Washington has a strange new bird — the Libya Hawk.
It has been seen alighting in potentially dangerous numbers on the Right side of the political spectrum, neoconservative wavelength. It appears to be a mutation of the War Hawk and the Democracy Hawk. Its throaty warble tells us there is some imaginary but overriding interest in taking sides in Libya, offing Qaddafi and imposing a no-fly-zone on behalf of “the rebels.”
I stand transfixed, Tippi-Hedrin-like.
Thankfully, the interpid Andy McCarthy has a targeted response that I hope scares them all away.
“I am against intervention in Libya,” Andy writes.
Amen, and here’s why.
Meanwhile, speaking of Hollywood, the New York Times reports on the perfectly noxiou$ nexu$ of Qaddafi and Tinsel Town that has arisen in recent years since, to borrow Andy’s phrase, GWBush laundered Qaddafi as a statesmen, “much like Clinton did with Arafat.” (Heck of a job, George and Bill.) The Times reports:
Los Angeles — Things have gotten chilly here for Natural Selection, the film production company backed by Col. Muammar el-Qaddai’s son Saadi.
Who knew?
On its office line, a recorded message has been the only answer for much of the last week.
Outside the company’s suite on Sunset Boulevard — across the street from the Hustler store and under a billboard promoting the Jerry Weintraub documentary “His Way” — a parking spot identified as Natural Selection’s is blocked by a battered white van with four flat tires. (An attendant’s notice taped to the back is dated Feb. 2.)
And Mathew Beckerman, the producer who made a splash in Variety last year with word that he had rounded up $100 million in financing for the company from Mr. Qaddafi and others, is suddenly getting a very cold shoulder.
What took them so long?!
Qadaffi Jr and Mr, Hollywood: Happier days
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The article further notes that pop stars who have performed for Qaddafi are busy defunding themselves of the filthy lucre.
Wonder what Gen. Petraeus’s thesis advisor Stephen Walt will do?
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein writes (via Andrew Bostom):
As regular readers know, I’ve been highly critical of Professor Stephen Walt for his shoddy coauthored “Israel Lobby” book.
One response of my critics has been along the lines of “how dare an ignoramus like you criticize a great foreign policy expert like Stephen Walt.”
Call me an ignoramus if you will, but at least I didn’t accept funding- assumedly, directly or indirectly, from the Libyan government – for a trip to speak to Libya’s Economic Development Board, and then write a puff piece about my visit. (It’s not clear whether Walt simply accepted travel funding, which is in itself not objectionable if you, like Michael Moynihan, then refrain from writing a puff piece, or if Walt, like some prominent academic invitees to Libya, accepted a large “consulting fee”.)
One fun irony: Walt, after fulminating about the American domestic “Israel Lobby”, becoming, perhaps unwittingly, a part of the “Libya Lobby” sponsored by the Libyan government.
Added irony bonus: Walt, a leading critic of the friendship between the U.S. and Israel, concludes his piece with the hope “that the United States and Libya continue to nurture and build a constructive relationship.” Because, you know, Israel is so much nastier than Qaddafi’s Libya.
A final word from McCarthy:
We should be having as little to do with Islamic countries as practicality allows, not getting ourselves ever more entangled — at least absent compelling national-security reasons. Such reasons are not evident in Libya.
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