Just like Donald Rumsfeld, there are some things I know I know and some things I don’t know that I know. I know that war is complex, and that when a dictator talks about showing his own people ‘no mercy’ there may well be a bloodbath.
So intervention in Libya might have been justified to save the lives of the rebels in Benghazi, but all last week I was wondering about what I didn’t know: why were Cameron and Sarkozy so very eager to impose a ‘No Fly Zone’?
I’d listened to the military experts and read column yards of military advice, and everyone in helmets said the same thing: that a ‘No Fly Zone’ was fairly pointless, because Gaddafi was moving his troops around on the ground, and even if and when he used helicopters for troop movements, a ‘No Fly Zone’ doesn’t actually allow you to shoot them down.
But as soon as I heard the phrase ‘by any means necessary’ being used in the new UN resolution, all became clear. They had never wanted a ‘No Fly Zone’. All they wanted was the idea of one, so that they could get a U.N. resolution passed, which allowed them to do whatever they wanted ‘legally’.
So now they’ve waded in with all the powerful speed, shocking ferocity and bloodlust that we have see so many times before. They have no idea what their endgame is because they never bother to think that far ahead. They didn’t finish in Afghanistan before they started in Iraq, and they didn’t finish there before they started in Libya. This colyoom suggests Yemen might well be next ...
My favourite bit of the war so far? That fabulous Pubic Relations exercise where the Royal Air Force said that they’d aborted a Tornado bombing mission over Libya when they’d received intelligence that there might be heavy civilian casualites. Oh my, how caring and compassionate the allied forces are. Why, I love them so much I could cuddle a cruise missile.
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