Hillary is in a very strong position, inside the party, and the country, but I expect this race to be very real. The US presidential election is no shoo-in, never has been, never will be.
It was George W's responsibility to protect the World Trade Center and he failed. It was Hillary's job to protect the ambassador in Libya, and she failed. Blaming Hilary for Benghazi: all is fair in love, war and a sexist country. If you ask me, W's failure was much greater. One life lost versus 3,000 lives lost. Not to say the damage to property, the economy and prestige. I don't see anyone, Republican or Democrat, blaming W for 9/11. How come? Blaming Hillary for Benghazi does not make you patriotic (I could argue the opposite might be true, you are sending a message to ISIS: kill someone and they will just blame it on Hillary! How convenient! .... okay, okay, I got confused between ISIS and the Al Qaeda there, but I don't expect the Republicans to figure that out), it makes you a facts-free sexist. Facts-free, as in someone completely unhinged from facts and logic. While you are at it, let's also blame Hillary for the 2008 recession. She was in the Senate at the time, was she not? What did she do to prevent the Great Recession? Why hurt the feelings of the white guys on Wall Street? Or the white guys in the White House, for that matter. I would not be surprised if Dick Cheney comes out to blame Hillary for the recession. Where is Dick when you need him?
Wait, maybe it was not her job to protect the ambassador. Maybe it was the job of the Department of Defense. Sorry for being a facts-free sexist in the paragraph above. My bad.
George W. Bush on being told a plane had just hit the World Trade Center kept on reading stories to little children. He thought it was an accident, a bad accident, but an accident still. 9/11 was a thousand times more "offensive" - if that is the word - than the attack in Benghazi. And W got it wrong at the outset. The 9/11 attack was so unexpected, so out of the box. And I don't blame George W - never did - for not getting it right right away. To engage in such a blame game would be disrespectful of the tragedy.
In hindsight we know what the Benghazi attack was. It happened on 9/11. The Al Qaeda feels poetic about that date. America killed Bin Laden, so the Al Qaeda killed an American ambassador. I read up on the guy after the death. He was a dream ambassador. He was steeped in the local culture with passion long before he was picked for the job. Libya was lucky to have him. And he got killed. Of course people did not get it right right away. You start with disbelief. You even engage in a little bit of denial. But then you get it right, and you draw a plan of action. The president said the perpetrators will be brought to justice. And I think he means it, he meant it on Bin Laden.
Hillary Clinton has been an excellent Secretary of State. In an era when soft power means for more than military power Hillary has managed to draw on all sorts of levers of soft power to do an effective job as America's face to the world. Now for the Republicans to conclude her time in office with a humiliating hearing on Benghazi I find obnoxious. It is "offensive" - Barack Obama's word to Romney during the second debate. The Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for playing political football with an apparent tragedy. It is a disservice in that it takes away from the fight against the Al Qaeda. This meets my definition of a witch hunt. And if they are not ashamed they should own up to the fact that 9/11 happened on their watch.
on Capitol Hill, where Clinton is expected to face bruising questioning from Republicans about security lapses at a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. The deaths of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in a militant attack there in September represent the largest blot on Clinton’s record as secretary, and Republicans have insisted that she testify in person about what went wrong ..... Top deputies gave Clinton the helmet and a jersey with the number 112, representing the number of countries she has visited during her tenure. .... “She loved it. She thought it was cool,” Nuland said, referring to the gift. “But then, being Hillary Clinton, she wanted to get right to business.”
And you can't be voting for a pathological liar. Are not people running for president supposed to submit their medical records? Whatever happened to screening?
The mass murder imminent in Benghazi was prevented. And the UN continues to demand of Gaddafi that he not unleash animal brutality on peacefully protesting Libyans. Armed rebels in Libya have done a swift job of retaking all the territory they had lost.
But now is time for some shift in strategy. Instead of relying solely on military advances, the rebels have to consolidate. They have to organize massive peaceful demonstrations against Gaddafi in all towns and cities they control. The people of Libya have to come out into the streets in large numbers.
The idea is to inspire the people in Tripoli to also come out into the streets. When they first came out, Gaddafi basically declared war on them. And they went into hiding. Now they have to muster the strength all over again. They need to come out all over again. This time if Gaddafi performs a repeat the UN sanctioned powers have to do in Tripoli what they did in Benghazi. Bomb all government installations in Tripoli so as to destroy completely all command and control structures in Gaddafi's army.
The next phase of the drive against dictator Gaddafi has to be nonviolent consolidation of gains made so far.
Image via WikipediaGaddafi might or might not go. Libya might or might not become democracy. But what has already happened is a Rwanda got prevented. If Gaddafi had moved into Benghazi like he threatened, like he was about to, we had a bloodbath on our hands, a massacre. That got prevented. That is a major humanitarian achievement. And the intervening powers have to be proud. The UN has to be proud.
No, America did not declare war on Libya. This was no invasion. This was police action to prevent a major crime: mass murder.
Mission accomplished.
But there is work to do. Gaddafi still has to be ousted. Democracy still has to see the light of day in Libya. That is for the people of Libya to do.
And now might be time to bring about a change in strategy. Now nonviolence has to be emphasized.
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe idea never was to bomb Gaddafi into submission. The military action has been designed to make sure he does not unleash animal brutality upon peaceful protesters. Otherwise there were mass protests already in Tripoli. Once Gaddafi has been neutralized, the thing for the Libyan opposition to do is to organize peaceful protests all over again, with the international community standing by. Could you bring a hundred thousand people out into the streets of Tripoli? That is the question. The idea is not for the Libyan opposition to outgun Gaddafi's forces. That never was the idea. The idea always was to win through nonviolent methods.
Come out into the streets all over again. Do it again in Benghazi. Organize peaceful marches in support of democracy. Do that is cities all across Libya. Finally do it in Tripoli. Gaddafi has to go. That is the only acceptable outcome.
Days of military action followed by a few weeks of nonviolent street action. That is the recipe for success. Image by Getty Images via @daylife
And if Gaddafi performs a repeat and unleashes animal brutality upon those peaceful protesters, take him out. Sometimes you don't get to take the criminal to court. He gets gunned down because he decided to fight to the end.
Image by US Army Korea - IMCOM via FlickrGaddafi not only did not respect the UN Security Council resolution, he lied about it first, then openly came out not only defying it, but also went on to threaten Europe. Attacking his troops that have encircled Benghazi is not sufficient. Because the orders are not coming from the outskirts of Benghazi. The orders for those military acts are coming from Tripoli. It is fundamentally important to destroy the command and control centers that are based in Tripoli. All that infrastructure that makes it possible for Gaddafi to make his ground maneuvers have to be destroyed.
The no fly zone has been announced. If Gaddafi continues to fly planes, shoot them down. Bomb the airports that those planes came out of. Bomb the air bases. Bomb the control towers. Bomb the command center in Tripoli.
If you only bomb the planes in the sky, you are agreeing to play the cat and mouse game that Gaddafi wants to play with you. When he announced a ceasefire he lied. That was his way of saying just give me 48 more hours, and I will have Benghazi by then. Then there would be nothing for you to do.
This dude is not going to do the ceasefire thing. It is the nature of the beast. Image by Abode of Chaos via Flickr
You bomb the planes in the sky. And if there are reports - as there are - that he has, if anything, accelerated military action on the ground, then that would be a clear signal that he has not understood the concept of the no fly zone. The concept is to protect Libyan civilians. If he continues to attack civilians, you look for all movements on the ground by the Gaddafi forces, and you conduct aerial strikes upon them. There are open roads that his forces use. They are not hard to find. These are not exactly the jungles of Vietnam. There is nowhere to hide. This is a freaking desert. There are open skies.
But if there is action on the ground on his part, you attack his military establishments in Tripoli. You hit the core of his military organization. You hit the presidential palace, because that is where the orders are coming from.
All this until all military action on his part ceases, not very likely. Instead the guy is threatening to go into a whole different direction. He is threatening military action against France.
It is like this. A criminal with a gun is on rampage at a department store. The police decide to take action. When he is finally surrounded and it is decided gunning him down is the only way to end the rampage, he sends a message that he is going to come next for the police station - maybe he will blow up the building - if the police try to gun him down.
Do you weigh his words? Do you want to think if it is worth taking the chances? Or do you get further confirmed in your suspicious that what you are facing is a criminal?
Gaddafi has done what Bin Laden did not do. At least Bin Laden went into hiding before he started issuing his tireless fatwas. Gaddafi is issuing his threats against entire countries and he is doing it without going into hiding.
This guy is not the president of Libya. He has no formal title. By his own admission he has no claim to any kind of representation to Libyan sovereignty. This guy is a criminal first, last and foremost.
It is not Al Qaeda that took over Benghazi. The people who took over Benghazi are people who aspire to turn Libya into a modern democracy. I wish that upon all Arab countries.
The uprising in Benghazi was not violent. Gaddafi's army units in Benghazi defected. Can't blame them. Image by BlatantNews.com via Flickr
The way this drama is going to end is this guy Gaddafi is going to commit suicide. As days have passed, he has become even less and less compromising. That is a warning sign. My judgment is he will kill as many people as possible before he will kill himself.
Exile is no longer an option for him. He has killed too many people. If he is captured alive, he gets to go to the International Criminal Court. But I doubt he will want to get captured alive.
The choice is between putting the mad dog to sleep and letting him kill a few thousand more people before he kills himself.
I wish it were otherwise. I wish he would do the ceasefire thing. That there would be no more attacks on civilians anywhere in Libya. Then the people of Libya would have the option to protest peacefully or keep him as their leader.
The international community does not have a democracy agenda. It is the Libyan people who have a democracy agenda. Liberty rings from within the human heart.
New York Times: Specter of Rebel Rout Helps Shift U.S. Policy on Libya: some military analysts have called a no-drive zone, to prevent Colonel Qaddafi from moving tanks and artillery into Benghazi..... the world had only days, or even hours, to head off a Qaddafi victory...... “What everybody is focused on is drawing a line, literally in the sand, around Benghazi, to prevent Qaddafi’s forces from capturing the city and staging a bloodbath,” said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch. “If Qaddafi wins, it could kill the moment in the entire Middle East.” ....... Libya’s deputy to the United Nations, Ibrahim Dabbashi, who last month broke with the Qaddafi regime, warned that if the international community did not intervene in the next 10 hours, there was a risk of genocide
Hindustan Times: Gaddafi announces 'decisive battle' today:Misrata, the country's third city, has a population of half a million people. It lies 150 kilometres (90 miles) from the capital Tripoli.
BBC: Libya: Red Cross pulls out of Benghazi fearing attack: Government forces say they have captured Ajdabiya, the last town before Benghazi, but the rebels deny this..... "We are extremely concerned about what will happen to civilians, the sick and wounded, detainees and others who are entitled to protection in times of conflict," said Simon Brooks, head of the ICRC mission in Libya. ..... Jalal al-Gallal of the rebels' Transitional National Council in the city said there would be a "massacre" if they did not intervene. ..... "He [Gaddafi] will kill civilians, he will kill dreams, he will destroy us," he told the BBC. "It will be on the international community's conscience." ..... "Let's save the martyred Libyan people together. Time is now counted in days, or even hours. The worst would be for the Arab League's call and the Security Council's decisions to fail because of armed force." .... Asked about targeted strikes, she said all options were on the table.
Bloomberg: Qaddafi Hits Rebel Capital, Son Says War ‘Finished’ in 48 Hours: Qaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, scoffed at yesterday’s United Nations Security Council discussions about authorizing a no-fly zone. “It’s too late,” he said in an interview with EuroNews television, according to a transcript on its website. “In 48 hours, we will have finished our military operation. We are at the gates of Benghazi.” ..... Libyan government forces continued to fight pockets of rebel resistance Ajdabiya, a city 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Benghazi, and attacked the blockaded city of Misrata, the last rebel holdout near Tripoli. ...... “The situation in Benghazi is calm,” Essam Gheriani, a spokesman for the rebels, said by phone yesterday from the city. “We are not concerned by what Saif al-Islam said. Our armed forces have taken all the necessary measures to protect Benghazi. Qaddafi has been trying to take over Misrata for two weeks. How would he manage in Benghazi that is a much bigger city than Misrata?” ...... “I don’t believe that any member of the Security Council could take the position of a spectator when people are being killed daily and cities demolished,” he said. “What are they waiting for before intervening?” ..... at Qaddafi-paid African mercenaries are headed toward Benghazi in a convoy of 400 vehicles. The Security Council needs to impose the no-fly zone, and go further in authorizing air attacks on Qaddafi’s ground troops, within “10 hours.” ..... In his EuroNews interview, Qaddafi said rebels should flee to Egypt while they can. “We have no intention of killing them or taking revenge on these traitors who have betrayed our people,” he said. “We say to them that they can run into Egypt quite safely because Libya no longer belongs to them. A lot of them have already left for Egypt.” ...... Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini proposed the convening of a European, Arab and African summit to discuss the almost monthlong fighting in Libya ..... David Cameron said leaving Qaddafi in power would send a “terrible message” not only to the Libyan people but also to those in the region who desire democracy
Voice Of America: Libya’s Opposition Tries to Define Itself to Gain Western Support: Despite anxiety and fear, Benghazis still widely support the 11-person provisional transitional council -- a group of men and women who lead the opposition. .... Council spokesman Abdul Hefda Ghoga offers this explanation. “We would like to assure everybody that once Gadhafi is gone it will be a much better place than it has been for the last 40 years. We will have true democracy in Libya. There will be a civil state that is independent and enjoys its civil rights,” he said. ...... Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi portrays the rebels as religious extremists. "It is a small group from Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt and Palestine who entered cities, they entered Zentan, Zawiyah and Benghazi and then what happened? They recruited youngsters, juveniles under the age of 20 upon whom the law cannot even apply," he said. ..... In Benghazi, there is little talk of establishing any kind of Islamic caliphate. For out of work Faraj Saber, it is all about having more of a voice…and a choice. “We should have more democracy, election…nobody rule us or control us for five years, fours years, not 40 years, like Gadhafi,” Saber said ..... “Once we are through this stage, we will work on developing a national dialogue among all Libyan forces in order to put the basis for the next stage. And we will have to develop together a civil organization to establish a constitution and then we will look on how to move into an election period,” Ghoga said.
Voice Of America: Libyan Forces Pound Rebel Areas, UN Security Council Meets: Ajdabiya is the last large town on the road to the opposition's eastern stronghold of Benghazi. The Libyan government urged Benghazi residents to hand over weapons and support a government advance on the city.
Reuters: Rebels fight to stall Gaddafi's army in east: "There are a couple of tanks there that sporadically fire at the city. But Ajdabiyah's city centre and other access points are peaceful and not one man from Gaddafi's force wanders around." ..... Earlier on Wednesday, weary government soldiers returning from the frontlines told journalists that they were meeting renewed resistance from rebel positions near the city. ..... The rebel army, made up largely of young volunteers with little training and defectors from the government military, has been hammered by the artillery, tanks and warplanes of Gaddafi's troops and looks now to be relying on guerrilla hit-and-run tactics to stay in the fight.
Image via WikipediaA no fly zone would be big and complicated. Surgical strikes would be swift and momentary. The goal would be to decapitate the regime.
When law enforcement shoots down a criminal with a track record of violence, with a propensity to violence, in an act of criminal violence, is that a violent act? Or is that law enforcement?
When crimes against humanity are being committed, you don't just wait and watch. You take action. You take all kinds of action, you keep open the military options. And surgical strikes would be a game changer.
The Libyans who have taken the rest of the country will take over Tripoli as well. They will do it themselves. But a little help can go a long way. The threat of surgical strikes has to be maintained by NATO. The idea is to make Gaddafi think twice before he unleashes brutality upon peacefully protesting people. That would be all. The Libyan people will complete the revolution themselves.
In a Saturday report, the official Libyan news agency said authorities have arrested "dozens of foreign elements trained to strike at Libya's stability and security." It said an investigation already was under way. It also said authorities were not ruling out that those elements were connected to what it called an Israeli plot to destabilize countries in North Africa, including Libya, as well as Lebanon and Iran.
That the regime in Libya should blame Israel for the unrest in the streets of Libya goes on to show how Arab dictators have been using the image of Israel to fool their own peoples. You blame all your problems and all the problems of your people on Israel.
That is why democracy is necessary. I have long held the belief that there can be no true peace in the Middle East until all autocracies in the region have been turned into democracies. When a country becomes a democracy, the democratically elected leader has to answer to the people. The people don't blame Israel for the massive unemployment, they instead vote out the leader. Next.
Anti-semitism does have a cure, it seems like. The cure is total democracy.
Image via WikipediaA Rwanda Was Prevented
Image via WikipediaGaddafi might or might not go. Libya might or might not become democracy. But what has already happened is a Rwanda got prevented. If Gaddafi had moved into Benghazi like he threatened, like he was about to, we had a bloodbath on our hands, a massacre. That got prevented. That is a major humanitarian achievement. And the intervening powers have to be proud. The UN has to be proud. 
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe idea never was to bomb Gaddafi into submission. The military action has been designed to make sure he does not unleash animal brutality upon peaceful protesters. Otherwise there were mass protests already in Tripoli. Once Gaddafi has been neutralized, the thing for the Libyan opposition to do is to organize peaceful protests all over again, with the international community standing by. Could you bring a hundred thousand people out into the streets of Tripoli? That is the question. The idea is not for the Libyan opposition to outgun Gaddafi's forces. That never was the idea. The idea always was to win through nonviolent methods. 
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Image by US Army Korea - IMCOM via FlickrGaddafi not only did not respect the UN Security Council resolution, he lied about it first, then openly came out not only defying it, but also went on to threaten Europe. Attacking his troops that have encircled Benghazi is not sufficient. Because the orders are not coming from the outskirts of Benghazi. The orders for those military acts are coming from Tripoli. It is fundamentally important to destroy the command and control centers that are based in Tripoli. All that infrastructure that makes it possible for Gaddafi to make his ground maneuvers have to be destroyed. 
Image by Abode of Chaos via Flickr
Image by BlatantNews.com via Flickr
Image via Wikipedia
