The Other McCain

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OPERATION ODYSSEY DAWN: U.S. Launches Attacks on Targets in Libya

Posted on | March 19, 2011 | 48 Comments

The first Tomahawk cruise missiles hit about 3 p.m. ET today:

Military strikes by the U.S. and its allies against targets in Libya Saturday have “severely disabled” Libyan leader’s Muammar al-Qaddafi’s air defenses, a U.S. official confirms to Fox News. . . .
The Pentagon says 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles have been launched from U.S. and British ships in the Mediterranean, hitting more than 20 Libyan targets along the Mediterranean coastline.

Criticism of Obama from neocon racist right-wingers Michael Moore:

Moore, a frequent critic of President Bush for launching the Iraq War, unleashed a string on tweets comparing the U.S. military’s mission in Libya to Iraq and Afghanistan, using a mantra coined by Charlie Sheen:

It’s only cause we’re defending the Libyan people from a tyrant! That’s why we bombed the Saudis last wk! Hahaha. Pentagon=comedy

And we always follow the French’s lead! Next thing you know, we’ll have free health care & free college! Yay war!

We’ve had a “no-fly zone” over Afghanistan for over 9 yrs. How’s that going? #WINNING !

Khadaffy must’ve planned 9/11! #excuses

Khadaffy must’ve had WMD! #excusesthatwork

Y’know, I had been skeptical of U.S. involvement in Libya, but if Michael Moore is against it . . . well, this might be a Change We Can Believe In.

More at Memeorandum, with blog commentary from Weasel Zippers, Protein Wisdom,  Left Coast Rebel, Ann Althouse, Legal Insurrection, Pundit & Pundette, American Power, Just One Minute and The Lonely Conservative.

UPDATE: Instapundit:

Hey, it’s exactly 8 years to the day since Bush started bombing Iraq! If you voted for change, this is the change you voted for.

Meanwhile, The Rhetorican:

What’s missing? The ubiquitous sense of outrage in every nook and cranny of Leftie-dom that we couldn’t stop hearing back in 2003, before troops even started packing for Iraq.

True: The outrage is not “ubiquitous,” but what are lefties like Michael Moore going to do? They got nowhere to go. They backed the most left-wing nominee in the Democratic Party’s history — yes, Obama is further left than McGovern or Dukakis — and actually managed to get him elected. And the result is . . . ??

We’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan. Guantanamo is still in business. Bradley Manning is stripped naked in solitary confinement. Now, another military adventure. You’d think that people who’d been so blatantly screwed over, bamboozled, sold out, ripped off and stabbed in the back would eventually wise up.

But then again: They’re liberals.

UPDATE II: Lefties in Madison turn on a dime: From protesting Scott Walker to protesting the “imperialist” war. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this.

In 2001, the usual suspects had scheduled a Sept. 29 protest (“S29”) against the IMF and World Bank, which were scheduled to meet in D.C. that weekend. But after 9/11 the IMF/World Bank meetings were canceled, and so the “anti-globalization” rally instead became the first major anti-war protest of the Bush era. And I was the only journalist in Washington who wrote about that sudden switch:

Communists, go home
Anti-American protesters come to Washington

By Robert Stacy McCain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Sept. 27, 2001

    Ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, communists are taking over Washington — or at least, the National Mall.
    Most in the media would have you believe that the protesters who  will gather Saturday are a “broad coalition” of groups (as CNN described the 1999 rioters in Seattle) or perhaps “various political, social and religious organizations” (as the New York Times described this summer’s rioters in Genoa, Italy).
    Hogwash.  They’re communists, and some of them are honest enough to admit it.
    One of the most vocal promoters of Saturday’s demonstrations is the International Action Center (IAC). The IAC’s chief spokesmen — Brian Becker and Larry Holmes – are both officials of the Worker’s World Party (WWP), a Marxist organization with a record of supporting repressive communist regimes such as Cuba and North Korea.
    The history of the WWP is instructive.  Its founder, Sam Marcy, was a follower of Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik leader who was purged by (and later assassinated by henchmen of) Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.  Marcy split from the Socialist Workers Party after his fellow Troskyists refused to endorse the USSR’s 1956 invasion of Hungary.
    So Messrs.  Becker and Holmes, whose party began by defending  Kruschev’s military conquest of Hungary, now want to protest war and “American imperialism.” Isn’t that nice?
    But the WWP and the IAC aren’t the only commies backing Saturday’s demonstrations.  Among those sponsoring, promoting and supporting the  rally is the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
    The Young Communist League, youth affiliate of the CPUSA, carries  this message on its Web site, www.yclusa.org: “We extend our invitation for people to come to Washington D.C.  for the Peoples’ Summit . . . on September 29th.”
    Like the WWP and the IAC, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) has its own front group, Refuse & Resist (R&R), founded in 1987 by veteran RCP activist Clark Kissinger.  Mary Lou Greenberg, another RCP member, is also on the R&R National Council.
    Kissinger — who recently served a 90-day jail sentence for probation violation — was a national officer of the Students for a Democratic  Society (SDS) in the 1960s, was involved in the 1968 riots in Chicago, then left SDS.  A follower of Mao Tse-tung, Kissinger has been affiliated for more than 20 years with the Maoist RCP.
    Last year, Kissinger offered this bit of analysis: “The problem in this country is the oppressive system of capitalism that exploits people all over the world, that destroys our planet, that oppresses minority people, that sends people to the death chambers in droves.  That is a problem that has to be done away with.  Is there a solution? Yes. Revolution is the solution.”
    Advocating Maoist revolution — and promoting the ubiquitous hero of the left, Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal — has won R&R and RCP the support of rockers like Rage Against the Machine and Chumbawamba.
    The communist influence on Saturday’s protest extends far beyond the participation of avowed Marxists, Trotskyists and Maoists.  Among the scheduled speakers are members of the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank which during the Cold War was recognized as “the perfect intellectual front for soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB,” according to historian Brian Crozier.
    Want more?  Should any protesters manage to get themselves arrested Saturday, they will call on the attorneys of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), organized by lawyers for the Communist Party in 1936. The NLG is affiliated with the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, described by the CIA in 1978 as “one of the most useful Communist front organizations at the service of the Soviet Communist Party.”
    Being old enough to remember the Cold War and to have cheered the collapse of the Soviet empire, I have to scratch my head at the crowds of young people — most of them rich, white college kids — who flock to these protests organized by communists.  Did America endure a four-decade nuclear standoff with the Evil Empire so that its children could grow up to be commies?
    I suppose many young people are victims of their baby boomer teachers, who taught them that the “peace” movement of the 1960s was all sunshine and light. Guess nobody bothered to tell the kids about the bombings perpetrated by the Weather Underground and the murders committed by the Black Panthers, to say nothing of the millions enslaved and slaughtered in Vietnam and Cambodia because of the “peace” resulting from communist victory.
    So hundreds of young people will be on the Mall, supporting the communist attack on “American imperialism.”
    It doesn’t really matter what they’re protesting, of course.  Saturday’s demonstrations were originally organized to protest against  “globalization” during the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund meetings. Those meetings were canceled after the Sept.  11 bombings, so suddenly the focus was shifted to opposing U.S.  efforts to strike back against terrorism.
    It makes no difference to the commies, you see.  Whatever the cause, the enemies are the same: America and capitalism.
    Some may ask why the “anti-globalization” movement doesn’t purge all these communists.  The simple answer is that, if all the communists were  purged, there wouldn’t be any movement left.  Behind all the rhetoric about protecting the environment and relieving poverty in the developing world, this movement is unadulterated Marxism – anti-capitalist, anti-freedom, anti-American.
    A better question is this: Why are we sending aircraft carriers halfway around the world to look for enemies, when our nation’s worst enemies — communists proclaiming an anti-American jihad — will be right there  on the grounds of the Washington Monument on Saturday?

Wow. That was nearly 10 years ago. The Bush administration missed its opportunity. They should have re-instituted the Smith Act.

UPDATE III: Angela from Red State Eclectic in the comments:

“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
— Sen. Barack Obama, Dec. 20, 2007

I believe the word is, “Heh.”

UPDATE IV: Andrew Sullivan feels compelled to issue a clarification. There’s nothing like a little reality to expose the ridiculousness of liberal “principles.”

UPDATE V: Linked by John Nolte at Big Hollywood — thanks!

UPDATE VI: Linked by the Lonely Conservative and Conservative Hideout — thanks!

UPDATE VII: Welcome, Instapundit readers!


Category: Barack Obama, Libya, Michael Moore, Military

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