Libya, in for a penny in for a pound? Or not

Libya, in for a penny in for a pound? Or not

From time to time on my "urban" blog, I feel the need to comment on current affairs. And its hard not to, giving all the immense tides of change taking place in the world today, both in the human and the natural world. Change is spreading like a wildfire over the Middle East and its jumping from one country to another like a fire jumping from tree to tree...or house to house. Earlier I wrote about Cairo saying first that a 'new day's gonna come' and later, 'a new day DID come'. Well, now I'm not so sure. In the last few days it has come to light that women have been subjected to 'virginity tests' where women are taken into a room, told to disrobe and with open windows and doors where soldiers are taking photos, checked by a white robed doctor to see if they are still a virgin. If not, they are charged with prostitution. This was told to and verified by Amnesty International. Also, Ramy Essam, the singer ramping all the people up at Tahrir Square, was recently taken, after stopping there, by soldiers to the the Egyptian museum and tortured. However, he does not blame the military as a whole but 'bad apples'. I hope he's right.

To look at all sides of an issue is not, as some have suggested, 'negitive', but actually honest, clear and real. Will the Egyptian Revolution be hijacked by entities like the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Queda, a military junta? Or will the aspirations of an idealistic youth who organized and executed via social networking sites, 'Revolution 101', win the day? I think everyone hopes for the later, and I was one of the idealistic cheering them on, but now, one has a bit of trepidation.

Now, to Libya. Here is my take. First of all the numbers. So far this action has cost the United States $500 million. To view this in perspective, the US spent a half a billion dollars in ONE week, the same week (and I know this may be a sidebar) that Congress was crowing and chest beating about de-funding NPR of the $5 million a year it gets. We would not do this unless our national interest was threatened. Realpolitik dictates that a nation acts on its own self interest, dispite what the hype on the media might claim. At the end of the day a nation's actions are dictated by its own self-interest. And this interest is really two fold. Oil and morality. Libyan oil production has slowed to a trickle and the 'trickle down effect' is trickling down to American price at the pump at a time when a fragile recovery is just beginning from the worst recession since the Great Depression. Though it was not mentioned in President Obama's speech vis a vie Libya, believe me, it underlies the bedrock of all actions in the Middle East. One dollar increase in the price of a barrel of oil translates into one penny at the pump. The second is morality. If we had waited just one more day, Gadhafi would have overrun Benghazi and the slaughter would have begun. Thousands of fleeing refugees would be pouring into the before mentioned Egypt and into Europe, both allys and one, Egypt, already reeling under its own revolution. And young people begging for help from America would be left twisting in the wind.

Back to the money. I do not believe, contrary to the powers stating that getting, killing, whatever you want to call it, Gadhafi, is not their plan. It is. We will not spend this kind of money simply to let this mafiosi stay on his throne, dispite all sorts of promises he may give for a cease fire or reform et al. So I think we're in for a pound. There will not be a 12 year 'no fly zone' like there was in Iraq. The president said 'Gadhafi must go' and he will. Which begs the question, as before-what comes next? Who are the rebels and what will they do? This we don't know, as we don't in Egypt.

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