He finally met some right wing ass that he didn’t feel compelled to kiss. Welcome back to the land of the sane. We hope you’ll stick around. 

He skipped their Mission Accomplished narrative and made the 10% Congress gag instead. I liked it.

I like what McCain had to say it was clear and he was trying to stick to the facts of what’s happening on the ground and what we could do to help the country in the future, rather than the unnecessary trivializing and fear mongering.

‘Democracy is tough…’

It is most certainly is, and I concur with that Senator McCain.

McOldCrazy speaks!

At least, he was McOldCrazy (aka McSame aka McBush) when he was opposing Obama.

Now, suddenly, inexplicably, he’s no longer McSame/McBush/McOldCrazy to the Obamites. He’s the voice of reason.

Tommy… you expect so much civility from the right and so little from the left. Yes… you have called out liberals when they go 1000 miles over the line. But lets face it. You don’t have the SAME standard for both sides.

Tommy… you expect so much civility from the right and so little from the left. Yes… you have called out liberals when they go 1000 miles over the line. But lets face it. You don’t have the SAME standard for both sides.

Typical spineless , gutter racist , gNOpig , “ ball-less ” , coward  , RINO . IOKIYAR

Typical spineless , gutter racist , gNOpig , “ ball-less ” , coward  , RINO . IOKIYAR

McCain is a doddering old fool. Lets see how this Libya Fall into Winter into next Spring and beyond thingy goes before we throw the dog ( Obama ) a bone. 

Premature ejaculation seems to be a real big problem with this regime according to the empirical data….at least that which has not since been exsponge from the archives, including youtube by the Obama regime..

You’re a cartoon character.

You’re a cartoon character.

So ,  that means that you are a  smiley sunrise ?

For the guys who supported two wars, that have lasted a combined 18 years, to complain that defeating Gaddafi (in 5 months) took too long…

How long did it take to topple Saddam? How long did it take to wrest control of Afghanistan from the Taliban?

You seem to think this is over. Were you asleep for the last 10 years?

BTW, Afghanistan is 10 years now and Iraq was 20. Check your math.

Perhaps, you’ll get your wish and everything will go very badly.

“The war is lost.” – Harry Reid

Isn’t this the same Foxnews that from the outset was asking where in the Constitution does this clown-president obtain the power to bypass the Congress?
Does the means now justify the outcome in Fox’s opinion?

Their hatred of President Obama FAR exceeds their love of their country.

They root against America if makes the outcome makes the president look bad.

Their patriotism is as phony as their religious piety.

The future for Libya may be uncertain, but it’s clear that our policy of ‘leading from behind’ was a wise course of action.

Wait a freakin’ minute just a short 3 years ago you were on his band wagon. Hang your head in shame.

Wait a freakin’ minute just a short 3 years ago you were on his band wagon. Hang your head in shame.

Another guy that votes for McCain then calls him an old fool

How long for OBAMA to get BinLaden?

obama killed the economy faster than he killed osama…

Demonstrably.

The monkey in pictured in your avatar has more sense then you.

The economic crisis started before Obama was even elected moron.  Remember Grampy McCain wanting to put the election on hold?

Remember TARP?

Remember the market crashing?

Some of the factors contributing the economic problems go back years (even to the Clinton Admin. and the loosening of banking regulations).

Why don’t you go educate yourself before you further embarrass yourself.

Criticizing the Commander in Chief’s foreign policy decisions in a time of war is ‘emboldening the enemy’.

Isn’t that the crap you folks kept spouting during Bush’s regime?

So kindly STFU now you hypocritical traitors. 

Ouch!! The GOP morning blowhards at Fixed News got dissed by McCain making the baseless comparison between Bush’s premature victory speech to Obama’s statement over Libya. Bush was the worst commander in chief in American history. He completely screwed America over with the longest, unresolved wars borrowing trillions to fund the misadventures. Republicans can’t stand to witness foreign policy successes for Obama. Obama didn’t deserve credit for killing Bin Laden. Now, he doesn’t deserve any credit for toppling Qaddafy. LMAO.

Truly .

Truly .

Truly .

Truly .

What is wrong with FOX? Can they never, ever give Obama a pat on the back for doing the right thing? Hypocritical traitors is correct!

Grandpa must be back on his meds.

Obama owns 3 things that white racists can’t stand: 1. Youth, 2. Innovation, and 3. Skin color. The ”How DARE he out smart us! How DARE he!” assertion is embedded in their every statement, vote, and belief. 

But their resistance to this president is all too familiar to those of us who deal with racism on a regular basis. It’s not a repub vs demo issue. It’s racism. Period. And it’s well past time that the media start calling them on it.

I said this in another post for a different article but it applies here as well.
There are a few differences that instantly pop into mind. 
1) President Obama celebrated the fall of Ghadafi’s government, he did not celebrate it as Mission Accomplished. Ghadafi’s government has failed to maintain control of Tripoli, let alone the rest of the Libyan nation. That does not mean that Ghadafi and his forces cease to exist as a threat, it just means that they have ceased to function as a government. They may menace Libya, but they no longer control it.
2) To this point none of our military personnel have been maimed or killed, versus the casualty rate in Iraq.
3) The Iraq war was driven by the false assertion that we were in imminent danger posed by secretly developed Iraqi WMDs. We initiated that war as a preemptive strike. The Libyan war was something that was happening prior to our involvement. We didn’t bring a war to Libya, but we did help out the right side in a war that was already going down.
4) Nation Building vs. Limited Investment. Bush’s military strategies often involved a lot of nation building. That’s what happened in Iraq. We broke it, we bought it. Though I agree that a just response to Al Qaeda after 9/11 was in order, I think it’s fair to question whether we could have achieved our primary aims without becoming so heavily invested in Afghanistan. A lot of these policies have led to us having to make deals with people that are no better than crooks and terrorists, just to put forth the image of a stable government being built. President Obama’s policies seem to be more focused, streamlined, and efficient than those of Bush. He gets what he wants (Osama, Ghadafi) by going after his targets with laser precision rather than just blowing everything up then having to rebuild it later.
5) This is more of a bonus point. With Iraq our image took a hit as we were perceived to be going after a nation, more for the commonality of the religion of its citizens to the 9/11 hijackers, than any legitimate cause. This was underscored by our failure to find WMDs. Libya presents special circumstances, and it would be naïve to think that we would intervene the same way with any other nation where a government treated its citizenry in such a manner. With that said, if we can benefit from lending aid to a good cause, which was already in progress, then why not? A point that I don’t think gets addressed enough is that Iraq was seen as a war on Islam. Many, if not all, of the Muslims who have attempted attacks on this country, since the start of the Iraq war, have expressed feeling that Islam was under attack from The United States. With Libya we are able to counter that narrative. Terrorists organizations have painted us as supporters of oppressive regimes, and imperialists set on destroying Islam. With Libya, we intervened in a conflict the Libyan people initiated against their oppressive government, that would have ended in the loss of many Libyan lives, had we not taken a stance to help the little people in their fight against an oppressive regime. It might not make an overnight change in American/Muslim relations, but with more acts like this, and our stance on Egypt, it becomes harder for Al Qaeda and its affiliates to sell their propaganda.

Even if things do go badly for Libya in the future, we have no obligation to them. We haven’t engaged in a campaign of nation building with them.

It’s truly very sad. The number one priority of Fox News and the GOP is to bring down Obama even if that means bringing down America in the process. 

Word .

Great points. America and the world are far better off under the deliberative, cooperative rules of the Obama Doctrine versus the coercive, wreckless adventurism of the Bush Doctrine in foreign affairs.

Yet, you voted for this doddering old fool for President.

If patriotism is the last refuge for a scoundrel, and these scoundrels have clearly exposed their patriotism as phony,

What refuge is left for the teabagger?  It is time for them to scurry back under their rocks.

I’ve been wondering what has made him so reasonable about this?

You really believe that, don’t you? This is still Bush’s economy. 

Like they give a damn about America? Faux News, Faux Patriotism. 

Good for you! You remembered the No Fly Zones that we maintained over Iraq for about ten years.

WELL SAID

BRAVO

The economy was almost dead when he got it. It is not dead now, and he didn’t kill it.

The “tea hates” are praying for failure. Common! Lets give “Bush” credit for Libya, so Douce can be happy for a country moving toward peace!

As David Byrne would say, stop making sense.

The statement he released yesterday was carefully worded and petty on his part, something he is very much aware of.  FOX and Friends was no doubt eager to get Senator McCain to expand upon the statement released the day before but he failed to deliver.  

I challenged every conservative commenter on this site to give Obama is due on Libya. Not one could bring themselves to do it. They’re genetically predisposed to hate him, no matter what. It provides a perfect insight into why the budget negotiations proved so impossible. You simply can’t negotiate with people whose only mission is to destroy you. 

He was looking for the 10% that approves of Congress. He was saying his constituents overall think he is doing a crappy job and they told him so in the townhall.

He doesn’t know what he is talking about RE Libya. One of the groups has a Sharia constiution ready to go. But now the stage is set for civil war between the rebel groups. Are we going to try to be peacekeepers in Libya like we are in Iraq and Afghanistan between warring factions ??   No thanks !!! Let them sort it out themselves.

They are rascist, that’s why they refuse to give Obama credit for anything.

These two guys on Fox and friends are such idots. McCain is a doddering ole fool, but he sounds like a grandparent talking to his smart aleck, no sense having grandchildren!

Good for him.  It’s good to see that McCain can sometimes act as the American in the room, instead of the Republican.

And Bush did what no Commander in Chief should ever do – he sent our men and women to war without the proper equipment and without an exit strategy.  When campaigning for president, Bush said he would NOT nation build.  Well, we’ve been building two nations he tore apart while he was in office.  Like General Powell said – it is the Pottery Barn rule. You break it -you bought it.

The FOX people are going to HATE any democrat and especially if they are black and president.

Maybe you should check yours.  Bush went into Iraq on March 23, 2003.  He went into Afghanistan on October 21, 2001.  Afghanistan is almost 10 years.  Bush took troops out of Afghanistan then for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  That is 8-=1/2 years.

The “no fly zones’ were not troops on the ground.  And, they were working and Bush should have left them in place and left Iraq/Saddam alone until the people tired of it.

And Iraq and Afghanistan are still Bush’s big mistakes “Mission Accomplished” as well.

I didn’t vote for McCain, but I have always liked him especially when he shows he has a voice of his own.  But, there have been times that he will say one thing – on the US Senate floor and then go on FOX and deny it.  Like when he criticized the Tea Party not long ago on the debt ceiling.- remember the “Tea Party Hobbits”?

He needs to stand up for what he believes in and quit thinking he has to line up behind McConnell.  We need congress representatives who can think for themselves and work with those across the aisle. I’m getting sick of this clear division between two political parties whose first goal should be to put “America First” – especially when you have a republican leader who can’t even make JOBS the #1 priority.

But that isn’t all he said and to just stop the sentence there is “taking it out of context”.
The statement was made in 2007 when the US Senate was asked again to fund the Iraq war.  Harry Reid said
“I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and – you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows -  this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,” said Reid, D-Nev.

But they did exist. They were an act of war as a continuation of the Gulf War, and they weren’t very effective. We can’t just wish that part of history away, and have to support the guy who said we were at war with Iraq (I think it was the Good Lt) for 20 years because it is true.

I was there for the Gulf War. I know why we didn’t go all the way to Baghdad then, but my reason (and Bush 1′s reason and Colin Powell’s reason) was knowing what would happen if we had taken Hussein out in ’91. Bush 2 didn’t take Bush 1′s advice on that.

The hope for the no-fly zones was that anti-Hussein elements would rise up and overthrow him while being protected by the no fly zones, but that wasn’t going to happen. We knew that for sure within one year of the creation of the zones. I am not supporting Bush 2′s invasion. I am only saying that facts are facts.

I like Fox. McCain is a fence sitting yawn til he decides not to and then he’s still an uninteresting bore.

Fox News and especially Fox and Friends are ideological hypocrites.  John McCain is too reasonable of a man to play their spin game. 

PabIo, I don’t know if the Libyan war is over or not. However, comparing Libya to Iraq or Afghanistan is, at best, tricky business. For starters, there weren’t civil wars in those two when we went in. Secondly we’ve had troops on the ground in those two wars — LOTS of troops — while we have no ground troops in Libya.

It’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which Qaddafi manages to regain power, though I suppose it would premature to dismiss that possibility, however remote, out of hand considering he’s apparently holed up and has eluded capture. But leaving that aside, it makes sense, in my view, to say getting him out of power is, indeed, over. For now anyway.

When the NATO operation ends, unless we (either through NATO or on our own) initiate a new phase of involvement, then the war will be over — for us. That is not to say that the Libyans themselves won’t descend into further civil war, perhaps along traditional tribal lines, perhaps along sectarian ones, such as those preferring a secular state versus those wanting one based on whichever version of Sharia law it is they prefer. But sans further involvement on our part, it’ll be over for *us,* regardless of how it runs out between the Libyans themselves.

Chrisg, you have to cut jdubbellu a little slack. Clearly he/she is in the camp that whether through denial of reality, complete memory failure, or delusions, believes that until President Obama was sworn in, we lived in a Golden Age, in a veritable Garden of Eden. The Bush Administration, in this mythology, not only was error-free but perfect, the pinnacle of human governance never to be outdone.By the way, Chrisg, it’s true some of the problems haunting us today do indeed date back to a loosening of regulations during President Clinton’s watch. I would say we can go back even further than that to at least the 1986-1989 S&L crisis, during which about half the S&L’s in the country collapsed, a crisis with roots the FDIC traces back to the late 1970′s — and took over a decade to finally play out completely post-1989. My point is different related events leading up to our current sorry state have occurred on the watches of EVERY President since the days of President Carter. I find it interesting that the conservatives like to latch onto the loosening of banking regulations under President Clinton — but to tell us to move along when others attempt to bring up the S&L stuff — started on President Reagan’s watch and continued into President Bush the Elder’s watch. But I’m not surprised. Presidential candidate and Texas governor Rick Perry has gone clear back the Progressive Movement — which began in the 1980′s, though he glosses over the fact that Teddy Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover were among the chief proponents of that movement. And in Perry’s view, pretty much the entire 20th century was a flop, and is spilling its poison into the 21st century.In case you’re interested, here’s a link to the FDIC report about the S&L crisis — it’s a PDF file:http://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/banking/2000dec/brv13n2_2.pdf

Devil’s Spawn, while I don’t fully agree with your take — are no-fly zones to be regarded as equal to boots on the ground? — I deeply appreciate your calm and reasoned approach. I get so sick of people launching into hateful ad hominem attacks, spewing filth. From both/all sides.

I am interested in your take on the effectiveness of the no-fly zones. I began wondering about that after they had existed awhile, but would usually get shouted down or otherwise silenced when I tried to bring up my gradually-increasing doubts.

I’m not going to try to second-guess Bush the Younger, though I can’t help but wonder about the road not taken — which we can never know, of course. But it’s interesting to muse about the possibilities had he followed his Father’s advice. Or, once we captured Saddam, if we had allowed him to go into exile, perhaps. (Not that I’m in any way a fan of Saddam, mind you.)

Absolutely outstanding, Stephen. Your presentation appears to be completely bullet-proof.

The two No-Fly zones were not supposed to be needed for as long as they were. It was hoped that Kurds in the north and Marsh Arabs in the south would gain strength and rebel against Saddam. The result would look almost exactly like what did happen in Libya recently.
It was more than No-Fly. It was also supposed to stop major military movements, like armored units, into those areas. However, the rebellions didn’t happen, and Saddam managed to mess with the Marsh Arabs anyway.
Those zones did not do what they were supposed to, and were getting expensive. At least no Americans died. All I can say is they are not necessary now.
By the way, Bush Sr. and Colin Powell knew how complicated the Sunni-Shi’ite thing would be, plus the job in ’91 was only to get Saddam out of Kuwait, not to kill him and invade Iraq. The other Arabs in the coalition did not want him killed. Only an Arab is supposed to kill an Arab. We had almost unanimous support in ’91, but almost none the second time. 

Devil’s_Spawn — thanks for your reply; I am truly interested in your take. Your reply is sort of more confirmation of my own take, though again, I don’t want to try to second-guess or otherwise condemn President Bush the Younger. I will say it may be he should have heeded his Father and Powell.

I was already aware of Gulf War I’s limited aims, and that they were entirely different than those of Gulf War Redux. And that Iranians are most assuredly not Arabs (though there sure are a LOT of Americans who can’t seem to grasp that simple fact, aren’t there???).

Well. You’re clearly a moron. Since the finer nuances of foreign policy undoubtedly escape you, I’d like to remind you that we entered Libya as a HUMANITARIAN mission and the President came on TV saying it’d take “days, not weeks” to topple the regime. The result? 7 months and $1 billion, and for all we know the country will end up in worse hands than it started (especially judging by the way these people have paraded around his mutilated corpse yelling “Allahu akbar!”).

On the other hand, in Iraq, a war IN OUR OWN NATIONAL INTEREST, it took us 21 days to topple the regime of a much more heavily fortified and sadistic ruler.

Now, we stayed in Iraq since then to ensure it DIDN’T devolve into the type of extremist state the Libya will likely follow Iran into. That took a lot of time and money. And it was for good reason, from a standpoint of national interest (as well, for that matter, as humanitarian).

However, the point remains that we took far too long to execute a simple mission in Libya (one the President said would take “days”), and it may not even be for the better in the long run.