many of the foreign companies (most notably France's "Total") in 2009, reducing the amount they could take by some 46%, and threatened nationalization if they didn't agree. His fate was sealed at that point. The neocons are all for this, the Europeans are seriously in the driver's seat, and we're the Drum Major out in front leading the parade.

The conservatives hate the War Powers Resolution even more than others ostensibly on our own side do, so they're not raising any outcry: they love another cinder-block of precedent being thrown into the balance of a President ignoring the thing, and are giddy that Clinton helped out so much to render the law moot. They also like the idea of Obama having performed an impeachable act, which they can hold over his head should things go wrong and/or it become convenient. Here's where the cowardice part comes in: they love not having to side with or against this. If he fails, they can blame him endlessly, and if he succeeds, they can take some credit. More than anything, the imperial power is buttressed, which is something they love.

Obama looks at this as something to give him more cred with the reactionaries, solidify his support from corporatists who hate loose cannons like Qaddafi and also show what a big tough and hairy non-wimpy non-liberal he is, just as he strutted his Afghanistan plans during the primary season and election.

Sadly, true progressives are fed the raw meat of some kind of moral intervention under the guise of the United Nations, which makes them feel upright and triumphal as they enable imperial resource-grabbing, and Obama gets to play war hero.

The whole thing is filthy, and the cowardly dynamic is reinforced by the sheer cheapness of the warmaking. One has an obligation when resorting to war to do it as painlessly as possible; it's an ugly thing, and one should not do a penny-pinching non-war that puts many civilians at risk due to a protracted starvation/attrition campaign: a proper war is expensive. The rebels are extremely guilty of this, too: if you're going to mount a revolution, it behooves you to actually have the means to win before risking everybody else's lives. They clearly didn't. They simply don't. Their threats to remember those who didn't stand with them induced the French to recognize them, and once Qaddafi struck back, they had to scamper needily to us and the UN to pull their chestnuts out of the fire.

Nobody wants to talk about or deal with this entire mess because they're all so chickenshit, cowardly and duplicitous. Still, it won't go away.

We own this now; everything that goes badly there is our own personal fault, and more than anything else, that's why the Republicans are leaving Obama plenty of rope to hang himself.

Perhaps we can control the story, and make this look "good", but regardless, we are nothing short of an Imperial Bully now, and it shouldn't have come from our side.