GreenTiger GreenTiger:
I'm not a Kaddafy fan, he is a murderous thug leader that the world would be better off without.
We said the same thing about Saddam,we got him out and are trying to bring his country into the 21st Century and the Iraqis are spitting in our face. They like living in the 9th century.
I think if we did lend the material support that the rebels want the same thing would happen. I'm wondering if we should do anything at all.
I don't know if this quite relates to teh Iraq War. There are significant differences--first off, you don' thave the entire thing based on a bunch of lies, second of all, you don't have tens of thousadsn of dead civilians nad third of all Obama isn't as much of a fan of torture and arbitrary detention that Bush was. So your face definitely deserved to get spat in.
In other ways these are similar situations--we ran into a conflict in a "tribalized" Muslim country with limited information. To my mind there's every possibility that these rebels would be as ruthless with Gadaffi as he is with them, were the tables turned.
Like I said, I could understand the thinking at the time, though I don't agree wiht it. But the time to walk away is now.