Shakesville

lol ur quorum

I don't often have occasion to be proud of politicians from Indiana, which tends to produce Republicans like Dan Quayle and Democrats like Evan Bayh, but the Democrats of the Indiana State legislature are, without much national note or fanfare, managing to successfully hold a Republican majority with a radically conservative agenda at bay:

Republicans control every Statehouse power base -- governor, Senate and House -- but they remain virtually powerless to enact laws so long as 39 House Democrats remain holed up in an Urbana, Ill., hotel.

For now, at least, Indiana's GOP majority has been outmaneuvered.

Those 39 Democrats managed to shut down the House for a month and win concessions from Republicans on labor and education bills -- and they're angling for more.

As long as they hang together -- and thus far the House Democrats are withstanding fines, the threat of censure and blistering accusations that they are derelict in their duty -- the legislature is at an impasse.

Without them, the House lacks the quorum it needs to do business.

As the stalemate headed toward its fifth week Thursday, Republicans said they were done playing around. They're going to move on without the House Democrats. The Senate will take control to salvage bills that have been caught up in the House ruckus.

But they can't get around the one inescapable truth:

Nothing that hasn't already passed the House can become law unless House Democrats return. Not a budget. Not new legislative maps. Not the education reforms that Gov. Mitch Daniels calls his top priority.

The need for a quorum is the Democrats' trump card. Republicans can shame them, fine them and ignore them. They can cut off their ability to offer amendments. But unlike Wisconsin, where Democrats also fled the state in a showdown over collective bargaining, they can't pass bills without them.

Emphasis mine. I'm really, really proud of my state Democrats right now, not just because they're standing up for Hoosiers, but because they know this as well as anyone else:

The fear that House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, and Senate President Pro Tempore David Long share: If Democrats, outnumbered 60-40 in the House and 37-13 in the Senate, think they are winning this battle of wills, boycotts could become a regular legislative tactic across the nation.

The Indiana Democrats are playing hardball. They're showing spine. They're defending their principles. They're refusing to play the GOP's rigged game anymore. These are the ~~droids~~ Dems we've been looking for.

Sign the petition to show your support for Indiana Democrats.

Open Thread & News Round-Up: Libya

Here's some of what I've been reading this morning. Please feel welcome and encouraged to leave additional links in comments. The same commenting guidelines are still in effect.

The Guardian's live blog is here.

Al Jazeera's live blog is here.

CNN's live blog is here.

New York Times—American Warplane Crashes in Libya as Ground Fighting Continues: "Ground fighting raged in Libya on Tuesday and an American fighter jet crashed overnight in the first known setback for the international coalition attacking forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. ... According to the United States military, the F-15E Strike Eagle warplane went down late Monday 'when the aircraft experienced equipment malfunction.' The aircraft, normally based in England, was flying out of Aviano Air Base in northeastern Italy when it crashed.'Both crew members ejected and are safe,' an American statement said."

The Telegraph has images of the wreckage and more info here.

ABC News—In Official Notification Two Days Later, President Obama Alerts Congress the US Joined a War: "President Obama Monday officially notified congressional leaders that at 'approximately 3:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, on March 19, 2011, at my direction, U.S. military forces commenced operations to assist an international effort authorized by the United Nations (U.N.) Security Council and undertaken with the support of European allies and Arab partners, to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe and address the threat posed to international peace and security by the crisis in Libya.' ... The White House has pushed back against claims that Congress was insufficiently consulted, noting that the president met with congressional leaders the day before the attack and the administration has provided testimony and background briefings on the latest from Libya."

The President's letter can be viewed here (pdf).

The Hill—Obama faces bipartisan pushback on force; US has no 'King's army':

President Obama has long trumpeted a desire to see lawmakers from both sides come together in bipartisan fashion, and now they have: to criticize his military action in Libya without formally consulting Congress.

In a harshly worded statement Monday evening, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) declared, "The United States does not have a King's army."

...Sen. Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a frequent ally of the president on foreign policy, also called Monday for "full congressional debate on the objectives and costs" of military action in Libya — and a declaration of war if it goes on.

"There needs to be a plan about what happens after [Moammar] Gadhafi," Lugar (Ind.) said in a statement. "Who will be in charge then, and who pays for this all. President Obama, so far, has only expressed vague hopes."

Criticism has come just as quickly, and just as forcefully, from Democrats.

Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, told MSNBC Monday "this isn't the way our system is supposed to work."

"We have not put this issue in front of the American people in any meaningful way," said Webb. "The president is in Rio, the Congress is out of session."

..."I truly believe … that before we put our young people in harm's way that people in the Congress should be able to explain to their constituents that our national security was in jeopardy," [Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)] said.

As much as I genuinely appreciate these issues being raised by members of Congress, irrespective of their party, I really wonder where the hell they were when Bush was doing the same thing, and on a much larger scale. That's not to say they shouldn't challenge the constitutionality of this war effort now, but to say they should have done it then, too.

Salon—Cost of Libya campaign in the hundreds of millions: "The cost of the bombing will easily surpass the annual funding for NPR and Planned Parenthood."

The Atlantic—The War in Libya and the Deficit at Home:

The suggestion that wars are bad for the deficit sounds unfeeling. The benefits of liberal democracies in Africa and the Middle East cannot be captured in deficits and bond yields. But still, it cannot be said enough: Wars cost real money, too.

Unlike human liberty, dollars in an austere country are zero sum. A dollar we spend on a bomb in Tripoli is a dollar that didn't go to food stamps, or highway reconstruction, or tax credits to the middle class. The Tomahawk missiles falling on Libya, for example, cost about $700,000 each. The United States fired 110 of those missiles on Saturday, totaling $81 million. "That's about 33 times the amount of money National Public Radio receives in grants each year from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the House of Representatives also wants to de-fund in the name of austerity measures," Abu Muqawama writes. The initial stages of the war could cost the U.S. between $400 million and $800 million, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. That's almost half the controversial cuts to heating subsidies for low-income families.

...[A]t a time when we won't allow additional spending to help an unemployed population the size of Florida, I'd hope to see Washington as stingy about money spent on Tripoli as it is about money spent on Trenton.

Meanwhile, CNN is reporting as breaking news that the Spanish parliament has approved its country's involvement in coalition assault on Moammar Gadhafi's regime in Libya.

Open Thread

Hosted by Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things.

Question of the Day

[Originally run May 2009.] Earlier today, Deeks and I were talking about how much the film version of Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany's sucks, with its lightened Golighty, yellowfaced Rooney, and Wherefore the Mo, as our aspiring writer/gigolo/narrator is replaced by (per Deeks) "not just a hetero, but a super-hetero, one that is so manly and hetero that women actually pay him to sleep with them, that's how hetero he is. He's hetero!" Add tacked-on cheesy romantic ending and voila!—total crap.

What film adaptation whose source material you enjoy do you consider to be utterly unwatchable?

(By source material, I'm excluding screenplays and previous motion picture iterations, so we're not talking remakes or TV shows made into movies, but a novel, novella, short story, graphic novel, comic book, poem, song, etc.)

War Criminals

[Trigger warning for murder; violent imagery.]

Earlier today, Der Spiegel published images [trigger warning for graphic violence] of US military personnel posing with Afghan civilians they killed, basically treating the bodies as though they were hunting trophies. These are the same soldiers about whom I wrote last year in "When You Have a War, There Will Be War Crimes." There was, at that time, virtually no national discussion or outrage about fact that twelve soldiers were facing serious charges, five of them murder charges, "in what military authorities believe was a conspiracy to murder Afghan civilians and cover it up, along with charges they used hashish, mutilated corpses and kept grisly souvenirs."

Now, according to the Guardian, "Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of 'trophy' photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed."

Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world.

They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year.

Some of the activities of the self-styled "kill team" are already public, with 12 men currently on trial in Seattle for their role in the killing of three civilians.

Five of the soldiers are on trial for pre-meditated murder, after they staged killings to make it look like they were defending themselves from Taliban attacks.

Other charges include the mutilation of corpses, the possession of images of human casualties and drug abuse.

As David Dayen points out, this incident differs from Abu Ghraib in that "the photos were part of evidence being used in those court-martial cases, and were kept by the judge under a protective order until the Der Spiegel publication. ... But that difference is fairly subtle given the depictions involved. This brutality adds to the long list of actions that can be used to inflame passions in the Muslim world. It makes any talk by the United States of a humanitarian mission to protect civilians ring extremely hollow. And it is a natural consequence of a long and confusing war, with untold pressures put on soldiers that often manifest in despicable ways."

Bush started this war, but Obama doubled down on it. He owns this war now as much as Bush does, and we need more than some trite murmured deflection about bad apples. This ain't about bad apples. This is about an unwinnable war being fought with outdated strategies by soldiers given impossible directives during extended tours in dreadful conditions with insufficient resources and no end in sight, many of whom are only in the military because of relaxed standards on former disqualifiers like white supremacy.

We can keep shrugging at that institutional mayhem and pretending like this shit doesn't happen in a void, or we can get our shit together and start holding ourselves accountable as a nation, on which the president needs to lead the way.

But probably won't.

-------------------------

UPDATE: "We apologize for the distress these photos cause."—Colonel Thomas Collins in a statement on behalf of the United States Army. Missing the Fucking Point Award.

Sweet

I haven't barfed about some lingering fuckery care of the Bush administration in at least six seconds, so this news is RIGHT ON TIME!

Though The Kennedys had terrible luck finding a cable home, HBO is developing a new political mini-series that may be better received — and why wouldn't it, since it's about friendly, sympathetic former Vice-President Dick Cheney. The project — to be written by The West Wing's Rick Cleveland — will be based on Barton Gellman's book Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency and the Frontline documentary The Dark Side, and will chart the "single-minded pursuit of enhanced power for the Presidency [that] was unprecedented in the nation's history," say producers. Start your fantasy casting!

Obviously I hope Dick Cheney will agree to play himself, because I just can't picture anyone else shooting an old man in the face in the middle of a canned hunt that's essentially skeet shooting with the added benefit of actually murdering living things. It's like trying to remake Troll 2; sometimes you just can't improve on an original, you know?

But, failing Dick Cheney agreeing to star in this Dick Cheney masterpiece, I hope they cast Megatron.

Daily Dose of Cute

Dudley the greyhound lies on his big tartan pillow, just a mass of legs and silly ears

"What?"

lolsob

Digby: "If you liked how the health care negotiations went down...you're going to love the budget talks."

Remember when I was constantly accused of bad faith for suggesting that then-candidate Barack Obama wasn't a progressive...? LULZ GOOD TIMES.

Rights Fight, State

[Trigger warning for LGBT*Q phobia]

It would appear the fight over states' rights (as opposed to, say, human rights) cuts both ways.

Take the Montana Legislature (please).

Last year, elected officials in Missoula passed an inclusive anti-discrimination law. If you recall, Missoula residents engaged in a [TW] spirited discussion of the proposed ordinance.

Because of their distaste for personal and municipal autonomy (and yet...), Montana legislators have formulated a witty rejoinder: a state law banning the banning of discrimination. House Bill 516 would prohibit Montana cities (and towns!) from extending anti-discrimination ordinances to people whom the state legislature has not already graced with the honor of being anointed members of a protected class (for example, LGB and/or trans* people).

The Montana state Assembly has passed the bill, and it has already passed a Senate committee. It will come up on the Senate floor as soon as tomorrow.

I can't say it better than folks at the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (their letter to state Senators is [pdf] here.), so I'll merely offer a hardly handshake and "go to hell" to supporters of H. B. 516. My patience, it wears thin.

The GOP War on Uteri

[Trigger warning for hostility to agency and bodily autonomy.]

Here's some more bullshit: Nebraska and Ohio Latest States to Try to Pass Parental Consent Laws.

Also: Missouri House Backs Late-Term Abortion Restrictions.

And, as already mentioned in today's blogaround: Indiana Woman Who Attempted Suicide Charged with Feticide.

I am literally out of ways to say that this campaign against choice is just straight-up misogynist fuckery, so I'm just going to say again the thing that I will keep saying as long as the GOP continues its attack on people with uteri: This is nothing more than state-sponsored terrorism, in defense of an inherently violent ideology.

Related Reading: The Only Kind of Labor the Republicans Care About, by Echidne.

Assvertising, Part 134 in an Ongoing Series

Last night, I saw this Terminix commercial for termite control services and all I could do was laugh in abject horror:

Video Description: An ominous male narrator says in voiceover, over images of a monster destroying a basement, "If something hit one in thirty homes, causing up to $8,600 in damage, you'd expect it to look like this, not this." Video pans to images of unassuming termites. "Get to them before they get to you, with the Terminix Ultimate Protection Guarantee. Call or click today. Terminix."

The monstrous horror one would supposedly expect to be causing the damage caused by termites is a fleshy monster with a multi-tiered mouth that I can only describe as a Russian nesting doll of vagina dentatas.

(If you can't view the video, I've got a screen capture of it here.)

I'm sure Terminix's intent was to communicate to me that I should be terrified of termites, but the only message I got is that Terminix's advertising department appears to be run by an MRA who gets all his best ideas from his own nightmares.

Oh, CNN.

Actual CNN Headine: What in the World? Al Qaeda launches their version of Cosmo

This makes total sense, because magazine for ladies = Cosmo, amirite?

Also, can anyone spot the disconnect here:

But make no mistake, this magazine is still aimed at pointing women in the direction of supporting al Qaeda's terrorist agenda. The underlying theme of the publication is that women should be supporting the cause of the martyr and making it their main goal in life.

It now seems al Qaeda wants to make sure women look fashionable while doing it.

Lady terrorists: adorable!

Christ.

Question Austerity

Via Stellaa, this is a video of Mark Blyth, professor of International Political Economy at Brown University and faculty fellow at its Watson Institute for International Studies, explaining why austerity doesn't work as an economic policy, why it is not common sense, but nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that: "Austerity confuses virtue with vice."

[Transcript below.]

Transcript as made available by the Watson Institute: Austerity: It's big in Europe, and it's getting big here. Everybody and their prime minister has been talking about it. But what is it? Its' the "common sense" on how to pay for the massive increase in public debt caused by the financial crisis, mostly through the slashing of government services. First you take on debt, then you pay it off. Sounds simple right? Unfortunately, it's never that simple because Austerity confuses virtue with vice. Let me explain why.

Now that, supposedly, the worst of the crisis is over, there's debt everywhere – credit cards, mortgages, government debt. This is the part you know. But we need to remember how we got here. Two years ago the world's financial system exploded. The crisis blew a two trillion dollar hole in financial space-time. And collectively, the rich governments of the world spent, lent or guaranteed between five and fifty percent of their countries' annual product saving the banks. Given this, you might think that a period of Austerity is a good idea. But to see why it's not, you have to think about the world as a series of balance sheets – I know – stay with me. Whether you are a person, a household, a firm, or a state, you have assets and liabilities – a balance sheet.

Before the crisis in 2008, everyone took on a lot of debt. Back then it made sense for many of us to take on debt. For example, the bottom 40 percent of the US income distribution hasn't had a real wage increase since 1979. Really – that's true. Corporates, especially banks, did the same, but they did so to make money rather than to pay the bills. It's called leverage – which is pretty much debt seen from a different perspective. "Levering up" is a little like going "double or nothing" in blackjack. If you've taken on debt from a mortgage, you hope your house will increase in value. If you think there's a high chance the value will increase, you might go double or nothing and take on a bigger mortgage. But like black jack, there is always the risk of losing. So the banks created mountains of debt. They levered up — twenty, thirty times. It was like they had pushed in all their black jack chips, but each chip was just an IOU. So when it all went wrong governments felt they had to step in and bail them out because they had become 'too big to fail.'

This is where the balance sheet problem comes in and why the common sense of Austerity is not so simple. If you are levered-up – in debt – and your assets lose value - your house or your housing derivatives portfolio, if you're a bank - your balance sheet, as a whole, is now 'underwater.' When this happens, whether you are a corporate treasurer or a single mom, if you've got cash coming in you'll want to pay down the debt to bring your balance sheet 'above water' rather than spend money, which means no one is spending. And that's when the government comes in.

If the whole private sector is 'deleveraging'—paying back debt — then government automatically 'levers up' to compensate. Tax revenue falls so the deficit increases, unemployment benefits kick in, and public consumption takes the place of private consumption. Now make no mistake - the problem is debt – there is too much of it across the board – and we need to clean those public and those private balance sheets. But all these pieces are connected – if the public sector cleans its balance sheet at the same time as the private sector, then the whole economy craters.

It's called a fallacy of composition - what's good for any one household or firm or even state is a disaster if all try it at once. So why then have most of the governments of the world decided to do exactly this, and all at the same time?

Remember that two trillion dollar hole in space-time? The answer is that someone has to pay for it and no one, especially the banks, wants to. So governments either have to increase taxes – difficult – or slash services – easier – especially when the policy has the common sense ring of virtue about it - 'Austerity' – the pain after the party.

But here's the kicker – "the hangover" of Austerity is not going to be felt same across the income distribution. Earlier this year, the forum for the governments of the world's most economically developed states, the Group of 20, called for "growth friendly fiscal consolidation" – which, like a unicorn with bag of magic salt, is a nice idea but is pretty much bullshit, precisely because this 'consolidation' doesn't hit everyone in the same way.

Remember those folks in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution that didn't really benefit from the financial boom – all they got was debt and the illusion of prosperity? They're the ones that actually use government services, those services that about to be so 'virtuously' consolidated. Those at the top end of the income distribution, those who made the mess in the first place, don't.

So where does this "common sense virtue" of Austerity leave us? It leaves us in a cycle where those at the bottom end of the income distribution pay for those at the top with the same stagnant and skewed incomes that now buy less, in a more unequal and unstable economy. There's a term for this – class politics – and it usually ends badly. This 'common sense' of Austerity - of reducing public debt all at once through slashing services—involves a question of equity — of who pays and who doesn't. Those who made this mess won't, while those who already paid for it through the bailout will pay again through Austerity. This is why Austerity is not common sense, it's a nonsense – and a dangerous one at that.

Monday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, publishers of the upcoming memoir My Overton Hangover, by Deeky W. Gashlycrumb.

Recommended Reading:

Monica: [TW for transphobia] Post Op Transpeople Denied Entry Into Egypt

Resistance: [TW for racism] 15 Minutes Almost Up

Loryn: Race and Happiness: Black Women Need Each Other to Thrive

Robin: [TW for misogyny; self-harm] Woman Who Tried to Commit Suicide Now Charged With Feticide

Fannie: [TW for misogyny] On Men Opting Out Of Competition

Andy: [TW for homophobia] Petitioners Demanding Apple Remove 'Ex-Gay' App Near 100,000 as Scientist Cited in App Cries 'Foul'

Deeky: Nothin' But Dengars

Leave your links in comments...

Quote of the Day

"Truly, in the best sense of the word, what we're doing is progressive. ... We're doing something that's truly progressive and innovative."—Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R-Eally?!), explaining that his union-busting is actually totes progressive. Sure.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Tina Turner, "Come Together"

Did Maclean’s Fire All of Its Editors?

[Trigger warning for misogyny; "joking" about the perils of female sex work.]

If only a lack of editors, as opposed to a lack of decency, was the actual explanation for the incredible publication of a "humorous" piece by Scott Feschuk titled "Escort v. Hooker: How do they compare?" which was nothing but a side-by-side list "humorously" framing escorts as glamorous and hookers as garbage. (Example: An escort has a "Heart of gold," while a hooker has "Cirrhosis of liver.")

It was also one of the most-read pieces on the site, according to Maclean's front page, before the article was taken down a few moments ago:

screen cap of maclean's most-read section

Now the link just leads to a page saying "Page Not Found; Try These," with links to other articles, but no explanation or apology for what was once there.

You can view my screencap of the piece here. My favorite part is the advertising for their subscription at the end: "Get our thought-provoking opinions delivered." LOL sure.

I hope that Maclean's will do more than simply redact the piece and pretend like it never existed. Some accountability would be welcome.

Contact Maclean's.

[H/T to Eastsidekate, who got it from @emmamwoolley.]

Pawlenty 4 Prez

Former Minnesota Governor and Professional Misogynist, Racist, Homophobe, and Transphobe, i.e. Republican, Tim Pawlenty is reportedly going to announce the formation of an exploratory committee blah blah presidency blah blah 2012 blah blah later today. He's a relatively young and reasonably decent-looking straight white Christian man with a "red-hot smoking wife," who hates everyone who isn't exactly like him and has a pair of bootstraps tattooed on his ass or whatever, and he's got a big "it's his turn" momentum behind him, which is an important element of GOP king-making, so he's got a pretty good chance of securing the Republican nomination.

He joins Newt Gingrich, Professor of Hypocrisy at Moral Values University, as the second Republican to throw his hat in the ring.

FUN FACT! Former Minnesota Lt. Governor and Traffic Commissioner Carol Molnau was long regarded as Pawlenty's heir apparent until the horrible bridge collapse that happened on their watch. (Pawlenty, like all good Republicans, is very loyal: He continued to support Molnau and say she was "doing a good job" even after she admitted she hadn't been reading bridge reports: "Do I look at the bridge inspection reports? No. I really believe we have professionals trained to do that.") After Molnau's disgrace, Pawlenty's former staff supported virulently anti-gay Tom Emmer in the last election, a donation to whose candidacy created a shitstorm for Target.

[Recommended reading on Pawlenty: My Neighbor Is Kinda a Bigot; Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Tim Pawlenty, But Were Too Bored to Ask.]

Open Thread & News Round-Up: Libya

Here's some of what I've been reading this morning. Please feel welcome and encouraged to leave additional links in comments. Also: As we discuss our newest warventure, let's bear in mind that it's possible to support humanitarian intervention, while simultaneously being critical of the way this went down, and/or while simultaneously being cynical about whether this is ultimately a humanitarian intervention, etc. To avoid flamewars, let's be careful not to build strawmen against each other to simplify complex arguments. Thanks in advance for careful and respectful commenting.

Guardian—Gaddafi may become target of air strikes, Liam Fox admits: "America, France and Britain—the leaders of the coalition's air attacks on Libya—were struggling to maintain international support for their actions, as they faced stinging criticism about mission creep from the leader of the Arab League, as well as from China and Russia. Critics claimed that the coalition of the willing may have been acting disproportionately and had come perilously close to making Gaddafi's departure an explicit goal of UN policy."

CNN—Coalition targets Gadhafi compound: "Airstrikes Sunday in the heart of Moammar Gadhafi's Tripoli compound had a military objective but also no doubt brought a message of allied resolve to the Libyan leader's doorstep. A coalition military official confirmed to CNN that the compound was targeted because it contains capabilities to exercise command and control over Libyan forces. The coalition's goal is to degrade Gadhafi's military capabilities."

New York Times—Allies Target Qaddafi’s Ground Forces as Libyan Rebels Regroup: "American and European militaries intensified their barrage of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces by air and sea on Sunday, as the mission moved beyond taking away his ability to use Libyan airspace, to obliterating his hold on the ground as well, allied officials said. Rebel forces, battered and routed by loyalist fighters just the day before, began to regroup in the east as allied warplanes destroyed dozens of government armored vehicles near the rebel capital, Benghazi, leaving a field of burned wreckage along the coastal road to the city. By nightfall, the rebels had pressed almost 40 miles back west toward the strategic crossroads city of Ajdabiya, witnesses and rebel forces said. And they seemed to consolidate control of Benghazi despite heavy fighting there against loyalist forces on Saturday."

Washington Post—Arab League condemns broad Western bombing campaign in Libya: "The Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, deplored the broad scope of the U.S.-European bombing campaign in Libya and said Sunday that he would call a league meeting to reconsider Arab approval of the Western military intervention. Moussa said the Arab League’s approval of a no-fly zone on March 12 was based on a desire to prevent Moammar Gaddafi’s air force from attacking civilians and was not designed to endorse the intense bombing and missile attacks — including on Tripoli, the capital, and on Libyan ground forces — whose images have filled Arab television screens for two days."

Josh Marshall at TPM—Just a Bad, Bad Idea: "A week ago a relatively limited intervention probably could have sealed the rebels' victory, preventing a reeling Qaddafi from fully mobilizing his heavy armaments. But where do we expect to get from this now? It's not clear to me how the best case scenario can be anything more than our maintaining a safe haven in Benghazi for the people who were about to be crushed because they'd participated in a failed rebellion. So Qaddafi reclaims his rule over all of Libya except this one city which has no government or apparent hope of anything better than permanent limbo. Where do we go with that?"

James Fallows at The Atlantic—On Libya: 'What Happens Then?':

The most predictable failure in modern American military policy has been the reluctance to ask, And what happens then? We invade Iraq to push Saddam Hussein from power. Good. What happens then? Obama increases our commitment in Afghanistan and says that "success" depends on the formation of a legitimate, honest Afghan government on a certain timetable. The deadline passes. What happens then?

...Launching air strikes is the easiest, most exciting, and most dependably successful stage of a modern war, from the US / Western perspective. TV coverage is wall-to-wall and awestruck. The tech advantages are all on our side. Few Americans, or none at all, are hurt. It takes a while to see who is hurt on the ground.

But after this spectacular first stage of air war, what happens then? If the airstrikes persuade Qaddafi and his forces just to quit, great! But what if they don't? What happens when a bomb lands in the "wrong" place? As one inevitably will. When Arab League supporters of the effort see emerging "flaws" and "abuses" in its execution? As they will. When the fighting goes on and the casualties mount up and a commitment meant to be "days, not weeks" cannot "decently" be abandoned, after mere days, with so many lives newly at stake? When the French, the Brits, and other allies reach the end of their military resources -- or their domestic support -- and more of the work naturally shifts to the country with more weapons than the rest of the world combined?

Justin Elliot at Salon—The "coalition" has no clothes:

An emphatic part of the White House messaging about the bombing in Libya is that the operation is truly international in character.

But it's quickly becoming clear that the bombing campaign -- at least so far -- is almost entirely an American operation, albeit one that has been packaged to give it an international look. It's a dissonance that brings back memories of George W. Bush's much-mocked "coalition of the willing."

...NBC Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski today knocked down the talk that what is going on militarily is a "huge coalition effort." Here's what he said in a remarkable segment this morning:

"Despite the White House attempts to make this look like it's a huge coalition effort -- obviously it required coalition political support -- but for now the U.S. military is not only in the lead but conducting almost all military operations, with only minor participation from the French, as you mentioned, even British fighters over night. There's a U.S. commander. And even this morning I talked to senior military officials, when I asked them how soon will the U.S. turn over the command to the coalition -- and the indication is the U.S. military is in no hurry to do that."

Oh dear.

Open Thread

Hosted by His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz.