Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
On Libya the Republican hypocrites are stepping out of the woodwork once again. After years of rubber-stamping a failed leader as he bumbled two failed wars and dropped the ball on bringing Osama bin Laden to justice they just cannot stand the fact that another leader may have better ideas in another country where the people have already risen against a despot. I guess it must disturb them that the new President is not willing to risk thousands of American lives and treasure for years in a bottomless pit to bring change. Indeed this leader is doing something Republicans would never dream of. Giving rebels trying to shake a despot what they asked for and not forcing American troops upon them.
Who better to sum up Republican hypocrisy than the last Republican ticket?? Yes these two were shunned by voters for the very Republican policies Bush/Cheney had forced down the throats of America and the world and now in a never-ending ring around the rosy to defend those policies they attack a much more responsible approach from a new administration.
First out of the gate was John McCain. Listen to his idiocy picking pepper out of fly crap:
MCCAIN: He mentioned a couple of times that Gaddafi must step down, and then he made a very puzzling comment, and that was, regime change by force would be a mistake. Gaddafi must have been somewhat comforted by that. It was then at least to some degree counter to the President's statement that Gaddafi must go. And if we end up in a situation where Gaddafi is able to cling to power, then we could easily see a reenactment of what happened after the first Gulf War. Stalemate, no fly zone, lasted for ten years and didn't bring Saddam Hussein out of power. Look, the reason why we wage wars is to achieve results of a policy we state. The president's policy is, Gaddafi must go.
http://politicalcorrection.org/...
Does it not sound like McCain is mad that Obama refuses to go down the failed road of "regime change" modeled by their failed leader that is still costing lives and money and has still not produced results?
And McCain was not alone in his hypocrisy. It seems as if his running mate Sarah Palin also worried that the Obama approach to Libya might seem a better alternative to Americans than the Republican vision of never-ending war that achieves nothing but death and debt and profits for the very few. She echoed his hypocritical point of view:
And indeed far from using an American tragedy to drum up never-ending wars and force regime change upon people with American occupation and weapons of war Obama simply offers safety for civilians from retaliation and seeks to offer the support that the rebels think they need to succeed. He also would limit the risk to American troops and treasure:
Of course, there is no question that Libya — and the world — will be better off with Gaddafi out of power. I, along with many other world leaders, have embraced that goal, and will actively pursue it through non-military means. But broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.
The task that I assigned our forces — to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger, and to establish a No Fly Zone — carries with it a UN mandate and international support. It is also what the Libyan opposition asked us to do. If we tried to overthrow Gaddafi by force, our coalition would splinter. We would likely have to put U.S. troops on the ground, or risk killing many civilians from the air. The dangers faced by our men and women in uniform would be far greater. So would the costs, and our share of the responsibility for what comes next.
To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq. Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our troops and the determination of our diplomats, we are hopeful about Iraq's future. But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/...
Which brings us to the real Republican problem with our response to Libya. We have shunned the neo-con wet dream they call foreign policy "vision". We are not invading countries and risking lives for profit or ideology. We are attempting to protect the helpless from a despot as that country attempts to overthrow him. We are giving them a chance to enact their own change and win their own freedom and create their own government free of our ever present influence.
I believe in Libya with the actions of the people there and our reaction to it we have a much better chance of actually creating Democracy in the middle-east and creating real allies among the Arab and Muslim world. Unfortunately some folks would rather push their own beliefs and agendas on that region instead. Worse yet they are obsessed with the thought that their own narrow-minded approach to dealing with the middle-east may be proven for what it was all along. A fraud.