Wait, what?

[MadHound]

So here we are in Afghanistan, supposedly, nominally fighting al Qaeda and other such folks. Never mind the pipelines, gas and other massive reserves of resources that have been discovered in that country, let's take them at their word and say we're there to fight these bad, bad people.

Same with Yemen, we've been killing innocent people, some of them our own citizens, for the nominal reason that they belong to al Qaeda, or are radical Muslims of some stripe or another.

Now we come to Libya, full of noble freedom fighters, trying to overthrow a tyrant. Here we are helping the rebels, some of whom are members of al Qaeda and other radical Muslim groups who want to now institute Sharia law in Libya.

Something is horribly wrong here. Either we're being lied to, some ugly scenario is being set up for Libya at a later date, or we're just simply imperial hypocrites.

[HereSince1628]

1. I believe this is a case for the inclusive use of 'or'

So many possibilities, so many probably true.

[lunatica]

2. Tell us something we don't know

They justify it by claiming it's in our National Security to protect our interests. Oil is the lifeblood of the US. Cut off our lifeblood and we're toast, because we can't possibly develop alternate sources of energy.

:sarcasm:

[bigtree]

3. we almost always support the Muslims in these conflicts

. . . even though that decision sometimes is unsustainable because of the short-lived alliances which break down over objections to our empire-building moves and military-led imperialism.

[MineralMan]

5. Who else would we support? The overwhelming majority of

people in those countries are Muslims. Islam is the almost universal religion there. Let the people determine their own system of government. When we meddle in that, we lose. Every time.

[bigtree]

6. right, I get that

[MineralMan]

4. Sharia Law is the default in all those countries. Why is

that surprising? We are either in favor of self-determination by the people there, or we are in favor of determining their system of government ourselves. Which is it? In all of those countries, the government chosen by the people there will undoubtedly be based on Islam. Self-determination means just that. We err by trying to establish any system at all. That is a matter for the people who live in those countries, not for us. We keep making the same mistake over and over again in the Middle East.