Happy Friday: "Go, Fight, Win..."

Damn, it's been a long week...
For all those itching to get the US involved in yet another mideast civil war, consider what happens when we -- the world's biggest strongest richest most exceptional world superpower, *stroke stroke* with a moral responsibility like Superman to protect all the little boys and girls and women across the world... -- jump in the game and upset the natural balance of power.

You see,
I'm always wary of those who would have others fight their fights.

If an internal revolution needs to rely on external superpower to bring down their country's leaders, heck -- even to pull down a statue of their country's leader -- then they're not up to the fight.

Better to wait, plan, and let's be honest -- get out -- before risking your own lives in a fight you're not going to win.

The US wars of choice of late have ensured that these rebellions are well financed thanks to the US taxpayers, naively supporting foreign concepts of freedom.

Middle-aged professionals whose closest taste of combat comes from video games and suburban gun range visits on the weekends. Their balls big and bloated, they contribute little if nothing to our national defense, except in term of tax dollars -- whoopie, and perhaps the occasional social benefit where they might get to actually rub shoulders with a real soldier, who spends time with men in the field, and not pretty campus co-eds before retreating to the safety of a big cozy home with a beautiful wife and exceptional daughters.

(These types never seem to have sons, oddly, nttawwt... but you do wonder if there's some unfulfilled masculinity thing going on there, urging on their warrior instincts that so many others fulfill with hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, and generally, spending time in the outdoors for extended periods of time with other men*...)

But back to the heroic tale... if you don't have enough internal strength to even take out your own leaders, you've little chance of rebuilding what you've destroyed, of creating something better for your land and your own people.

I leave you with today's news of the aftermath in Libya. We sowed superpower strength bombs and bullets there; the 'rebels' had no chance of destroying their country without our supersized military help...

Is this what we're willing to reap by 'protecting' from afar the people of Syria? Sip our wines, boohoo the dead children, and cheering for more? one, two, we want more... one, two, we want more...

Two years after local militias overthrew the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, many of those same fighters have brought Libya’s critical oil industry to a halt, as a challenge to the latest in a series of that country’s interim governments.

Protests and strikes at several large export terminals and oil fields have throttled Libya’s daily oil production to one-tenth its capacity in recent days, jeopardizing the national economy and tightening world oil supplies at a time when unrest is spreading in the Middle East.
...
The crisis began last month when armed groups seized the country’s major oil export terminals, claiming that the national oil company had engaged in corrupt sales. They also demanded autonomy for the eastern region where the rebellion against the Qaddafi government had been strongest.
...
As the western protests have grown, local utilities have been forced to cut back power generation, which has caused blackouts.
...
The Parliament ... has also appointed a crisis committee to go from village to village to negotiate with local governing councils allied with the militias.

David L. Goldwyn, the State Department coordinator for international energy affairs in the first Obama administration, characterized the government’s efforts as “a fight-and-talk strategy.”
...
Oil, the mainstay of Libya’s economy, has in recent years accounted for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings and 75 percent of government revenues. The government estimates that the country is now losing roughly $130 million a day in oil revenues.

While experts say the government should have six months of reserves to keep the state apparatus functioning, international oil executives are watching developments carefully to see if Tripoli can regain control of the country and ensure security for foreign investment.

“Libya is grinding to a halt,” said Badr J. Jafar, president of Crescent Petroleum, an oil and gas company based in the United Arab Emirates that has had conversations with the Libyan government over investing there.
...
The falling Libyan oil output — which under normal circumstances would represent roughly 2 percent of global supplies — comes at a bad time. Unrest in Syria and Egypt potentially threatens to spread more widely through oil-producing regions of the Middle East, especially Iraq. Persistent attacks on a major pipeline in northern Iraq have already interrupted as much as 150,000 barrels a day of production in recent weeks.

Global oil prices, which have risen moderately over the past month, would probably have climbed much higher had Saudi Arabia not increased its production to the highest level in 32 years to compensate for the lost Libyan crude, oil experts say.
...
Before the NATO-backed insurrection against the Qaddafi government, Libya produced more than 1.5 million barrels of high-quality crude oil a day, mostly selling to Europe and Asia. Oil production and exports came to a halt during the 2011 revolt, but revived quickly after the fighting ended.

The recovery of the Libyan oil industry helped cushion global markets as the United States and Europe tightened the oil embargo on Iran over the past year or so.
...
[P]roduction fell in recent months to 550,000 barrels a day, and in recent days to as low as 150,000 barrels. Exports have tumbled to 80,000 barrels a day.

Few foreign companies now have more than skeleton crews of expatriates working in the fields, because of the dangerous security situation. OMV, an Austrian oil company that is a major producer in Libya, announced this week that it was suspending production.

“The situation is so bad, it’s unsafe,” said Dragan Vuckovic, president of Mediterranean International, an oil service company that withdrew from Libya during the fighting two years ago and has not yet returned.

“Every village has a militia, and there is no central government.”

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*Ok, that's all can do here...
off to Mal's with Buddy to get in a nice long river paddle as we watch the dry leaves drop from the trees. A boxload of tomatoes onions and garlic will accompany me, as we plan to get in some salsa-making.

(There's)
Something inherently satisfying in working and creating with one's own hands and brain that the hard-on of temporary destruction and temporary burst of short-term might can not match. I remember when the Jews of old taught me that, before they got all muscular.

Artificially muscular, at that...

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* Of course, these aren't the types whose wives make a living whining on the perpetual victimization of American boys and men.

HANNA ROSIN: Why Feminists Won’t Accept That The Patriarchy Is Dead.“My young interrogator might be annoyed to learn that many of those women who pick up the trash yearn to bring back at least some aspects of the patriarchy. They generally appreciate their new economic independence and feel pride at holding their families together, at working and studying and doing things on their own, but sometimes they long to have a man around who would pay the bills and take care of them and make a life for them in which they could work less. And they want the men in their lives to be happy. It’s elite feminists like my questioner and me who cling to the dreaded patriarchy just as he is walking out of our lives.”

Don’t you love him as he’s walking out the door?
Posted at 7:19 am by Glenn Reynolds**

If you don't like your situation, work to actively change it? The power indeed is in your hands, and it sure beats simply exercising your trigger finger on a range, or cheering wars, missles and drone strikes abroad.

**You gotta read his comments on that one too. Stuck at grade-school-level sad, still playing girls v. boys...

becket
Hence, on a, errr, deeper level, the overwhelming popularity of Fifty Shades of Gray. Once again, it's not all about the sex.

OldSchoolConsrvtive
There are actual physiological differences between men and women that in general forces them to trend toward their old stereotypes. Women trend toward mixing emotion into decisions and nurturing. Men trend toward using cold logic and divorcing emotion from decisions. Neither is especially bad or good just different. The differences compliment each other in many situations. the differences are not strict or universal, but trends in the overall population.

Amphipolis
All of the women are expected to be like the men, and all of the boys are expected to be like the girls. That's modern diversity. Oh, and mothers/fathers must be interchangeable. Being equal before the law is just not good enough. We all must be identical.

So sad to read those who think like that... They cripple themselves.