Are there any good Qaddafi-themed poop jokes?

I feel constipated. Not physically, but creatively. It's not quite writers block, in fact it's almost the opposite. There are so many things that I am poised to write about, but all of them are waiting for a trigger, an event, a green light. There are rumblings, ominous portents, but everything is still half-baked.

I blame Qaddafi.

The message that Egypt and Tunisia sent to the rest of the Arab world was, "This can happen anywhere"

For the past two months, Qaddafi has been trying to send a very different message, "Not here, it can't"

Thankfully, this has not stemmed the flow of uprisings nor has it broken the will of protesters in Bahrain, Syria, or Yemen. Nonetheless, we didn’t get to see a dictator step down this past month.

However, instead of getting one in March, we may get two (or three) in April.

It looks like the endgame is in place for the old president of Cote d'Ivoire. Despite his best efforts, his army has evaporated out from underneath him. This is, presumably, in no small part due to the fact that by most estimates two thirds of the military voted for his opponent in the election. The new president and his supporters have retaken most of the country, and Gbagbo is conspicuously absent.

Yeah, I know, Cote d'Ivoire isn't part of the Middle East, but if you go back and look at the very first posts that I wrote for this blog, you'll notice that the post-election conflict was one of the issues that motivated me to start writing this. Certainly, the circumstances are quite different, but watching a despot fail in his attempts to retain power in the face of a populace whose patience has expired is nonetheless inspiring.

I know my predictions for Qaddafi's departure have so far been overly optimistic, but Gbagbo will very likely be gone by next week.

As far as Qaddafi goes, it is only a matter of time before he reaches the end of his rope. His failure to capture the eastern cities has deprived his forces of the additional fuel supplies they were hoping to seize, thereby mobility severely. Air-strikes on weapons depots have also drastically impacted his military capacity. His attempt to reinforce his weakened forces with additional mercenaries may buy him a few more days, but I think it is unlikely that he will retain control for more than another week. (I've been wrong before, but I think the end is in sight at last.)

Perhaps, once brother leader has been removed from his position this damnable constipation will be relieved.

Qaddafi, you are an impacted stool impeding the natural functions of democracy’s colon. I look forward to seeing you flushed down the toilet of history.

Why exactly are we involved in Libya?

It’s pretty simple, really – we’re there because it’s easy.

Easy is relative, of course, but Libya as a target for intervention has a lot going for it. A comically distinct leader with a history of deliberate regional destabilization and brutality, a wave of democracy sweeping across its North African neighbors, a defiant but outgunned domestic uprising, an eager coalition of international partners, a clear humanitarian disaster in the making, the unprecedented approval of the Arab League to take action against one of their own members, and the fact that whole business can be conducted via NATO’s 60-year-old military alliance using our allies’ airbases in the Mediterranean.

It’s just too easy.

We don’t even need to put troops on the ground, just fighter jets, gunships, cruise missiles, and drones.

We get to use up ordnance that was reaching its expiration date, give our pilots a little bit of combat practice, and generally make ourselves feel better about the Middle East and our role in it.

Jon Stewart explained this last night in terms of a ledger sheet and, grim as it may sound, there is an undeniable truth to the reality of the situation. The benefits of our actions must be weighed against their costs. It’s ugly, but it’s true.

Are we doing the right thing in Libya? I believe the answer to be yes.
Why then, are we not doing the right thing in places like Cote d’Ivoire, Bahrain or Syria?

Because it’s a whole lot more difficult in those places.

Syria and Bahrain are tangled messes that require a delicate negotiation of allies, potential allies, neighbors, repercussions, and regional instability that could severely impact our interests in the area.

Whereas Bahrain and Syria have close ties to other Middle East countries, Libya has steadily angered and alienated everyone else in the Arab-speaking world. (This is one of the main reasons he has given so much money to African regimes and the African Union - Qaddafi has spent billions on dictators across Africa in order to ensure their support for his various machinations. )

Right now Cote d’Ivoire is in the early stages of a civil war. How many of their neighboring countries are clamoring for our help to mitigate the thousands of fleeing refugees? What has the AU done to stop that conflict (or any other, for that matter)? Almost nothing – instead they rail against intervention. Gbagbo, the former president of Cote d’Ivoire, refuses to leave office despite having lost the election. Instead he is unleashing his military on the supporters of his opponent Outtara. Simultaneously he has vigorously supported Gaddafi and denounced any and all western intervention. (Interesting sidenote – in addition to his links to Gaddafi, Gbagbo has strong ties to some big name conservative Evangelical Christian movers and shakers in the US).

Furthermore, the scale of brutality in Bahrain and Syria hasn’t yet begun to approach what we’ve seen in Libya (though Syria should be watched closely – this Friday after evening prayers things will almost certainly get interesting). Getting NATO or Arab league approval for an action in Syria isn’t going to happen, and unilateral American intervention in the middle east went out with GWB.

In the case of Bahrain we have to weigh our actions within the context of our own involvement (the US 5th Fleet is docked in Bahrain) and the proximity of Iran, the entanglement of Saudi Arabia, and the fact that we’d be hard-pressed to achieve anything truly constructive by getting involved. It’s also not near Europe, and it’ll have to get a lot worse before Europeans would even think of getting involved. (And really, why would Europeans get involved? It doesn’t really impact them in the way that Libya does.)

So. American intervention in Libya. Easy.

Everywhere else. Messy and problematic.