Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Chock Full of Goodiness

In top of my list of the vast differences between the good Libya War and the bad Iraq War, let's list this incident:

Members of Libya's powerful Warfalla tribe say they are thirsting for revenge after their bastion Bani Walid was looted and pillaged by anti-Kadhafi fighters.

"Tomorrow is another day. We will get our revenge sooner or later," said a Warfalla tribesman, pointing to shelled and burnt-out buildings in the oasis town, southeast of Tripoli.

The winners looted the property of the former regime supporters? No worries. This won't be an issue for anyone trumpeting the goodness of leading from behind fulfilling our responsibility to protect. This is in striking contrast to the looting in Iraq after the fall of Baghdad that anti-war types said encouraged the Baathists and other Sunni Arabs to resist us. It was proof that we had too few troops to stabilize Iraq. The post-war planning was clearly insufficient, they said.

Never mind that had our troops shot a score of looters to restore order in Baghdad, the same people would have complained that our harsh measures provoked the insurgency.

And never mind that had we shot a score of looters and had that lesson prevented the Sunni Arabs from mounting any resistance, that those same people would have demanded war crimes trials for our soldiers since, obviously, no insurgency would mean the shootings were completely unnecessary.

Some things are just obvious, don't you know. I'm sure this is all in the post-Libya War plan that the Obama administration put together. By now, it must be freaking awesome.