Monday, March 28, 2011

LIBYA AFTER ALL

I watched President Obama's speech on Libya tonight, and he convinced me. I guess.

OK, so it was a humanitarian intervention, and we did it to save innocent people, who have been oppressed by Qaddafi for 40 years.

Hmmm. I don't know why the logic of this seems off somehow. Have we not been helping Qaddafi oppress his people? Have we not been buying his oil? Have we not made deals with him so his airplane bomber could get out of prison in Scotland? Wasn't he our ally?

Hmmm. OK. Reminds me of those old photos of Saddam Hussein shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld and then a few years later he was our enemy.

OK. Things change. Maybe the uprising is a good thing. But if it is a good thing now, what were we doing all those years? How can what is good today not have been good then? Were we on the wrong side and now we are on the right side? I don't know.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. Why am I so skeptical? Am I just an old fart? Perhaps. So many revolutions have turned out badly. The Mexicans, the Russians. Some have turned out well. The French and the USA. So wait and see. 

Meanwhile, I trust Obama, at least I guess I do. It does seem right to stop Qaddafi from killing his own people.

As the head of a school district used to tell his board of directors, "All management decisions have to be made with inadequate information."

Amen to that, brother.


© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

2 comments:

John said...

Totally right . On this one we just have to hope it was the right thing to do but I realy have very strong doubts and still think we can not be the source of policing the world. We still need to take care of things here at home as we have or own set of problems which we don't seem able to solve.

Roger R. Angle said...

Somehow, it seems easier to bomb Qaddafi's forces in Libya than to stop laying off teachers here in the USA. I don't know why. Of course, in Libya, it's life and death.