"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Mar 21, 2011

Outcomes IV

Anyone want to wager on how long the NATO forces will remain in newly liberated/partitioned Libya, to battle entrenched AQ type terrorists?

Or to train local forces to defend their newly imposed friendship with the US and Europe?

I'll kick off the bidding: indefinitely.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

The base-building will begin as soon as we can squeeze some KBR/Shaw Group poindexters in with enough safety to let them examine the territory and imagine where they'd build.

See: Iraq, 2003-onward.

fish said...

I will go with "a while."

Anonymous said...

Until the Libyans can take care of themselves defined as sell oil, do what they're told, kill Islamists, turn in their weapons, elect the right leaders, the usual metrics.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

I'm going to take the under.

Idea being that staying in Afghanistan and Iraq (not to mention all the other military donations to the plutocracy) plus rising oil prices will bust us rather quickly.

Remember how the collapse of the Soviet Union was a total surprise to the neoconmen?

Same thing.
~

K. Ron Silkwood said...

Or to take photos with dead civilians as trophies?

Anonymous said...

What NATO forces are on the ground? Is this pure speculation like American cable 'news'?

Jack Crow said...

Anonymous,

None yet. Is that germane to the wager? Aren't we discussing the conceivable future, not the present?

I don't know about you, but I thought wagers were sort of predicated on future and as yet undetermined outcomes, n'est-ce pas?

Jack Crow said...

under,

I don't think we're close to precipitous collapse, yet. Soon enough, but not close.

I'll also just sort of want you to be wrong about that. My kids just ain't old enough, yet.

Jack Crow said...

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/03/21/boots_on_the_ground

via

http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2011/03/great-big-high-explosive-envelope-pushed-on-top-of-dictator.html

Randal Graves said...

At least until soylent green.