More Libya -- although I'd remind everyone that presidential speeches are typically a lot less important than they seem at the time. Syria, Yemen: broadly considered, I can't see this one dropping off the "what mattered" list anytime soon.
I noted over at Greg's place that at least one analyst believes that the Terry Jones thing changes everything in Afghanistan. Again, I'm skeptical...but it's worth considering.
I don't recall anything in the pre-shutdown budget maneuvering that I'd put on this list.
Baseball started! Hey, it matters to some of us.
What am I missing? What do you think mattered this week?
Saturday, April 2, 2011
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I think the Jones thing matters A LOT. Every US conflict, since WWII, has featured a mightier US military against a lesser opponent (save perhaps the Chinese in Korea), with the US challenge being finding a face-saving way to go home.
ReplyDeleteConsidering that the US is teeming with Terry Jones types, people who sneer when saying "Religion of Peace" or ignorantly ask 'peaceful' Muslims to "pls refudiate", the Afghan blowback to some random Gainesville Koran burning strongly suggests there could be more such torchings in the US bible belt.
Considering further that the perpetrators of these murders in Afghanistan were average Afghans, (apparently) not remotely attachable to AlQaeda or the Taliban or whatever,
It would seem that an ill wind is blowing over there, and over here, threatening to extinguish the flickering flame of hope for an honorable way home for the poor troops slogging it out over there. Those 100,000+ Americans fighting over there - this Koran burning stupidity must be a tough pill to swallow for them and their loved ones.
Again, Japan nuclear crisis, not over.
ReplyDeleteThe massacre of between 800 and 1,000 civilians seeking refuge from civil war in Cote D'Ivoire even as a no-fly zone tried to stem a massacre in Libya. The balance on the scales that oil beneath the ground makes some lives more worth saving then others.
ReplyDelete@zic
ReplyDeleteDo you have a theory for how oil figures into it?
It seems letting Qaddafi win would have been the way to get maximum oil flow in minimum time.
Zic, I don't think this one is about oil. Obama intervened in Libya rather than Cote D'Ivoire because Americans had never heard of Gbagbo, but we have 25 years of Americans seeing Qaddafi as evil.
ReplyDeleteWe intervened in Libya because there was a call from other nations to do so; particularly from France, she likes the Libyan sweet crude.
ReplyDeleteHow does a stalemated civil war get more oil from Libya to France?
ReplyDeleteJuan Cole devotes a paragraph to the oil issue in his 'Open Letter to the Left'.