YES, let's have another war for oil, the only thing that gives these bastards wet dreams

whether they're operating under the umbrella of PNAC or the FPI, these are truly evil people who, as sincere in their beliefs as i'm sure they are, wouldn't hesitate to kill a few thousand more people in libya than gaddafi has already killed in order to get their greedy hands on libya's oil resources... the fact that they would do it in the name of avoiding a "moral and humanitarian catastrophe" is all the more nauseatingly hypocritical...

U.S.:Neo-Con Hawks Take Flight over Libya

In a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage U.S. intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to "immediately" prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and end the violence that is believed to have killed well over a thousand people in the past week.

The appeal, which came in the form of a letter signed by 40 policy analysts, including more than a dozen former senior officials who served under President George W. Bush, was organized and released by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a two-year-old neo-conservative group that is widely seen as the successor to the more-famous – or infamous – Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Warning that Libya stood "on the threshold of a moral and humanitarian catastrophe", the letter, which was addressed to President Barack Obama, called for specific immediate steps involving military action, in addition to the imposition of a number of diplomatic and economic sanctions to bring "an end to the murderous Libyan regime".

In particular, it called for Washington to press NATO to "develop operational plans to urgently deploy warplanes to prevent the regime from using fighter jets and helicopter gunships against civilians and carry out other missions as required; (and) move naval assets into Libyan waters" to "aid evacuation efforts and prepare for possible contingencies;" as well as "(e)stablish the capability to disable Libyan naval vessels used to attack civilians."

Among the letter's signers were former Bush Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Bush's top global democracy and Middle East adviser; Elliott Abrams; former Bush speechwriters Marc Thiessen and Peter Wehner; Vice President Dick Cheney's former deputy national security adviser, John Hannah, as well as FPI's four directors: Weekly Standard editor William Kristol; Brookings Institution fellow Robert Kagan; former Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority spokesman Dan Senor; and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman.

paul craig roberts sums it up nicely...

The United States government cannot get enough of war. With Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime falling to a rebelling population, CNN reports that a Pentagon spokesman said that the U.S. is looking at all options from the military side.

Allegedly, the Pentagon, which is responsible for one million dead Iraqis and an unknown number of dead Afghans and Pakistanis, is concerned about the deaths of 1,000 Libyan protesters.

oh, yeah, we're SO-O-O-OOO concerned about the deaths of libyan protesters...

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A Thursday puzzler: find the missing piece in this Robert Kagan essay

in all the gobbledegook about democracy, power, influence, military supremacy, ideological convictions, freedom, oppression, catalyst for change, unique abilities, and unique responsibilities, there's one major - actually HUGE - underlying motive to america's foreign policy that is only faintly touched on, if it can be said to be touched on at all... see if you can guess what it is...

End of Dreams, Return of History
By Robert Kagan


Robert Kagan

Since the end of World War ii at least, American presidents of both parties have pursued a fairly consistent approach to the world. They have regarded the United States as the "indispensable nation" and the "locomotive at the head of mankind." They have amassed power and influence and deployed them in ever-widening arcs around the globe on behalf of interests, ideals, and ambitions, both tangible and intangible. Since 1945 Americans have insisted on acquiring and maintaining military supremacy, a "preponderance of power" in the world rather than a balance of power with other nations. They have operated on the ideological conviction that liberal democracy is the only legitimate form of government and that other forms of government are not only illegitimate but transitory. They have declared their readiness to "support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation" by forces of oppression, to "pay any price, bear any burden" to defend freedom, to seek "democratic enlargement" in the world, and to work for the "end of tyranny." They have been impatient with the status quo. They have seen America as a catalyst for change in human affairs, and they have employed the strategies and tactics of "maximalism," seeking revolutionary rather than gradual solutions to problems. Therefore, they have often been at odds with the more cautious approaches of their allies.

[...]

So long as Americans elect leaders who believe it is the role of the United States to improve the world and bring about the "ultimate good," and so long as American power in all its forms is sufficient to shape the behavior of others, the broad direction of American foreign policy is unlikely to change, absent some dramatic -- indeed, genuinely revolutionary -- effort by a future administration.

[...]

Six decades ago American leaders believed the United States had the unique ability and the unique responsibility to use its power to prevent a slide back to the circumstances that produced two world wars and innumerable national calamities. Although much has changed since then, America's responsibility has not.

didja figure it out...? if you did, post it in the comments... extra points to anyone who figures out what it is AND goes to the full 11,835 word essay and finds i'm wrong and that it's actually discussed in any detail there...

p.s. it's people like robert kagan and his ilk that are providing the "intellectual" underpinning for united states foreign policy... if you have the stomach to read the entire piece, you will clearly see why we are in the mess we're in today...

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