Obama and Libya

I have to admit that the first time I heard about what was happening in Libya I immediately jumped onto the "No-Fly Zone" bandwagon because I thought, like many others, that the Libyan rebels are fighting against Qaddafi to gain their freedom and establish a democratic republic. I heavily criticized Obama for his inaction, mainly because I wanted to the no-fly zone and I wanted him to act (now my criticism still stands but for another reason). However, as some have pointed out we don't know who the rebels really are nor do we know their true intentions. There are some reports that the rebels are Al Qaeda, and Qaddafi has been been a strong opponent of Al Qaeda. So, are we and the other Coalition nations helping Al Qaeda take out their enemy? So while I think that we should be involved in this situation due to the attacks on civilians I am concerned that we may be helping our sworn enemy, Al Qaeda terrorists, and if this happens then they will gain a large foothold in the Middle East and have plenty of oil money to work with. So, at this point I am a little conflicted. What is worse; a Qaddafi-control Libya or an Al Qaeda-control Libya (based upon the assumption that the rebels are Al Qaeda).

Something else to think about and something that history has shown to be true. A no-fly zone will not end the rule of Qaddafi anymore than the no-fly zone over Iraq took out Saddam. Ground troops were necessary to take out Saddam, and the same holds true for Qaddafi. Also, remember Kosovo under Clinton under the 90s; Clinton imposed a no-fly zone over but the Islamic/Christian genocide still continued. Imagine if during WWII, the Allies simply set-up a no-fly zone over German held territory...? I don't think Hitler would step down nor would he stop the Holocaust.
I am not arguing that we should not have a no-fly zone; my argument is not based on that premise, but my premise is that we shouldn't think that a no-fly zone will be the end-all strategy here. While the rebels are showing signs of gaining strength since the no-fly zone was enacted, they're still out-gunned on the ground, and if this war goes full-scale, the rebels are likely to lose given the might of Libyans Army. What then? Are Coalition forces going to come to their aid? Are they going to arm the rebels, analogously to the way the CIA armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in their fight against the USSR? At this point, no Coalition nation has said that they would support the rebels with weapons or ground forces, and if the rebels in the end are defeated and massacred, the UN's action and every nation that is involved is going to look extremely bad. Not to mention the fact that Muslims will have an even greater reason to hate the West because we came to the aid of the rebels but when they needed it the most, the West didn't do anything.

So, if we really want any sort of change in Libya, Qaddafi will have to be removed, and history shows that this can only be done if Qaddafi steps down (which he's not and said so), he's assassinated by someone in his regime, rebel forces win, or Coalition forces invade and remove him. If Qaddafi is still in power after all of this, it will be a huge blow to the Coalition forces, and Obama will have huge amounts of 'egg on his face', and this whole operation is for not.

What's the end game? Unfortunately, no one knows at this point, and the leaders in the Coalition have not given a clear message to what their end game. Making things worse is that not even the Obama Administration has a consistent message about what our end game is.

So, my criticism of Obama is essential his inaction, even though now I'm conflicted about a no-fly zone. Obama did nothing, but gave speeches saying that he was watching Qaddafi and eventually said he had to go, and yet did nothing. He showed no leadership and definitely not the strength of a leader. Instead he hid behind rhetoric. Obama could have been a world leader by calling a meeting a world leaders whenever the Libyan crisis began, but instead he stood idly by. Obama did nothing until Hillary Clinton called him on the carpet and the French stepped up and took action, and ever since then he hasn't really said much of anything. I think that if Clinton hadn't got on his case Obama would have done nothing and that is my primary criticism. Thus far Obama hasn't shown any leadership, no strength, only cowardice and rhetoric. Am I saying that he should have gone into this situation "guns blazing"? Not necessarily; there is a planning period whenever options and strategy need to be considered, but up to this point, all we've heard, "All options are all the table," which is about as vague as you can get. Where's a definite, "This is what we're doing, this is how we're going to do it, and here's the end game"? Nothing like this has been stated. Even while planning strength can be shown.

The world has looked to the US ever since WWII for leadership in such matters, and we've been silent. We look weak and this will only embolden our enemies.

Omniscience, Prophesy, and Freewill

Introduction
God’s divine attribute of omniscience has been seen by some to be incompatible with human freewill. This puzzle can be summed up with the following (and well-known) question, “If God knows everything that will happen and God is never wrong, then how can human agents make autonomous decisions?” Some have argued that since God really knows everything and is never wrong then humans cannot make autonomous decisions because in some sense God’s omniscience causally determines human events so that all events happen in accordance with what He already knows. I believe this argument rested upon a mistake; this argument rests upon the mistake of conflating foreknowledge of an event with controlling the prior events that bring that it about. The fact that God knows that a certain event e will occur at time t does not entail that God is controlling all events prior to e’s occurrence to bring e about. Given His omniscience God knew all of the events that would occur to bring about e, but again this does not entail that God controlled all of the events leading up to e’s occurrence, it simply entails that God knew e was going to occur and how e was going to be brought about. God’s omniscience does not causally determine human actions. However, this solution may not work for instances involving prophecy, i.e., instances where God announces that an event is going to happen, whatever that event may happen to be. For example, if God says that a certain event e is going to happen in Bob’s life and God knows this is going to happen and God is never wrong, how can Bob freely choose to bring about e’s occurrence? It appears, prima facie, that no matter what Bob chooses to do e is going to happen. It appears that Bob’s freewill has been negated. One could argue that God is not controlling Bob’s autonomy actions whenever He declared that e is going to occur, and, therefore, Bob still can make the autonomy choice to bring about e. I find this answer dubious because, again prima facie, it appears that Bob could not choose not to bring about e because God said that e is going to happen and thus his choices in a certain sense were determined. I think we are faced with a genuine antinomy here.
In this essay I will be making the following assumptions:
1. God exists
2. God is omniscient
3. Libertarian autonomy, i.e., humans possess freewill
The structure of this essay will be as follows. First I will discuss dissolving the incompatibility of God’s omniscience and human autonomy by arguing that even though God knows what will occur in every human’s life this does not entail that God is controlling human action and, therefore, human freewill is not negated by God’s omniscience. Secondly I will discuss human autonomy and prophesy and attempt to dissolve this puzzle by arguing that when it comes to prophecies, the occurrence of prophetic events is still determined by human actions and so even though God may announce that a certain event is going to occur, the occurrence of that event is contingent upon human action.