By Steve Hynd
In an hour or two, the UNSC will approve a resolution on Libya (PDF) that allows all necessary measures short of occupation forces, but up to and including airstrikes on ground targets, in support of rebel forces in Libya. It's expected to pass 10-1 with Brazil, India, China, Germany and Russia abstaining.
[Update: and the vote passed exactly as expected.]
So we have yet another Western war in a Moslem nation. Kevin Drum quips: " I sure hope this works."
At a cost of up to $300 million a week, or $1.2 billion a month, I'm sure a lot of people are hoping that too - even if no-one's wondering how we'll pay the debt.
The resolution comes at the urging of the UK, France and US.
Washington's ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said on Wednesday that a no-fly zone would have only a limited use, and that the Obama administration was working "very hard" to pass a new resolution, which would authorise the use of aerial bombing of Libyan tanks and heavy artillery.
The UN security council is planning to vote on the resolution late on Thursday.
After a day of intensive negotiation in New York, Rice told reporters: "We need to be prepared to contemplate steps that include, but perhaps go beyond, a no-fly zone at this point, as the situation on the ground has evolved, and as a no-fly zone has inherent limitations in terms of protection of civilians at immediate risk."
It's amazing to me how many liberal foreign policy pundits are jumping on the "do something" bandwagon and are gung-ho for this new foreign adventure. It's as if they've learned nothing from the decade long quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq. Still, I'm sure many will be against the war later when the unintended consequences of a rush to intervene bite them in the ass.
So sure, we're about to be involved in a new shooting war that involves US and other NATO warplanes dropping bombs on a Moslem country and its citizens. What could go wrong?
Well, Gadaffi has already said that in the event of such an attack he'll consider military and civilian targets throughout the Mediterranean fair game, including maritime and civilian air traffic. And beyond the actual warfare part, no-one seems to have any plans for if Gadaffi hangs on, or for when the war escalates - as it inevitably will, just like Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan - or for the aftermath when the Pottery Barn "we broke it, we fix it" theory will call for a new round of nation-building and counter-insurgency. (No, Matilda, not even the Libyan rebels will "greet us as liberators.)
It seems to me that this new war ignores every single lesson of the recent past. There is no clear goal. There is no exit plan. The American public opposes it. However tarted-up the coalition is, in the end, we all know that this will become a US responsibility. And we do know that if we break it, we own it, do we not?
If we are prepared to do this in Libya, why not in Congo, where the casualties and brutality have been immensely greater? Or Zimbabwe?
This is such a bad idea.
Funny to see Sullivan, aka Master gun-ho for Iraq, worried about the Libya likely fiasco. I listened to Paddy Ashdown yesterday try to make a case for this latest humanitarian game. His 1st criteria re when am intervention, aka the R2P thingy, was that the people of the state asked for an intervention. I wondered how that might be determined though the interviewer didn't push him to be specific I would have been amused to hear his twaddle. In other words I'm not sure the Libya revolt is supported by "all the people", I'm assuming he would pull some such claptrap out of his bag. I did wonder that maybe Ashdown had access to the outcome of a secret vote though. My point is not to defend this "on again off again" Western buddy in Libya but to mock the modern imperialistic clowns and their various excuses for saving their new found downtrodden - I'd use the "N-word" but likely to offend the let's re-write Mark Twain crew.
ReplyDeleteRe: my reference to the "N" word and not really at all related to any ME fiasco I've a copy of Pierre Valli�s' "N�es blancs d'Am�que" on 1 of my upstairs bookshelves. I wonder if any publisher today would have the balls of McClelland and Stewart to publish it with it's real translation "White Niggers of America". It was offensive in '71 but meant to be, eh and the, not quite at the time, awful word n�e or nigger had an impact on us whites, no matter our mother tongue.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Niggers_of_America