The Middle East---Still

What does it say about this country that we are now involved in three wars and the large majority of Americans do not have it affect their daily lives. What does it say that military deaths are a small footnote to the news, if they are mentioned at all.

Now we hear that the situation in Libya might be at a stalemate. Are we shocked? We and the UN have done just enough to help the rebels to keep them viable while not enough to help them have a realistic chance to win. I never understood the idea that we had a viable interest in Libya ( if we did why would we have allowed Quadaffi to stay in power for 30 years. So now we are in the position that if Quadaffi stays in power we will have lost face by putting ourselves on the side of the rebels. One can bet also that the rebels find a way to blame the Western forces that did not do enough to help them. Obama did many of the things he has criticized his predecessor for. There was no clear mission in Libya, no clear idea of what victory was, we were not even sure as a declared policy that regime change was a must.

So now we have Syria killing protesters almost daily. We have mourners being killed at funerals. In short Syria is doing nothing less than what the Libyan leaders were doing. To be sure I am not advocating we act in Syria. I do think that if we were going to act in Libya or Syria a much better argument could be made that Syria, being close to Israel and Iraq was much more important to our interests.

Was Libya a situation where Obama was bullied by the Republicans or did he feel this was a place where he could flex his muscles and be sure of victory. If this was the case it did not work and there is no victory in Libya.

At a family gathering I was at recently we were talking about a new school we had been in, this was the new Cony High school, and how nice it was. My Aunt said imagine how many schools we could build for the cost of all these wars for just one day. Sadly she is correct.

Obama new better. His speech about Libya was a meandering, longwinded message that still defined nothing. We still know nothing. I do not that we ever really will.