We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

I've mentioned before that I subscribe to a good number of alternative news feeds. Since I probably have a lot more time on my hands than most of you, I thought I would provide a small primer on what is being written in terms of our new "war" in Libya -- you know, the kind of stuff you are less apt to hear or read via the mainstream media.

Not surprisingly, most of these articles question or outright oppose our latest imperial aggression. As is typical on this blog, small snippets are below. Use the link provided if you would like to read each article in its entirety.

Instead of Bombing Dictators, Stop Selling Them Bombs
by Medea Benjamin & Charles Davis

When all you have is bombs, everything starts to look like a target. And so after years of providing Libya’s dictator with the weapons he's been using against the people, all the international community – France, Britain and the United States – has to offer the people of Libya is more bombs, this time dropped from the sky rather than delivered in a box to Muammar Gaddafi's palace.

If the bitter lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan has taught us anything, though, it's that wars of liberation exact a deadly toll on those they purportedly liberate – and that democracy doesn't come on the back of a Tomahawk missile.

President Barack Obama announced his latest peace-through-bombs initiative last week -- joining ongoing U.S. conflicts and proxy wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia...

Be Consistent — Invade Saudi Arabia
by Robert Scheer

It’s the black gold that drives nations mad and inevitably raises the question of whether America and the former European colonial powers give a damn about human rights as the basis for military intervention. If Libya didn’t have more oil than any other nation in Africa would the West be unleashing high-tech military mayhem to contain what is essentially a tribal-based civil war? Once again an American president summons the passions of a human rights crusade against a reprehensible ruler whose crimes, while considerable, are not significantly different from those of dictators the U.S routinely protects.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Moammar Gadhafi must now go not because his human rights record is egregious but rather because his erratic hold on power seems spent. After all, from the London School of Economics to Harvard, influential foreign policy experts were all too happy until quite recently to accept Libyan payoffs in exchange for a more benign view of Gadhafi’s prospects for change under the gentle guidance of what Harvard’s Joseph Nye celebrated as “soft power...”

Always Money for War, But Never for Schools
by Rosa Maria Pegueros

My situation mirrors President Barack Obama’s geopolitical situation. He is the head of the most prosperous country in the world. It has one of the highest standards of living. We have the most well-equipped and trained military.

Nevertheless, the country is heavily indebted to the Chinese. It is struggling along with 9.5% unemployment (though in some states, like my home state, Rhode Island, the rate is almost two percent higher). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, among our Latino citizens, the unemployment rate is 13.4%; among our African American citizens, the unemployment rate is 16.2%, almost twice the rate of white citizens but down from the whopping January figure of 17.3%. Providence, RI’s Mayor Taveras was forced to fire all of our city’s teachers for the fall term, and to close four schools as his partial response to what is being called our “Category 5 hurricane,” a structural deficit of $110-million.

Throughout Rhode Island, the roofs of schools are being inspected as a result of two roofs collapsing under the weight of the snow. Heaven knows how much those repairs will cost.

So you’ll understand why my reaction to the President’s decision to participate in the attack on Libya was to spend the afternoon writing to President Obama, Rhode Island’s two senators, and my congressman, protesting vigorously against engaging in military actions in Libya. We cannot afford it. It may be a good cause but WE CANNOT AFFORD IT...

Libya Reminds Us Almost No One in Washington Cares About Deficits
by Jon Walker

If we are actually so “broke” – as the deficit hawks like to claim – that we can no longer afford to give heating assistance to poor Americans in the winter or fund immunizations, there would be no way we could afford another conflict that isn’t vital to American security. Nor would we be able to afford the highly unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which cost almost three times as much as all the cuts sought by House Republicans.

Yet there has been no massive uproar from many of the self-styled Republican and Democratic deficit hawks about ending either conflict where we are literally blowing up millions of dollars a day in some of the most wasteful spending imaginable. As if by magic all concerns about the deficit disappear when money is needed for more war. Just like all the scary deficit rhetoric vanishes when it comes time for more tax cuts...

Obama claims Gadhafi is a danger to U.S.
by Justin Elliott

Greg Sargent notes that liberal Democrats like Dennis Kucinich have pointed to a crucial 2007 quote by then-candidate Barack Obama: "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." To hew to that principle, Obama was compelled to make the argument that there is a national security threat here...

Those Useful Tyrants
by Eugene Robinson

In Yemen, forces loyal to dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh have slaughtered dozens of defenseless protesters seeking democratic reform. Saleh, who has ruled the nation for 33 years, clings desperately to power despite having been abandoned by many of his political supporters and some of his generals. He has shown nothing but defiance. “Every day we hear a statement from Obama saying, ‘Egypt you can’t do this, Tunisia don’t do that,’” Saleh said in a speech earlier this month. “Are you president of the United States, or president of the world?”

But there has been no U.S. military intervention. Saleh has been seen as a valuable ally in the fight against al-Qaida, which has perhaps its most active — and potentially dangerous — base in Yemen. Attacks against the United States have been planned and staged there. Saleh, therefore, is a useful tyrant. He gets nudges, not bombs.

In Bahrain, the ruling al-Khalifa royal family has responded to peaceful demonstrations with violent repression. While the world’s attention was focused on the unfolding tragedy in Japan and the looming tragedy in Libya, Bahrain’s leaders brutally cleared Pearl Square of its protest encampment and even destroyed the towering monument that had become the pro-democracy movement’s most powerful symbol.

But for Bahrain, too, we have polite words rather than decisive action. Why? Because the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is based there, astride the Persian Gulf shipping lanes through which 40 percent of the world’s seaborne oil shipments must pass...

Libya: A War We Shouldn't Believe In
by Ted Rall

U.S. forces fired 110 cruise missiles at Libya on the first day of the war. Each one cost $755,000 to build; $2.8 million to transport, maintain and shoot. Austerity and budget cuts abound; there's no money for NPR or teachers or firefighters. Note to union negotiators: the government has lots of money. They're spending it on war.

For people too young to remember Bosnia, this is what a violent, aggressive, militarist empire looks like under a Democratic president. Where Bush rushed, Obama moseys. No one believed ex-oil man Bush when he said he was out to get rid of the evil dictator of an oil-producing state; Obama, the former community organizer, gets a pass under identical circumstances. Over the weekend, also the eighth anniversary of the start of the Iraq quagmire, there were few protests against Obama's Libya War, all poorly attended...