Monday, April 04, 2011

Libyan Lysistrata - Barry's Girls' War


Lysistrata.: There are a lot of things about us women
That sadden me, considering how men
See us as rascals.

Calonice.: As indeed we are

Aristophanes - Lysistrata

In order to conclude the endless warfare between Athens and Sparta the gals get together and conspire to withhold the nookie from the gents. World Peace!

That was how Aristophanes, the only Attic dramatic comedian to survive in literature, spun the story.

In our confused orientation ( sexual and geopolitical) world, What's a body to do?

What happens in Libya will not stay in Libya. This is cluster . . . coalition copulation of cosmic proportions.

If I recall my history, Italy owned Libya. In WWII the Brits and Rommel and the Italian Afterthought Armies tore up the deserts between Tripoli, Tobruk and Benghazi.
That was a man's war what am a man's war.

For most of my life Gaddafi's owned Libya. Jimmy Carter's brother Billy carried water for Libya as did the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya and Tom Cruise got a hit movie out of Libya.

Now, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and UN Ambassador Susan Rice are following the Samantha Power playbook. Libya is a girl's war. We are bombing, but not bombing - sans boots. We are People Saving and not Nation Building. When the emery board gets dropped, its over!

Here is Irish Independent's Kevin Myers on this Libyan cat fight:

Libya is now the focus for the raw emotional self-gratification that typifies the woolly "logic" of R2P. So where does R2P stop? Does it rescue the whites and Ndebele of Zimbabwe? Does it intervene in east Africa's endless and incomprehensible wars? What about the Congo? And might not the European left-liberal anti-Israeli Alli-ance use the most emotional trump card of all, and call for American armed intervention in support of Hamas against Israel in Gaza? That Libya and the Palestinian territories are not remotely comparable is irrelevant when an R2P moral mania is allowed to corrupt all military and political decision-making.

War should not be about the unpredictable and imprecise moral yearnings of politicians and their advisers, but about measurably advancing the cause of national self-interest


The United States has no business, historical, political, moral, or economic anywhere in continental Africa.

It will be a Man Sized undertaking and there are bugger few men stepping up in American political leadership.

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