Expressing grave concern at the deteriorating situation, the escalation of violence, and the heavy civilian casualties…
Considering that the widespread and systematic attacks currently taking place in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya against the civilian population may amount to crimes against humanity...
The hypocrisy of the Libyan situation continues to irk me beyond what any sane person would regard as a normal level. This fustration was heightened further this morning when I continued to read about the ongoings in the Ivory Coast.
So here we have a corrupt-and-megalomaniac-but-still-incumbent President refusing to yield to the normal rules of the democratic process which imply that losing a supposedly fair election means you (the incumbent) should hand power to the winner. Silly of us therefore to expect Mr Gbagbo (incumbent) to follow those principles and allow Mr Ouattara to take office. Instead we have a situation where the formers henchmen and die hard republican guard continue to slaughter hundreds of the latter's supporters.
How is this relevant to the Libyan situation? Well the decided lack of military intervention by Western powers is rather conspicuous given all the reasons they gave us for intervening in Libya.
I sat there the other night listening to David Cameron harp on about ''an obligation to enforcing international law that provides for the protection of civilians of any country who are been slaughtered by their own....'' and if that wasn't enough he then droned on about the ''...despotic and terrorist like characteristics of the Libyan Government''.
A few questions then popped into my rather small brain.
1. If the protection of citizens in any given country from their potential slaughter by their own, is a criteria for military intervention then what of the Rwanda situation in the 1990's ? Why did it take so long to get involved in the Serbian-Croatian battle? Where has the military intervention being in Myanmar ? Zimbabwe? Tibet? And god forbid I should mention it...China. Add to this any country in West Africa in the past decade and of course now Ivory Coast. What of Syria, Bahrain, Yemen...can we expect those Eurofighter planes gleefully bombing the crap out of Libya to do a fly by those last three countries on their way home to maintain some consistency in this foreign policy that we have all voted for ? Are we what?
Am more likely to get two consecutive sunny days in London.
2. ''..despotic and terrorist like characteristics blah blah blah....'' Where is the surprise here? Gadaffi has being this and everything else that you might surmise as representative of evil since he came to power. Yet there in the recesses of my mind is Tony Blair shaking hands with him 8 years ago and welcoming him back into the fold as BP signed an oil contract.
3. Who exactly are the rebels? I for one have not heard a single identity being bandied around as the leader of this supposed group of ''freedom fighters''. I can't help liken it to the Afghanistan situation of the 1980's. Arm the lesser enemy (Taleban) to the teeth to fight the greater evil (Mr Vodka) and discover yourself fighting the lesser enemy somewhere down the years, firing at you with the very guns you gave them.
4. No fly zone ? Well they certainly achieved that. Why then the need to continue to bomb the country to a pancake?
5. Cameron was on the wires today expressing ''...concerns about the duration of the current battle and ongoing loss of lives''. If he and the French midget hadn't wanted to stoke their ego's this whole debacle would have been dealt with by now and the status quo in Libya restored some time ago. Not an ideal status quo by any stretch of the imagination but hey the devil you know is surely better than the one you don't?
You'd think that surely we learnt that from our excursion to Iraq?
But finishing on a positive note it has bought one item to light that I had been struggling to discover since their vote into office.
Obama's foreign policy? It's clear his policy is not to have one.
Cameron's foreign policy is renamed '' Oil policy ''
Sarkozy's is '' I might wear wedges in my shoes but I''ll show em '' policy.
But hey that's another chapter.
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