Meanwhile, back in the USA, crazed potential leaders are too cheap to meter. Perhaps we could export some of our excess supply.

This can only mesan one thing: Obama sucks.

Oh, and quagmire.

If those rebels don’t serve papers on Qaddafi and read him his Miranda rights, David Sirota is gonna be PISSED!!!

I’ll break ahead of the pundits here and say that whatever pans out, it’s going to be “messy.”

Quagmire! Vietnam! Imperialist scum! Obamawarmonger! Blood for oil!

Mr. Whipple, it is pretty funny that the people who excoriate Obama for not being more like LBJ in pushing “Great Society” legislation (even though not even King Bully Pulpit Texas Tough Guy tried to get universal healthcare passed) then turn around and use Vietnam as a stick with which to beat Obama’s foreign policy—even though Afghanistan is nowhere near being Vietnam and Libya even less so.

I want us out of Afghanistan ASAP, make no mistake - but the Vietnam comparisons, particularly when they come from people who conveniently forget that the guy they want Obama to emulate in “toughness” is the one who showed his “spine” by escalating that conflict, just make my head hurt.

It’s good news for John McCain because it gives him another excuse to appear on a Sunday morning talking heads show for his foreign policy “expertise.” Muthafucka needs to get off the teevee screen every goddam weekend!

Hey, Sunday show producers: McCain LOST the election!

Of course it’ll be messy.

The Eastern Townships of Quebec were all founded in the 1780’s, and all look like little pieces of New England, for a reason. Same thing in broad swathes of the Maritimes. Their original settlers—somewhere between 2% and 5% of the population of the Colonies—were Tories fleeing the brand-new United States.

That’s a best-case scenario. Worst case looks something like Algeria in its first three or four years of independence—its struggle to expel the French was also a brutal internecine war.

You know, if the rebels could find the shaft that leads to the main power generator this could all be over in time for fireworks later tonight.

I’m just sayin’.

I’ve found that even at some of the better liberal blogs, the same people who were cheering breaking windows to steal trainers and saying, “why can’t we have that here” don’t really like people actually throwing out a real live honest to god dictator.

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near,
How can I keep from singing?

I’ve found that even at some of the better liberal blogs, the same people who were cheering breaking windows to steal trainers and saying, “why can’t we have that here” don’t really like people actually throwing out a real live honest to god dictator.

In the common parlance, these people are known as assholes.

They also clearly have never been near anything that resembles a riot.

There are a lot of people who learned, thirty, forty years ago, one particular set of prisms through which to look at events, and one particular set of categories to fit things into.

And they’ll be damned—because it’s too much work, or because those things are too much a part of them, or because no one wants to admit they’re growing old—if they have to change them, or acquire a new perspective.

So, yeah, there’s a fair amount of “Create two-three-many Libyas!” out there. Qadaffi the Unaligned standing tall with his third-world comrades, bravely resisting the EU/NATO/US steamroller, and such.

Add to that that the high-water mark of the blogospheric left was the run-up to, and the US kicking off, the Iraq war. It was the Spitfire summer for a lot of people still blogging. They’ll see everything in that context the rest of their lives.

Fortunately, Davis, that’s all about to end:

WHOO-OOSH!!!!  It [will] literally feel as though a MIGHTY BURST of energy has swept across America and the WORLD when she announces!  She will be taking on Obama and his Obots, and indeed ALL Marxists and dictators everywhere, saying, “NO!  You will NOT win!  You will NOT use people as your slaves!”

She will be mighty, because GOD is empowering her.

Be our most excellent President, Sarah Palin, and lead the world to work for wholeness and
peace.

Well, let us not forget that the Weather Underground had a boner for Kim Il Sung. In that special way that only overprivileged narcissistic white kids can worship crazed genocidal oppressors of the real working class.

Fortunately, Davis, that’s all about to end:

Oh well, don’t tell whoever scrawled that (FR? C4P?) that it’s reported on Balloon Juice by Jenny:

They’re singing the national anthem in the streets of Tripoli and chanting Obama Akbar.

Heh~Obama’s war took 6 months…Bush has two at like ten years and counting.

I’m reading Cole’s legitimate concern:

Finally, every time we exert military force and have a “successful” outcome, it makes it more likely we will do so again.

I’m not about to ring a victory bell here—the transition’s going to be a delicate and potentially explosive process—but my counter/consolation to him would be that this has been an example of the international community intervening* with the US taking its role as a crucial partner, not the lead bully saying “Our way, or we go unilateral.” As I said a whle back, it’s pathetic that this is such a radical step, but it is.

* And yeah, I can be skeptical about the motivations of the likes of Sarkozy and what awaits Libya in terms of a carve-up, but sometimes bad people do good things, for all the wrong reasons, and very occasionally the right ones. At times in his career, that’s been true of Gaddafi, too.

True enough, YAFB.  The French helped the U.S. gain independence, but it wasn’t because they loved the colonials’ backwoodsy hick asses. It was just a part of their broader imperial goals.

@YAFB, this wasn’t just something the international community dreamed up.  There were actual people on the ground in Libya taking up arms to overthrow the government.  Not supporting them was the same as allowing the government to slaughter them.  There was no middle ground, there was no way to stay out of it with clean hands or conscience.

The fighting was happening without the US, without France, and without the UN.  Once the fighting started it was a matter of helping the people or helping Gaddafi.  Act and help the people, don’t act and help Gaddafi.

BTW, Obama managed to do all this WHILE ON HOLIDAY!!!!!
===

Apparently on CNN his new name is Obama-who’s-on-vacation-on-Martha’s-Vineyard and this full name is required whenever he’s mentioned.

@YAFB, this wasn’t just something the international community dreamed up.

I don’t think we disagree greatly on any of that, Mike, except that I still retain skepticism about humanitarian concern as a primary motivator for pols like Sarkozy. But at the moment, that doesn’t matter. I was for a no-fly zone when things first kicked off in Libya. The rest had to follow, unless there was going to be years of deadlock and even more bloodshed.

@YAFB, Chad was reason enough for the French to jump in, but I’m not that concerned with their reasons. Nobody got in until the Libyans themselves started getting killed.  Even if that’s not what got France in, I think it was enough for us.

BTW, Obama managed to do all this WHILE ON HOLIDAY!!!!!

As the kids would say, I’M ON VACATION, KILLIN’ UR D00DS!