You Don't Have to Be a Genius...

to have what's called "FOREthought".

(Of course, with all the media -- new and old -- focused more on forePLAY these days, you can see where we advance thinkers are a rarity...)

Eugene Robinson, in the Washington Post, asks a question I asked 3 months ago*, at the start of these "hostilities":

Is there a point at which the death and destruction of a drawn-out civil war surpass anything Gaddafi’s forces might have done had they rolled unopposed into rebel-held Benghazi?

Lots of people have good intentions, you see. Wanting to "save" innocent civilians and prevent slaughter. Except, sometimes in real life, you bet the wrong horse, and all well-meaning people should take time, and then some, to ask:

"Is what I'm doing really helping people, or might they be better off without my outside 'help' that might actually end up making the situation on the ground worse?"

It's why you don't intervene publicly, short of possible death, in another person's parenting styles. Best to leave the child and parent alone, or offer up some comforting words in an uncomfortable situation, rather than verbally "taking on" the abusive parent directly. Can you imagine what it's like back at home, after you've gone and escalated the situation with your help? Is that child really better off now, or do you just feel better having "done something" before returning to your own comfort zone?

Truth be told,
those Libyans likely would have fared better had the United States minded their own business and stayed out. Yes, I know that's hard for the "heros" out there to hear, let alone comprehend how life works out funny like that.

This bull-oney about Flight 103 in Scotland back in 1988, (if it was so vital to seek revenge, why didn't we act sooner?) and acting against Gaddafy after he played along with US and gave up his nuclear ambitions... Didn't the president meet and shake his hand even? FLight 103 in 2009 seemingly forgotten... what changed?

Nope, there's something more behind this current action than "he's a madman promising to go door to door killing his enemies!" (Besides, who trusts what madmen say, anyway?)

Once more, we've broken another country, another people who are not like us, created in our own image. We'll not be there to lift them back to the civilized living they knew. So let's stop pretending that all this "help" has really benefitted simple civilians.

Oil company pockets, though... and politicians eager to keep our current energy policies of buying foreign oil as easily as possible, sure that might be in America's interests. But we long-term thinkers don't see the price paid in this militaristic way to be beneficial at all in preserving a peacefully function market, needed to maximize free trade and perhaps get us to explore independently tapping our own country's reserves.

Funny thing,
I thought that for such a smart and intellectual president we were promised -- the anti-GWBush -- military force would be a LAST resort, only after the hailed diplomacy, finding compromises, and creative solutioning had failed. Instead, with the technology we've got today, it seems like even President Obama has signed on with the "Might equals Right" crowd, and the "He Who Has the Gold, Makes the Rules" part of the secular Golden Rule.

Doesn't anybody wonder what's going to happen when we finally up and admit that there's a lot more wealthier, and therefore more powerful players than U.S. in the world? (Ta-Nehisi does: I assure you if I were in Libya and my baby sister was killed by a NATO bombing, I would conclude, whatever my hatred of Gaddafi, that America was at war with me, that it had, indeed, commenced hostilities. I don't think I'd be wrong in that.)

What goes around, comes around. It's why being a good neighbor -- not cheating your neighbors and allies -- makes for a long and prosperous life. Short-timing the thing just to game the system ... where does it end?, you tell me...

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* Would Quaddafi really have killed so many civilians, had his back not been to the wall from the airstrikes, originally said to cripple and create a no-fly zone only? Would he have killed less innocents, had he been able to put down the revolution, and voluntary revolutionaries, more quickly? Can we admit that the most noble actions of the US and NATO -- well intentioned -- might indeed be causing more civilian (wm+children+elderly) to be killed, than would have had we not intervened? Dead=dead

See my other posts and predictions on Libya, back in the day, compiled here.

Consistency, thy name is Mary.
Track record, babe.
Forethought...
Just sayin.

It's not isolationism, it's winning America's future. Just like when Ronald Reagan came to town, the country could use a little good old-fashioned honest winning and justified pride in America right about now...

Put down the weapons, and start fighting back, Americans. It's our tax money financing these deaths and needless destruction -- escalating the abuse, if you will -- even if it is borrowed from China.