No Fly Zone
- Thread starter Rockslinger
- Start date
US Public is very tentative about the US participating in a NFZ:
http://people-press.org/report/715/
OTB
http://people-press.org/report/715/
OTB
The old arab dictum: my friend's friend is my friend; my enemies enemy is my friend - is playing out .......
If western forces attacked Libya, he (Ghadaffy) would join forces with the radical Islamists. "We will ally ourselves with al Qaeda and declare holy war," he (Ghadaffy) said.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/42084554
Also - National Post reports today:
"Turkey, the only muslim NATO member and an important regional player, came out against involvement by the Western alliance as it sought to urge Col. Gaddafi toward a peaceful outcome of the crisis......................"We have seen from other examples that foreign interventions, especially military interventions, only deepen the problem," said Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister. "Therefore, we see a NATO military intervention in another country as extremely unbeneficial and, moreover, are concerned that it could create dangerous results."
So to sum it up:
Our (western) useful idiots want our planes to protect those being brutally killed, as a result of their clear desire for freedom, by their own people (and co-religionists).
The power in the region, Turkey, by its' actions, acquiesces to the killing of muslims by muslims and dissembles the truth to justify no action by the co-religionists - let them be killed seems to be the decision !
Now let us examine how Turkey under their neo-islamist government and Iran under their fascist theocracy are edging closer in hteir cooperation......neither Turkey (majority Sunni) nor Iran (majority Shia) are Arab.......but they are all muslims ............ members of the religion of peace !
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain, or freed a human soul. - Mark Twain
If western forces attacked Libya, he (Ghadaffy) would join forces with the radical Islamists. "We will ally ourselves with al Qaeda and declare holy war," he (Ghadaffy) said.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/42084554
Also - National Post reports today:
"Turkey, the only muslim NATO member and an important regional player, came out against involvement by the Western alliance as it sought to urge Col. Gaddafi toward a peaceful outcome of the crisis......................"We have seen from other examples that foreign interventions, especially military interventions, only deepen the problem," said Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister. "Therefore, we see a NATO military intervention in another country as extremely unbeneficial and, moreover, are concerned that it could create dangerous results."
So to sum it up:
Our (western) useful idiots want our planes to protect those being brutally killed, as a result of their clear desire for freedom, by their own people (and co-religionists).
The power in the region, Turkey, by its' actions, acquiesces to the killing of muslims by muslims and dissembles the truth to justify no action by the co-religionists - let them be killed seems to be the decision !
Now let us examine how Turkey under their neo-islamist government and Iran under their fascist theocracy are edging closer in hteir cooperation......neither Turkey (majority Sunni) nor Iran (majority Shia) are Arab.......but they are all muslims ............ members of the religion of peace !
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain, or freed a human soul. - Mark Twain
Isn't the vast majority of money spent by the American military going to other Americans? How many U.S. aircraft carriers are "Made in China"?
Arab states should take the lead in formulating an international response to the situation in Libya, and Russia will base its policy on their views, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20110315/163020665.html
http://en.rian.ru/world/20110315/163020665.html
If my memory serves me right, the MIC NEVER outsource their manufacturing bases overseas for obvious reasons.
Pretty mind boggling when the libertards and teabaggers advocate draconian defense cuts, like jumping up for joy to dismantle their remaining manufacturing bases and eliminate good paying jobs simultaneously.
Even Obama nowadays is in MIC pocket. No?
Depending on context, maybe not so difficult. Noticing that a carrier group is approaching your shores is significantly easier than hunting all over the Pacific for it.
The missile the Chinese are developing alters its trajectory repeatedly on re-entry so that it is hard for the defender to target it and shoot it down. Shooting down a missile is hard--all current systems plot the trajectory of the missile and then then launch something to intercept it. For a missile that changes course the interceptor has to change course too, which requires a lot more sophistication then current anti-missile systems employ.
It's unclear how well the Chinese have got this working YET, but in theory it's a huge threat to a carrier, and sooner or later they will get it working well enough. It's a land based missile, though, with limited range. That makes it a threat only to carriers that stray too close to China--but potentially a game changer if the Americans wanted to intervene in events in, say, Taiwan.
Most of China's defense spending is aimed at eventually denying the Americans access to the area around China, and not really useful for projecting force further from home. Their "easy to track" attack subs for example may be easy to track, but only if you already know where they are, or they're moving from place to place. If they're hiding around the coastal area of China, basically lying in wait as your carrier groups sails by, and you miss one... well you have a problem. That makes them significant assets to defend a coastline, but not so useful for going out and hunting a carrier in the middle of the ocean, say.
Clearly we make our own hardware, I'm sure we spend billions in other countries (one has to wonder what the food bill alone is for 250k US troops in Europe). It's not cheap, just effective.
OTB
The Chinese are far too smart to take a shot at a carrier, one - they'd likely never hit it, two - the retaliation would be immense, three - they would have no way to respond.
OTB
No way to respond other than nuking the USA back into the stone ages, but you're right, it would be suicidal for both sides to start that war, and the Chinese are unlikely to want to start it. I don't think the Chinese would have any desire to attack a carrier group. What they are more likely interested in is a defensive capability so that a carrier group doesn't attack them. The nice thing about having an array of missiles that MIGHT sink a carrier is the admiral on the carrier is likely to keep well away from them.
At the end of the day the relative military might of two nations like China and the USA is more likely to inform diplomacy than to generate an actual war. It's all about possibilities.
How tough the US is willing to talk over China's treatment of Taiwan, for example, depends on how likely the Chinese are to be able to sink a carrier sent to intervene.
If the Chinese MIGHT have the ability to sink a carrier the likely outcome is NOT likely to be brinkmanship. The likely outcome is that the US will soften its line on Taiwan slightly to make the possibility of conflict more remote. It's also likely to influence politics in Taiwan too--the stronger China's ability to ward off a US attack, the less likely the Taiwanese are to count on America, and the more likely the Taiwanese are to seek a negotiated settlement with Beijing.
In this view the Taiwanese would be smart to negotiate with Beijing NOW, and reach some sort of deal while they still have the upper hand in the dispute. The Chinese are eventually going to build a capability to ward off the Americans--it's only a matter of time, maybe 10 years, maybe 20, maybe 50, but it will surely happen.
But for the time being the Chinese missile is untested, their attack subs MIGHT be able to ambush a carrier, but might not--so the Taiwanese would be negotiating from a position of strength, a position that is likely to deteriorate over the next several decades.
How tough the US is willing to talk over China's treatment of Taiwan, for example, depends on how likely the Chinese are to be able to sink a carrier sent to intervene.
If the Chinese MIGHT have the ability to sink a carrier the likely outcome is NOT likely to be brinkmanship. The likely outcome is that the US will soften its line on Taiwan slightly to make the possibility of conflict more remote. It's also likely to influence politics in Taiwan too--the stronger China's ability to ward off a US attack, the less likely the Taiwanese are to count on America, and the more likely the Taiwanese are to seek a negotiated settlement with Beijing.
In this view the Taiwanese would be smart to negotiate with Beijing NOW, and reach some sort of deal while they still have the upper hand in the dispute. The Chinese are eventually going to build a capability to ward off the Americans--it's only a matter of time, maybe 10 years, maybe 20, maybe 50, but it will surely happen.
But for the time being the Chinese missile is untested, their attack subs MIGHT be able to ambush a carrier, but might not--so the Taiwanese would be negotiating from a position of strength, a position that is likely to deteriorate over the next several decades.
Perhaps Taiwan is hoping the totalitarian regime loses it's power before Taiwan loses it's leverage... in any case, for the foreseeable future the cost of taking Taiwan by force is too high so it won't happen.
OTB
Didn't Saudi Arabia and probably along with a few other countries
including Japan covered the expense of operation desert storm. If
I remember correctly the operation actually did not cost the US
(financially) anything significant. On a side note I seem to remember
being told that the Saudi militants were so scared of Saddam they
hide behind the US lines in combat.
Perhaps Obama can take a lesson from the senior president Bush
and go around begging money from the Arabs to fund a no-fly
zone operation.
The Arabs can keep their money. Glad we are sitting this one out. The Arabs have to learn to resolve their problems themselves.
