Our Addlepated Congressional "Leaders"

[O]n Sunday, three influential members of the United States Senate, from both parties, renewed the call for a no-flight zone to ground the Libyan Air Force and prevent it from attacking its people.

and

Congressional leaders prodded the Obama administration on Sunday for a more aggressive U.S. response to Libya's increasingly brutal attacks on opposition groups - calling for a no-fly zone and other military measures - but White House officials cautioned against being drawn into a potentially protracted and costly military campaign.

First, do we just go establish a no-fly zone over a sovereign country without any authorization by the UN to do so? With all due respect to our congressional leadership,[1] who the hell died and made us the world's cop?

Second, were do they think that all of the airplanes necessary to enforce a "no-fly zone" are going to come from? We've already got one active war going on. We're also keeping carriers in the 5th Fleet's area to keep an eye on Iran. Now we'd have to have carriers sitting off Libya 24/7? How many fucking aircraft carriers do those bags of meat on Capitol Hill think that we have?[2]

If you wanted to keep two carriers in the Med to deal with Libya, you'd need at least five total, to allow for deployment rotations and maintenance. That'd be half of the carrier fleet. And carriers are about the only way to do it, unless anyone seriously believes that Egypt, Tunisia or Algeria would allow us basing rights.

Yes, parts of Italy are within range. Don't forget, however, that Italy has had its nose so close to Libya's ass that if Gaddafi stopped suddenly, the Italian Prime minister would have a snoot-full of shit. There were allegations that when we bombed Tripoli in 1986 in retaliation for Libyan agents bombing a nightclub in Berlin that was an unofficial U.S. Army hangout, the Italians gave Gaddafi just enough of a warning so that he could get to his bomb shelter.

Third, with all of the cries by the teabagging Confederates that "we are spending too much money", now those same asswipes want us to get involved in another conflict?

Fourth, France has an air force. So does Italy, Spain and Germany. This one is close enough to them, let them deal with it.

Fifth, and probably most damning: Civil wars are not unheard of in Africa. On the other side of the Sahara, there are regions that have had civil wars going on for decades. When various rebel groups (and national armies) have conscripted boys into their armies, when they used rape and amputations as terror tactics, nobody did anything. The Ivory Coast is in tumult because they had a presidential election and the loser has refused to leave office. Millions of people have died in civil wars in the Congo. In Zimbabwe, the dictator there has impoverished the country and mass starvation is not an unforeseeable consequence.

Did we get involved? Nope. We didn't fire a shot in any of those situations.

But Libya is different and the reason is this: OIL! It is high time that we stop using our military as the bully-boys for ExxonMobil, British Petroleum, ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell.

Finally, as Iraq is proving out, just because we choose to go into a country and shed our own blood and expend our own treasure doesn't mean that we eventually get any say in what goes on. Even if we were to intervene and spend a few hundreds of billions of dollars in the process, odds are that another strongman will just take over.
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[1] "All due respect" being defined as "damned little".
[2] 11. USS Theodore Roosevelt is maybe 2/3rds of the way through a 3-year overhaul.