Derrick Crowe is a Political Director at Brave New Foundation, a five-year veteran of Capitol Hill, and contribuor at Huffington Post, MichaelMoore.com and AlterNet. We spoke with him about the Libya war (and it is a war now)
With Steve Hynd of Newshoggers, Josh Mull of Firedoglake and Rethink Afghanistan and myself.
Some highlights.
We all agreed the extremely fast onset of the bombing was highly suspicious. The rebels had barely started fighting when they started calling for a no-fly zone. They broke into storehouses, stole munitions, and turned what was a nonviolent uprising into a violent one. It’s almost like they were expecting military help would be arriving quickly.
Derrick thought the rebels made a huge strategic blunder by going to violence. They picked a fight before they were ready and moved to violence way too fast. They should have stuck with nonviolence, and used the ensuing government repression against the regime. But by picking up arms, they allowed Qadaffi to use his. There are 1,000 rebels who have military training. The government has 120,000 soldiers. As Saul Alinksy said about the Black Panthers in the later 1960’s, it is sheer idiocy to say all power grows out of the barrel of a gun when the other side has all the guns.
The supposed allies in NATO are already squabbling about what the resolution permits them to do. What was supposed to be a quick little war to establish humanitarian intervention as a basic principle (and to restore their own tarnished reputations as well) has now turned into an apparent quagmire.
Congress has to approve the increased spending for this when they return next week. Derrick advises for everyone to email their representatives in House now voicing opposition to the wars and to stress that we are already in two expensive, pointless wars and can scarely afford another one.
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