re: #206 Not a Sparkly Vampire

Yeah, it was on its way to being a stalemate. He was retaking territory that the rebels had overrun but was having difficulty in decisively beating them. With further uprisings among the civilian population and military defections, do you honestly think this would’ve ended quickly?
It may have gotten out of the headlines but numerous people still would’ve died.
We’ll never know if the intervention helped or not.
The problem I have with your posts is that you assume you’re correct and refuse to acknowledge that, like the rest of us, you simply don’t know.

I appreciate the measured response. It’s true we’ll never know for sure. There are many things in life we’ll never know “for sure”. The best we can do is look at what actually happened and consider alternative ways things could have gone. That’s all I’m doing. I don’t mean to suggest that my opinion is the ONLY valid one.

But I see all these continuous demands to backup MY assertions (what, that Gaddafi was winning and on the verge of capturing rebel strongholds prior to NATO intervention? That the collapse of his regime led to spill-over conflicts and weapons profileration? That Libya has since collapsed further into warring factions? That ISIS now has a foothold in the country that Gaddafi would not have tolerated? Do I also have to prove that Trump is an idiot and a budding fascist who says offensive things in public?) yet no one else can back up theirs, which are more implausible in my view.

The Democrats shouldn’t have to continuously go to war and bomb other countries to be taken seriously on foreign policy. That’s buying in to the Republican/Neo-con worldview, where foreign policy is confused with military action and “toughness”. Obama has been a good domestic president even while faced with fanatical opposition, and on foreign policy he has mostly avoided his famous “dumb wars”, with the glaring exception of Libya. We should applaud him for his successes, but hold him to account on his failures, just as we should Hillary. Especially if she is the next president. I recognize that people in positions of power have to make consequential decisions and simply accusing a political figure of “thousands of deaths” is a cheap shot. But do we then absolve them of all responsibility on poor decisions? I don’t think so. Apparently I cannot suggest this without being accused of trolling.

Alright, I’m done. For real this time. Peace.