From TheHill.com:
Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday morning from Egypt, as they’ve been on a regional tour over the Presidents Day weeklong recess.”This is a real moment of choice for the international community,” Lieberman said of the bloody crisis in Libya, where dictator Moammar Gadhafi has had forces fire on protesters and deaths are estimated to have exceeded 1,000. “What we’re hearing here in Egypt is the Arab world is watching. Will the world stand by and let a leader like Moammar Gadhafi slaughter his own people?”Both senators welcomed the unilateral sanctions implemented by President Obama at the end of the week, but stressed that more needs to be done.
That would include recoznizing [sic] the provisional government that has taken control of the eastern part of the country and giving them the weapons to fight the armed mercenaries unleashed on demonstrators by Gadhafi.
[…]
“I would provide them with arms,” Lieberman said, adding that he understood “why the administation hesitated at the beginning but frankly I wish we had spoken out much earlier and clearer against the Gadhafi regime.”McCain said that the safety of U.S. citizens in Libya, cited as a White House reason for treading carefully, was a high priority, but “it’s not our only priority.”
“The British prime minister and French president were not hesitant and they have citizens in that part of the country,” he said. “America should lead.”
Sounds like he wants America to follow, not to lead. Britain and France are arming the Libyan opposition (I don’t know if they actually are doing that, but this is what McCain is implying), and so the United States should do the same?
What could possibly go wrong?
I see three possibilities here. Lieberman and McCain:
- are so stupid they don’t understand from past experience what a bad idea it is to support either anti-government rebels OR government forces with weapons and money in a volatile country like Libya.
- are insane — as in mentally unbalanced, psychologically impaired, etc. — and so cannot grasp the above point.
- are so in love with war, weapons, and violence that they may be very smart men and totally sane but simply don’t care about the consequences.
The third possibility, of course, suggests that these two men are evil — which I don’t want to believe, but may very well be true.
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