Let’s Talk Libya Today, Mortgages Next Week

Does anyone really believe that within six or eight weeks, the United States won’t be militarily involved in Libya?

Something will happen which suddenly “forces Americans into this dispute”: think “Gulf of Tonkin.”

Picture two scenarios, if Muammar Gadaffi isn’t deposed, killed, or leaves his country:: he survives and begins exacting revenge on his citizens who challenged him, and blames the “West” for his troubles. He threatens us and Europe withholding his oil from the world market (can you say $150 a barrel and a plummeting stock market) and we develop a sense of greater outrage (meaning fear of spiraling oil prices) and we jump in, literally, to….(fill in the explanation du jour).

Or, NATO finally gets its weak ass together, again because of oil concerns cloaked with rhetoric about the civilian carnage and, we lead the effort with a few French and British soldiers and try and save the Libyan people from Gadaffi. Before you know it we are fighting on the shores of the Med.

Personally, since we will get blamed no matter how a Libyan war starts or ends, I would hope President Obama and his national security “team” go to the mattresses, now, before Gadaffi attracts too much support and the Libyan rebels’ ardor dwindles because they are being killed off.

What’s not to like about this fight?

Gadaffi is a scumbag and no friend of the US; he’s responsible for the Lockerbie bombing; he's killing his own people who want to be free of his yoke, in fits of megalomania, and we have a major economic interest in Libya’s oil. He’s also screwing up the “Arab spring.”

If Gadaffi survives, does anyone doubt that radical Muslims, whether Al Queda, the Taliban, or others will find a home in Libya?

So, wipe him out along with his extended family and get onto tomorrow’s crisis.

The Middle East is in active strategic and political play and we are either going to sit back and reap a bitter harvest--because we kept a low profile and did little--or we are going to engage and try and shape the "Arab summer and fall," which follows today’s “Arab spring.”

If it’s a lose/lose for us, let’s at least kick some Libyan bad guy butt.

Via NATO, let’s embarrass the French, British, the Germans, the Dutch, Turks, Italians, et al to join us in a “humanitarian” military engagement, quickly arm the Libyan insurgents and let them fight whoever remains after we take out Gadaffi in the literal sense.

We missed Gadaffi after Lockerbie, let’s not miss this time.

President Obama looks callow with all of this huffing and puffing producing no action. Why be the world’s strongest country if you won’t use your might in a good cause, if not a just cause?

Where is the closest “Tea Party” recruiting office? I am heading for it!!

Maloni, 3-10-11