Obama’s Speech and our “Interests” in Libya

“…[D]isappointingly, neither [deputy NSA Denis] McDonough nor White House press secretary Jay Carney would give a hint about the substance of President Obama’s speech this evening”
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Why YOU gotta know so soon? Tryna save a Libyan or two??

we don’t intervene based on precedent or based on a certain set of consistency guidelines but rather so that we can advance our interests.
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Put another way… at any given moment, we may not be able to articulate why we are doing what we are doing.
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Sooo… just… trust us?
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Yeah, THAT’s guaranteed to be a good way to get buy-in from the American public for military action… or do they simply not care if we “buy in” or not?
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The “adults in charge” will just make the decisions for us.

“Put another way… at any given moment, we may not be able to articulate why we are doing what we are doing.”
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That’s about the biggest BS interpretation of that statement that you could possibly make. Is the explanation that we do what we do to advance our country’s interests that opaque? At it’s heart it’s the description of the philosophy behind EVERY country’s policies.
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I’m curious to hear what Obama will say tonight, but I think you could make a good case for doing it just to help improve relations and America’s image in that part of the world…

The problem, charlieromeo, is when you have to come up with a rationalization for why we are intervening in Country A but NOT in country B, and the reasons given contradict each other from time-to-time. It would be nice if the government actually said what the “interests” were but they seldom do.
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We seem to always give “moral” justifications for the action. THAT’s what they think the public wants to hear – NOT that Blackwater, Chevron and GE will get lucrative contracts from the friendly governments if we step in, or that Israel asked our ambassador to recommend military action, because it would look bad if THEY did it.
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If we want to give the REAL reasons why we intervene, then fine, let political and PR chips fall where they may.
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But don’t call it BS to suspect that they MAY not be exactly forthcoming and honest with the REAL reasons and we, the public, may be called on to support what essentially are lies because the truth might not paint us in a flattering light.
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And if troops are going to be put into harm’s way, I’d sure as h*ll prefer that it be for a good reason, and not in support of diplomatic doublespeak.

One other thing… effectively, right now, our so-called national interests and business interests overseas are pretty much one and the same.
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I don’t recall the government ever saying that we were going to war for “Big Oil” profits.
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We are always going in support of “freedom and democracy”, even when we are supporting very un-democratic individuals or movements under the umbrella statement of “national interests”.
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Doesn’t the hypocrisy bother you at all? Because it sure does bother me that we may have military members essentially dying for multi-national corp profits.

“Even if we did initially fire our Tomahawks to save Benghazi’s innocents, that rationale now amounts to a foot in the door for something more complicated, more nebulous, and much harder to explain.”
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Then he should probably just skip it.

Digby

… I think that the motives are much more complex and opaque than the government is admitting and that we aren’t particularly good at this and usually make things worse. Most importantly, I think we are fighting wars in this region mostly because we are engaged in a Great Game over oil and that it needs to be discussed so that we can start having a rational discussion about energy.To the extent that there are other strategic reasons, the most important is around keeping nuclear arms out of the hands of extremists and rogue states and this latest adventure is probably counter-productive for the reasons Steve Clemons and Jonathan Schwartz raised above. I still feel quite strongly that “humanitarianism” is really far down the list of official concerns even as it’s being raised as the main motive for our actions. It’s a delusion that no populace in a mature nation, much less a military empire, should have — raining bombs for “good” is a dangerous concept even in the clearest situation.

Like I said, when Digby and Greenwald slip into “we shouldn’t use our military to stop a massacre because people will die,” or “Libya is like Iraq” nonsense, and f@cking Richard Cohen is making more sense than either if them, the country has lost it’s collective mind.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/to-rescue-or-not-to-rescue/2011/03/28/AFDJfkoB_blog.html

Even if we did initially fire our Tomahawks to save Benghazi’s innocents, that rationale now amounts to a foot in the door for something more complicated, more nebulous, and much harder to explain.
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Translation: “Innocents” are what the press was instructed to say. Tonight we will hear the “real reasons” (as opposed to the actual reasons, no quotation-mark needed). They will, no doubt, explain why our commitment will be more substantial and enduring that initially claimed.
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Meanwhile, the actual reasons are known and debated well before the first shot was fired.. but they are “complicated”, “nebulous” and hard to explain– meaning the admin and Pentagon won’t admit them for fear negative fallout or, worse-yet, that the American people won’t write them the check for it.
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But I’ll speculate on the actual, actual reasons: Israel is worried about the future govt of Egypt and wants the US to cover its western flank, and western companies would love to run the Libyan oilfields.

That’s certainly as good as any speculation I’ve heard today.

Major companies with operations in Libya: Eni, Total, Repsol YPF, StatoilHydro, Occidental Petroleum Corp., OMV, ConocoPhillips, Hess Corp., Marathon Oil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil Corp.

http://www.taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_content.php?id=1555957

No, Shep, when Richard Cohen is making sense to you, and when Joe Klein has more misgivings than you, perhaps you’re the one who has to reassess his “personal prejudices.”
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You’re taking disingenuous to a symphonic level.

Pint, have you read Pepe Escobar?
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http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MC25Ak01.html

“You’re taking disingenuous to a symphonic level.”
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You’ll need to explain that. When I say that nobody has any idea what they’re talking about and much of it is pure nonsensical conflation and speculation, I couldn’t be more earnest.

No jc, I hadn’t. Thanks.
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The ME’s monarchs don’t want democracy to spread. The Sauds (with the US) have been sending troops and planes to crush rebellions against their authoritarian brethren in Yemen and Bahrain. The reasons seem to hold for Libya too.
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I linked to this the other day, don’t know if you saw it:
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Crackdown in Bahrain (link)
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(T)he Saudi rulers led by hard-line prince Nayef bin Abdel-Aziz, the second deputy prime minister and interior minister, have insisted that the protests be crushed, because the symbolic effects of a weakening – let alone demise – of the Al Khalifa dynasty would strike at Saudi Arabia’s vital national interest, unleashing intensified Shia protest in the kingdom’s oil-rich eastern province.
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But it is not just Saudi Arabia: the whole “club” of GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) monarchs apparently fears for the future of one of its own.
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In addition, it is not difficult to believe that the United States gave a green or at least amber light for the crackdown.

“Gaddafi was ‘behind an attack on American citizens’ in the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing”

Was he?

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/these-fragments-i-have-shored-against-my-ruin/

Our government is pulling out all the stops. Iraq was strictly over oil and Egyptian is the target of Democracy. The funny thing is that these people in the middle east are motivated by their spiritual beliefs, and our country is motivated by profits and revenue. This country worshiping a flag that has been built on the persecution and death of several ethnic backgrounds from Native American Indians to the African American slaves. Who could forget the Asian concentration camps? We need to get new people in the office because these guys sitting on fat pay checks aren’t paying attention to the people in their own country.

March 26, 2012. We get out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and any country the the U.S. has taken action to intrude. The savings can be plowed into social security, education, health care, infrastructure improvements, xxxx (fill in please). Future initiatives can be initiated by any other member of NATO, the U.N., Arabian countries, where the initiator provides military and financial backing. In other words, everyone else should first put their money, military, aircraft, tanks, warships, xxxxx (fill in please), where their hot-air rhetoric is. And the U.S. can begin to go about taking care of business…….at home. We, as tax payers, are paying for all this, shouldn’t we have a say in how the resources are used? Let’s get out of Dodge, and become the great country we once were!!