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Post by Fingerplucked on Mar 31, 2011 6:38:21 GMT -5
Jon Lee Anderson from the New Yorker was on CNN last night. He's in Libya, and answering some of the questions about who the rebels are. www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2011/04/04/110404taco_talk_andersonThe big shocker is that he says there are fewer than 1,000 rebels. They're not trained, they're just typical Libyans. When fired upon, they run because they have no other strategy. And there's no reason to think that they're Al Qaeda - there is a small percentage of bearded, Qaeda-looking guys, but they're not leading the effort and they keep pretty quiet.
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Post by omaha on Mar 31, 2011 6:46:42 GMT -5
So we are going through all this to save 1000 guys?
That can't be right.
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Post by Fingerplucked on Mar 31, 2011 6:57:51 GMT -5
Jeff, that came through on a "breaking news" format. I was pretty shocked. And I had the same thought - why are we doing this for just 1000 rebels?
Right now it appears that the New Yorker knows more than the CIA does. Maybe the New Yorker is wrong. Maybe not.
I'm sticking with what I said yesterday - no guns, no training, and no boots on the ground. The CIA doesn't count because they're just about everywhere, other than maybe Libya.
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Post by sidheguitarmichael on Mar 31, 2011 10:29:30 GMT -5
So we are going through all this to save 1000 guys? That can't be right. I had a teacher that once commented that something like 3 percent of residents participated in the American revolution. Not sure I actually have a point here, I just though that was an interesting stat.
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Post by Fingerplucked on Mar 31, 2011 10:38:12 GMT -5
We have a couple history buffs here who might be able to back that up.
I do know that in the early days it was a very small number of rebels, and they were hiding, acting covertly.
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Post by aquaduct on Mar 31, 2011 10:50:57 GMT -5
I do know that in the early days it was a very small number of rebels, and they were hiding, acting covertly. Right. And 8 years and 25,000 American deaths later, it was over. The historical parallels aren't looking promising right now.
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Post by Fingerplucked on Mar 31, 2011 11:03:12 GMT -5
I don't know if it's a parallel or not. We started off small. Libya is apparently starting off small. (We'll see what the CIA has to say about that.)
I don't think anyone's claiming that Libya's movement will grow and turn out to be as successful as ours. Likewise, I don't see anything to suggest that it couldn't happen. All that's up to Libya to decide.
In the meantime, I hope we stay put and don't get any more involved and stay on plan.
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Post by sidheguitarmichael on Mar 31, 2011 11:09:17 GMT -5
The historical parallels were bad from the start. Bottom line, we need to be cautious about this world police thing. How'd that work out for the British, anyways?
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Post by Fingerplucked on Mar 31, 2011 11:20:04 GMT -5
But the British weren't policing us, we were a British colony, up until Glenn Beck's great great great great great grandfather said, "Hey, if somebody invents television, and somebody else invents Lipton tea, we could make millions!"
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Post by millring on Mar 31, 2011 11:34:01 GMT -5
How'd that work out for the British, anyways? They RULED the music world in the 60s.
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Post by Doug on Mar 31, 2011 12:42:19 GMT -5
How'd that work out for the British, anyways? They RULED the music world in the 60s. Yeah but we had the King.
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Post by Fingerplucked on Mar 31, 2011 13:02:03 GMT -5
Tuns out the King was made in Japan. I looked. He had a little tag on his left leg.
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Post by Chesapeake on Mar 31, 2011 13:09:50 GMT -5
So we are going through all this to save 1000 guys? That can't be right. I had a teacher that once commented that something like 3 percent of residents participated in the American revolution. Not sure I actually have a point here, I just though that was an interesting stat. That might be about right. The ones who did the actual fighting in George Washington's army were a small fraction of the population. (Proud to say an ancestor was one of them.)
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2011 17:22:32 GMT -5
Well, the percentage of any population that fights in a particular war is usually very small. I know that the vast majority of the US population at the time were ambivilant, and the number of people inclined to revolt was about the same as the number of torries, but BOTH were pretty small groups, with the silent majority disinterested. Revolutionary sentiment was strongest amongst the influential merchants and traders on the east coast who controlled printing presses. The relationship between the British government and the Hudson Bay trading company was thought to work to the commercial disadvantage of the local elite. British efforts against the rebels tended to swing some of the ambivilant majority. Indian tribes were split, or indifferent, but predominantly pro-British. The wiser indians realized that, with the crown out of the way, the local boys would likely go on a genocidal rampage against them. (I doubt many of them even thought about it, either-- just a dust-up between crazy white guys).
It's a much bigger topic of discussion now than it was when it happened-- in both the UK and the US. Correspondence from average people in that era indicate surprisingly few references to it. The Brits obviously had other things to think about, and so did the majority of folks living here.
A pretty interesting history of the time was written by a fellow named Charles Beard. Think it was called "An Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution", or something like that.
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Post by Chesapeake on Mar 31, 2011 18:24:12 GMT -5
I believe the elites were indeed the most eager to break ties with Britain for reasons having to do with both economics and pride, but my reading is that a broad swath of colonial society was angry about the tax demands - which, was we all know, were enacted by a parliament that had no American representatives. These were proud British citizens who expected all the rights enjoyed by those in Britian. Having no represenation (other than the fiction that their interests were being looked after by the King) made them feel second-class. Also, by trying to tighten up enforcement of existing tax laws, the government was materially harming the colonial way of life. The mob who that British detachment fired on in Boston wasn't all made up of rich merchants.
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Post by millring on Mar 31, 2011 18:29:43 GMT -5
'merican: It was about taxation without representation. brit: So, how you liking it with representation?
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Post by patrick on Mar 31, 2011 18:35:22 GMT -5
It wasn't simply about taxation per se. The specific tax they were protesting at the Boston Tea Party was specifically to put American tea merchants out of business in favor of British merchants. There were some industries that America simply was forbidden from engaging in. The colonists were expected to sell low-value raw goods to Britain and import high-value goods back, which is the classic definition of a colony.
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Post by millring on Mar 31, 2011 18:38:09 GMT -5
There were some industries that America simply was forbidden from engaging in. Including pottery.
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Post by Cornflake on Mar 31, 2011 21:10:25 GMT -5
In the last few years I've read a fair amount about the American Revolution. I found myself thinking that I might have been a Tory. Like most human events (our civil war comes to my mind), it gets ambiguous when you look closely.
But my ancestors, as far as I know, were revolutionaries. Benjamin French was one. Got one grandmother into the DAR. The other grandmother was also in it and I don't know who did the trick for her.
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Post by Chesapeake on Mar 31, 2011 22:16:20 GMT -5
I believe scholars disagree as to whether the Navigation Acts favored the colonies or the mother country. Certainly the colonies benefitted to the extent that they had guaranteed markets for their exports. In any case, it wasn't until the British started trying to get payback for all the money they'd spent in ridding the French from the continent during the French and Indian War that serious discontent began brewing. I don't think there is any disagreement that the taxation issue was the major underlying economic cause for the revolution, though there were other issues, including the colonists' refusal to accept the role of second-class British citizens.
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