at the same time, there's a controversy unfolding across the newspapers in france over the question of whether sarkosy got out in front of this in the way he did in order to shore up his imploding public approval ratings. this is linked to the fact that the socialists did reasonably well in the local elections over this past weekend....
LIBYE - Fait-on la guerre pour la popularité de Sarkozy ? - Big Browser - Blog LeMonde.fr
very little is obvious.
another perspective, which i think kind of interesting, from this morning. the article is entitled: the obama doctrine. why libya and not syria?
Doctrine Obama: pourquoi la Libye et pas la Syrie - Big Picture - Blog LeMonde.fr
notice that when obama pointed to countries where the "arab spring" (a kind of irritating expression that implies this is in some sense a re-run of 1989 which was a rerun of 1968, as if nothing new can ever happen-----so a purely ideological meme) was being met with force/suppressed, he pointed to iran and not syria. or bahrain. or yemen for that matter. or algeria. the blog entry poses the simple question: so.....why is that?
Quote:
- “We don’t make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent. We make them based on how we can best advance our interests in the region.
So do we worry about what’s happening in the region? We worry about it an awful lot. Do we worry about setting some false set of precedent? We don’t, because we’ve been very clearly communicating why we’re doing certain things in certain instances and not in others, and we’ll continue to do that”.
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which le monde's writer interprets as an example of "that mix of idealism and cynicism characteristic of obama"....
so there are varying interpretations. just fyi.
---------- Post added at 04:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:19 PM ----------
at the same time, there's a controversy unfolding across the newspapers in france over the question of whether sarkosy got out in front of this in the way he did in order to shore up his imploding public approval ratings. this is linked to the fact that the socialists did reasonably well in the local elections over this past weekend....
LIBYE - Fait-on la guerre pour la popularité de Sarkozy ? - Big Browser - Blog LeMonde.fr
very little is obvious.
another perspective, which i think kind of interesting, from this morning. the article is entitled: the obama doctrine. why libya and not syria?
Doctrine Obama: pourquoi la Libye et pas la Syrie - Big Picture - Blog LeMonde.fr
notice that when obama pointed to countries where the "arab spring" (a kind of irritating expression that implies this is in some sense a re-run of 1989 which was a rerun of 1968, as if nothing new can ever happen-----so a purely ideological meme) was being met with force/suppressed, he pointed to iran and not syria. or bahrain. or yemen for that matter. or algeria. the blog entry poses the simple question: so.....why is that?
Quote:
- “We don’t make decisions about questions like intervention based on consistency or precedent. We make them based on how we can best advance our interests in the region.
So do we worry about what’s happening in the region? We worry about it an awful lot. Do we worry about setting some false set of precedent? We don’t, because we’ve been very clearly communicating why we’re doing certain things in certain instances and not in others, and we’ll continue to do that”.
|
which le monde's writer interprets as an example of "that mix of idealism and cynicism characteristic of obama"....
so there are varying interpretations. just fyi.