Different Endings and Unpalatable Outcomes

Postscripts to Western Arrogance

As the war drums sound over Syria, it may be prudent to stop and reflect upon Libya.  Remember Libya?  The United States (along with NATO) decided that it had to get involved to support Libyan rebels attempting to overthrown dictator, Colonel Qaddafi.  The mission was eventually accomplished.  Poor old Muammar ended up in a culvert and was shot to pieces by vengeful rebels.

The US felt good.  Mission accomplished.  The US President and congressional hawks looked in the mirror and raised a few toasts.  The Lone Ranger and the Invincibles and the Super Heroes had ridden forth again, vanquished the evil one, and retired from the theatre.  They, no doubt, in raising the toast saw in the mirror adumbrations of one of the great fictional heroes of the West: "He was the man who rode into our little valley, out of the heart of the great glowing West and when his work was done, rode back whence he had come.  And he was Shane."  Whoop-de-do.  Yeeeee hah.

But what of Libya?

The Benghazi Bungles 

Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
 Monday, 29 October 2012


I have followed the Benghazi story generally but have not said much about it to date here in this space. But as more and more information comes out about it, the debacle appears to be either evil and high cyncism that got caught in the act, or it is the result of a staggering incompetence,. And, given the fact that more than a few people had to have been involved in it, it was perhaps both.

There are at least three layers to the story/scandal.

Tangled Webs Being Woven

Who Made Up the Porky?

Where did that fabricated story about the attack upon the US embassy in Libya come from?  This has now become the pressing question of the presidential campaign in the United States.

The story (now proven to be "spin") came to the widespread attention of the country when  Ambassador Susan Rice went on six weekend talk shows one Sunday to tell the nation five days later that the attack upon the US embassy compound in Benghazi, Libya which killed four US government employees including the US ambassador, was a spontaneous demonstration of public rage incited and caused by an anti-Islam film made in the US. 

Up until that time few had heard of the now-demonised video.  Hillary Clinton's US Secretary of State has now gone on the record stating that the State Department at no time, not even at the beginning of the attack thought that it was a public demonstration gone wrong.  This from the Daily Mail:

Letter From America (About Benghazi)

Who’s ‘Politicizing’ Benghazi? 
 It was Obama who chose to blame a national humiliation on an obscure YouTube video.

By Mark Steyn
National Review Online
October 12, 2012

‘The entire reason that this has become the political topic it is is because of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.”

Thus, Stephanie Cutter, President Obama’s deputy campaign manager, speaking on CNN about an armed attack on the 9/11 anniversary that left a U.S. consulate a smoking ruin and killed four diplomatic staff, including the first American ambassador to be murdered in a third of a century. To discuss this event is apparently to “politicize” it and to distract from the real issues the American people are concerned about.

For example, Obama spokesperson Jen Psaki, speaking on board Air Force One on Thursday: “There’s only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane.”

She’s right!

Incompetence

Dereliction of Duty?

If ever confirmation were needed that the Obama administration is one of the most inept in living memory and the president himself is AWOL from the job mentally, emotionally, and physically, this report from Brett Baier shows it all in sharp relief.

Another Western Utopia Unfolds

The Demons Are Coming Back

Libya is no longer in the headlines.  It's all over, bar the torture, the killing, the destruction of human life.  C'est la vie.  Where is the clamour for helping Libyans that once stridently and passionately circled the globe?  Where are Hillary Clinton or John McCain or President Obama when you need them?  Actually we don't need them--and we never have.

What lies before us is another testimony to the folly and stupidity and hubris and idolatry of the West.  Libya is yet another piece of damning evidence indicting the craven humanism of the West and its perverted notion of secular human rights.

When the West takes upon itself the arrogation of rights to intervene and go to war to oust dictators, what arises from the rubble and detritus of war is often ten times worse. 

We are seeing reports start to trickle through on what is presently "going down" in Libya.

Letter From Libya

Descent into Darkness

Prisoners tortured by Libyan militia

Ian Black, London

January 28, 2012

Prisoners held by Libyan militiamen told Amnesty International they had been beaten for hours and given electric shocks. Photo: AP

THREE months after the killing of Muammar Gaddafi, concerns are mounting about the mistreatment and torture of prisoners held by Libyan militiamen.  The militia are operating beyond the control of the country's transitional government and officially recognised security bodies.

Amnesty International warned that prisoners from Libya and other African countries have been subject to abuse.