roachboy

1. again, ace, "leadership" for you has to do with the type of sentences in used in the marketing of war. "leadership" is a matter of short punchy statements that reassure people like yourself because they enable you to eliminate complexity when you imagine the war fantasy of your choice. it has no relation whatsoever to actual strategy in the actual conflict.

recall that the bush administration's "strategy" for iraq really was the farce called the "wolfowitz doctrine" at the time---grateful natives lining the streets to welcome their heroic liberators---and now we're 8 years on during a fiasco of a war the stench of which can easily be judged by looking at sources like the iraqi oil report and reading about the state of basic service delivery---you know, stuff like electricity---or reading almost any actual information about the empirical situation in actually existing iraq and not relying on simple sentences and assuming that the therapeutic effect those simple sentences have on you reflects anything beyond the state of affairs that obtains in your skull.


so you may have had "leadership" on tv but you certainly didn't have it on the ground.

i'd prefer it on the ground.
tv is for chumps.


2. that the operation in libya is open-ended at this point in a disconcerting way is given.
anyone who looks at what's going on comes to the same conclusion.
why do you imagine the operation is happening?
well, in reality---you know, that shifting complicated place---it was triggered by gadhafi's decision to attempt to crush the revolt against his regime militarily.
it was pressurized by the progress he was able to make and the speed with which he was able to make it.
if you remember, tanks were outside of benghazi when the operation finally got under way.

if you remember, the united states did not support the action until the end of the week. the security council resolution was cobbled together quickly and passed last friday. by saturday night the bombing started.

it's no surprise that things are not as clear as one might prefer.

it's also no surprise that the statements about what's happening, what the operation is, what it's military goals are and what are their relation(s) to the political goals (not the same) are not as clear as one would like.

but i would prefer that the war marketing be closer to the real than you and peggynoonan apparently do. you want to be lied to. i don't.

again---i support this phase of the action with ambivalences. i do not support the idea of ground involvement.

and to head off the usual projection, i am not a real fan of the obama administration. way too centrist/conservative for me.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite