danieldwilliam | Entries tagged with libya

A couple of quick thoughts on the situation in Libya. I don’t necessarily subscribe whole heartedly to these views and they are certainly not my settled position after thinking deeply about them.
( More to provoke some reaction and discussion )

I presume anyone enthusiastically supporting our military intervention in Libya is prepared for fuel duty to not be cut (think of it as your long term investment in establishing democratic markets in – and they had better be, or else – grateful client states.)

I’m opening a book on how long we’ll be burning jet fuel over the Libyan dessert. Bets are being taken in months and years, not days and weeks.

I look forward to a whole bunch of rough-and-tumble enabled North Africans sitting about, excluded from power, with nothing to do with their stack of AK-47’s and RPG’s in about five years. Where will they go? What will they do? Answers on a postcard please.

First person to mention the Spanish Civil War wins a prize.

Whilst we are debated the rightness of targeting* Gadaffi I note that he targeted our own leadership when he funded the IRA with their habit of blowing up Conservative Party conferences.

I also note that it appears to be not okay to deliberately target* a specific named individual if he is in charge and responsible but killing and maiming innocent civilians negligently is okay so long as it is regrettable** and they have no chance of surviving and becoming a nuclear armed nutcase.

If we are actually going to kill Gadaffi could we use the appropriate tool for the job and send the SAS? Libya is after all where they were born to operate.

Have we found Ossama Bin Laden yet? Ditto Lord Lucan? We may well then struggle to actually target Gadaffi.

Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, yadda, yadda, yadda***

But also China, where I’m not sure we got as far as regretting their use of tanks to crush, both figuratively and literally, democratic protest movements. Perhaps it’s okay because the Chinese weren’t using tanks made in a marginal constituency****. And also South Africa where our behaviour towards the Boers was boorish.

What are the Israelis up to now everyone is looking at the other end of the Med? I don’t know but I bet they are having a lovely time.

On the subject of human shields and the dastardly connivance of Libyan citizens thereto to protect their beloved leader I note the example of the German soldiers and citizens in Berlin in 1945. I also note Chuchhill’s decision to bomb Berlin in 1940 in the expectation of triggering retaliation raids on London and diverting Luftwaffe resources from bombing militarily valuable airfields in Kent.

I note that the RAF and other European air-forces have an opportunity to try out their new Typhoon in a relatively risk free environment.

*Euphemism alert – smashing his body into pieces with high explosives launched from a fast moving jet at high altitude, with or without the assistance of SAS spotters who perhaps ought not to be there.

** spin alert – hopefully not captured live on Al Jeezera or CNN and God forbid we actually kill a BBC journalist.

*** The situation in Yadda, Yadda, capital of the little known Golf State of the Emirship of Yadda^ (36 holes in the desert) is much under-reported and presumably something will be done about it just as soon as the Guardian locate it on the map, point it out to the US Marines and we work out if the oil will be cheaper or not once we bomb the living bejeessus out of the them.

**** There are no marginal seats in the Glorious People’s Republic of China, they use First Past the Post.

^Motto of Yadda International Airways: Yadda is the Air way to the Fairway in the Fair Oasis.