The Gary Null Blog

Progressive Radio Network, April 1, 2011

“I call them (the Libyan rebels) freedom fighters… now they are retreating… after all that, does the world community stand by and watch the freedom fighters get crushed? The president [Barak Obama] pledged that there would be no US troops on the ground.. but today we learned that CIA operatives are on the ground, so what does that all mean? Still it looks like the freedom fighters only shot for survival at this point is a real injection of military hardware that they say they desperately need… whether or not we arm rebels, freedom fighters, whatever you want to call them,  is a very hard decision. But I think we have to do it… it is a moral decision at this point… we have a state, New Hampshire, (with the motto) ‘live free or die.’ What do you think that Libyan freedom fighter wants?”  - Ed Schultz, MSNBC, March 30, 2011

What happens when we extend the logic and beliefs of Ed Schultz and others, including Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, who accept Obama’s rationale for intervening militarily in Libya, which mirror those of the neocons and personalities like O’Reilly and Hannity on the radical right?  For the reason that Gaddafi was responsible for the bombing of the Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland, killing 259 passengers, we are being told that arming, funding and training any opposition factions in Libya is perfectly justified. But then, is it not also true by that same logic that any civilians or innocent bystanders that were killed, tortured or disappeared as a direct result of America’s interventions in other nations are also justified to attack Americans and US interests globally?  It is this old adage of “an eye for an eye” reactionary posturing that repeatedly leads us into multiple disasters, wars, revolutions, regime changes and a trail of failed foreign policies.