Friday News Roundup - Hour 2
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-03-11/friday-news-roundup-hour-2
Libyan leader Gadhafi draws on hoards of cash to extend the fight against opposition rebels. Sectarian violence in Egypt grows. And a new U.N. report shows an increase of civilian casualties in Afghanistan. A panel of journalists joins Diane for analysis of the week's top international news stories.
Guests
Yochi Dreazen
senior national security correspondent, National Journal magazine.
Susan Glasser
editor-in-chief, Foreign Policy.
Jonathan Landay
senior national security and intelligence correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers.
Comments
Please familiarize yourself with our Code of Conduct and Terms of Use before posting your comments.
The dangers from the damaged nuclear plant in northern Japan
(with limited information coming out) rival the 8.1 earthquake itself at a time when new nuclear plants are being considered in the United States. We have not solved the waste processing or disposal problems and uranium availability is past peak. Thus even more pressure to control oilfields in the Middle East.
The incredible arrogance of Diane and others to believe NPR is so important! I notice a lot reference to Fox News as if this is the only other news source. I don't think you complainers even watch Fox News and only repeat what you here other liberals say about it. You must be incredibly jealous of the success of fox news and your vile contempt for things for which you disagree only uncovers you have indeed become what you claim to hate.
1. What's wrong with a reverse oil embargo? Just refuse to buy Libyan oil until he leaves. We developed a fair regime to defeat black-market oil in the case of Iraq. This is something the Europeans can do almost by themselves.
2. The next time US intelligence services predict a big event will be the first time.
Monte - You're right in one sense. A lot of us don't watch Fox anymore. I don't. I got rid of my TV 10 years ago and Fox was a factor in doing so.
I thrive on a good political argument and am often persuaded opposing beliefs. We are luck to have a variety of points of views presented and not shouted down on NPR. No one thrives in a stream of rudeness and cavalier dismissal of facts. Fox, in that respect, is truly offensive.
Most people eventually catch on to the distance Fox maintains from facts and from any respect for democratic process and values. NPR is far from perfect, but it knows a fact when it sees one, is not terrified of reality, and above all NPR avoids venom in its presentations of news and views.
Your guest is consistantly over emphasizing "islamist" rebels...he seems to forget that they took up arms as a result of Gadaffi's agression against political protests. The US cannot put troops on the ground nor can the europeans...the only option is to provide military support to the rebels. The alternative is likely to be a stalemate..i.e civil war or a Gadaffi victory which will likely lead to a slaughter of the rebels.
I say let's reinstate the draft, only this time, in the Bible Belt only. The South richly deserves to have first dibs on fighting for their religious beliefs against Al Qaeda, the Mujahadeen, and the Taliban, etc.
Personally, I look at the Middle East and I see nothing but reasons to go atheist. Certainly the US has no business fighting there. Let the Israelis fight their own wars.
Who are the Libyan Rebels? There most likely are radical elements amongst them, but let's take a bigger view of things. A wiki leaks cable called "Die Hard In Derna" featured the following subheading: "PERCEIVED U.S. SUPPORT FOR QADHAFI [after his international "rehabilitation"] FUELS DESIRE TO FIGHT IN IRAQ." The diplomatic cable pointed to economic neglect, political repression, a lack of social outlets, and a general lack of dignity as the causes of radical strains in Libya.
Even though Qaddafi is mounting counter-attacks, which horse is ultimately the wrong one to back? Do we really want to allow Qaddafi to regain control of Eastern Libya, repress it even further, and thereby feed a new wave of radical Islamists? When will we drop this kind of short-sightedness? I think there is both a moral and a strategic argument to take prudent measures to undermine Qaddafi and support the rebels.
There is a lot we can do short of putting boots on the ground (which would be counter-productive, and even short of a "no-fly zone"). We can jam Qaddafi's communications and share our intelligence capabilities, amongst other measures.
Wiki Leaks Cable:
http://213.251.145.96/cable/2008/06/08TRIPOLI430.html
Usually you try to ensure balance by having people present different point of views but not today on the Lybian revolution. Your guests and particularly the gentleman named "Yoki" (sorry if I mispelled his name) seemed intent on discreting the Lybian revolutionary. Time and again he tried to associate the revolutionaries with Al Qaeda in a subtle way. He says we do not know who the people opposing Gaddafi are. He even said that they tend to be easily radicalized. I wonder where he got this information. Well, the people fighting the monster Gaddafi are women, children, man yound and old. I would say 99.99 percent of the population are trying to remove Gaddafi. This is who they are. Does it matter who they are? We know Gaddafi (a genocidal maniac) and this should be enough.
This being said I must say that your show is one of the best on the radio and that I love listening to it whenever I can.
LittlePlant: You are correct to be puzzled. Here's facts.
Yochi Dreazen, about 34 years of age, has been a longtime war correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. He has really paid his journalism dues since editing a high school paper at the Ida Crown academy (prep school) in Chicago. Mr. Dreazen is obviously Jewish. I do not hold this against him but believe his heritage and his religious affiliation color his point of view.
No journalist is purely objective and neither is Yochi.
With a predictable pov, though, a journalist becomes a valuable tool of particular interests. Mr. Dreazen is pro-corporate in most cases, supports a hard military line in the mid-east oil region and defends Israeli policy and interests in most instances. I think this is no surprise but because Mr. Dreazen is honest in his perspective he retains his integrity. Even a reporter is entitled to be a person with values.
Maybe Yochi needs to visit Libya and see the civilian opponents and victims of Gaddifi firsthand. He is not old enough to have witnessed the Jewish struggle to take Palestine in the 1940s. Maybe he should get with some Israeli grandparents to find out what they have in common with Libyan freedom fighters. Maybe then he would not seek stability and easy oil at the expense of common working people. All of us need to keep in mind the lessons Jews disseminate about how any people deprived of human rights and legal protections are ripe for persecution, dispossession and execution, even extermination. If Yochi's journalism matures in humanism and transcends religion he could someday become a great man, somewhat like the late Daniel Schorr.
Peaceful protests & political activism are laudable, societally-constructive tactics & ought to always be the first strategy utilized by persons or groups of persons attempting to bring about positive change of political, legal or bureaucratic structures...
But when 'peacefully protesting'/'peacefully agitating' persons (in this case, Libya's 'freedom fighters') are responded to with brutal, unnecessary violence- if the protesters have success as their objective- violence must be met with types of tactics that can win: even if this means using military measures...
When 'peacefully protesting'/'peacefully agitating' persons- whose objectives are reasonable & constructive (in this case, Libya's brave, commendable freedom fighters)- are responded to with brutal, unconscionable violence, those that have the ability to intervene- & that are being asked to intervene (by Libya's freedom fighters) but choose to stand by & do nothing, invite Libya's abusive-to-human-rights despotic, dictatorship model of governance to be spread to- and become more firmly entrenched in other countries....
Surely, the rights & legal guarantees which we in the developed world take for granted such as:
universal-suffrage democracy; human rights-based rule-of law; equal application of a country's laws to its residents/citizens regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, race, religion & creed; freedoms of speech, thought, association, expression, peaceful assembly & belief....
... are sufficiently worthy for NATO/western countries to fight for- or at least support the establishment of- in countries whose citizens are demanding such??
CONTINUED
UNITED KINGDOM's FORCES OUT OF AFGHANISTAN- INTO LIBYA!!
The UK could re-deploy its air and land-based military resources from Afghanistan to Libya- IE: from a country where there is very little expressed support for democracy and human rights-based rule-of-law to a country where the majority of its people are attempting to set up a universal-suffrage, democratic, human-rights-based rule-of-law state...
Libya's 'second city', freedom fighter controlled Benghazi, needs to be fortified with competent, well trained professionals to bolster defences manned by the largely untrained, 'volunteer' freedom fighters...
Farther west, Libya's freedom fighters need to retain foot-holds, to be kept in place until an offensive against the Gaddafi regime can be launched.
France and the UK could productively deploy their land, sea and air assets to assist Libya's freedom fighters retaining and fortifying cities and ports such as Ras Lanuf and Misrata...
The negative consequences down the road for the comfortable west for not deploying air- and if required: land-based military assets in Libya threaten to be be many times worse than intervening...
Waiting for the the UN Security Council to provide its endorsement of international/NATO intervention in Libya is in many ways like asking a business-license office in Zimbabwe to make a decision on issuing a business license based upon objectively-applied laws and policies: it doesn't happen!
Considering the extreme urgency* of the worsening Libya situation & the dire consequences for Libya's freedom fighters- as well as the west & the democracy + human rights movement generally- if the US, UK, France & allies do not militarily intervene in Libya: the U.N. and its dysfunctional processes ought to be ignored...
* "Fuel shortage looms for Libya":
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-libya-oil-20110312,0...
Roderick V. Louis
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Libya's commendable freedom fighters should not expect assistance from other middle eastern and North African countries
Why??
Libya's freedom fighters unequivocally expressed objectives are to live under human rights-based, rule of law democratic governance rather than continuing to live under a despotic dictatorship...
The region's countries with the biggest, best equipped militaries- such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt- have zero histories of functioning under human rights-based, rule of law democratic governance, and for decades have been dictatorships in which appalling human rights abuses were regular occurrences...
Why would Saudi Arabia's and Egypt's rulers (IE King Faud and military) support people in other countries who are attempting to set up governance models that they have uncontradicted, appalling histories of opposing, and occasionally- violently oppressing??
Roderick V. Louis
Vancouver, BC, Canada