03.19.11
Laughable quote of the day re Bombing Moe
From a Foreign Policy mag blog:
“This is the greatest opportunity to realign our interests and our values,” a senior administration official said at the meeting, telling the experts this sentence came from Obama himself. The president was referring to the broader change going on in the Middle East and the need to rebalance U.S. foreign policy toward a greater focus on democracy and human rights.
Five more reasons the President decided to Bomb Moe:
1. The Republicans won’t know what to say. They like bombing Muslims in a foreign country but hate the President. They like war to defend oil but hate the President.
2. Bombing Moe is another opportunity to gin up the importance and cooperation between nations in something with a name like “the Allies” or “the Coalition Forces.”
3. Bombing Moe presents another opportunity for the mainstream media to send its reporters to the battlefield, either somewhere in Benghazi or on the aircraft carrier Billy Ray Culpepper CVN [Fill in the blank or sub with Charles de Gaulle]. Or maybe on the islands of Malta or Cyprus. If they’re there they won’t be in Wisconsin or Michigan or any other state where the middle class is protesting.
4. Bombing Moe gives the cheerleaders for the last war — the old media and think tank “experts” to repeat all the same mind-numbing rubbish, statistics and weapon of the week stories on the state of the enemy and balance of forces. Like this:
What worries NATO planners, however, are Libya’s plentiful antiaircraft guns and light, short-range shoulder-launched missiles — systems which proved very effective against NATO aircraft during the Kosovo war, said a diplomat who asked not to be identified.
These include about 500 cannons of various calibers, which could prevent allied aircraft from descending lower than 15,000 feet, said the diplomat who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. In Kosovo, a majority of bombing missions had to be carried out from higher altitudes beyond the reach of the Serbian guns.
Other problems may come from Khadafy’s several dozen Mil Mi-17 helicopters and Mi-24 gunships. As experiences in Bosnia have shown it’s very difficult for fast and high flying jets to intercept ground-hugging helicopters.
Analysts have cautioned, however, that it is difficult to give an exact assessment of the African nation’s military abilities, particularly after the defections that saw some troops taking not just aircraft but also weapons with them.
In contrast, NATO planners say the international community has 200 to 300 modern jets that could be quickly deployed to Libya from bases stretching from Gibraltar to Greece, and from US and French carriers in the Mediterranean Sea.
These would include top-of-the-line Eurofighter Typhoons, used by British, Italian, and Spanish air forces. Also available are the formidable French Dassault Rafale fighters and the F-18 Super Hornet, the backbone of US naval air power.
Backbone of US naval air power. Sounds impressive.
5. Bombing Moe gives the powers that be the opportunity to claim arrant nonsense like “we’re rebalancing U.S. foreign policy toward a greater focus on democracy and human rights.” It gives birth to new noble operation naming conventions, like perhaps, Libyan Freedom or Benghazi Shield or [fill in the blank with two words, one geographical, one uplifting].