In “Another war based in theory”, Columnist Gil Smart opines:
“… This has nothing to do with the poor oppressed civilians in Gadhafi’s Libya and their likely fate had we left Crazy Moammar to his own devices. That’s the story we proffer for public consumption, but as with our last war in Iraq, the justification is a noble, convenient lie. If we were truly worried about despots mowing down their own people in the Arab world we would have intervened in Bahrain and Yemen. We haven’t and we won’t, but Libya is another matter, due to its size, due — yes — to its oil, and most importantly, due to the symbolism of the rebellion that was about to be crushed before we the ‘allies’ rushed in.”…
“So why is it so important for us to get on the side of ‘the people’ in Libya? I’ll give you one guess. It involves the estimated 41 billion barrels in Libyan oil reserves, some of the lightest, sweetest, easiest-to-extract crude left on the planet. Some 80 percent of it lies in eastern Libya, near Benghazi — where, what a coincidence, the rebels were ready to make their last stand before we decided to help them out….”
WATCHDOG: In response to a question in Parliament, Prime Minister David Cameron observed to the effect “Although we cannot do the right thing all of the time, that should not prevent us from doing the right thing some of the time.”
Whoever is in charge of Lybia will be as eager as Moammar Gaddafi to sell oil. However, had Gaddafi been allowed to remain in office through brutalizing his people, it would have likely caused other African and Mid-East strong men to take similar repressive measures, possibly even rolling back burgeoning democracy in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere.
World Government may have been a utopian dream, but democracies working in coalitions may over time prove to be a means of thwarting rogue elements. This has been the case of the European Union and even the United Nations, although they have no military forces to enforce any mandates. By jingo, perhaps the US’s judicious handling of the Lybia situation in cooperation with African and European nations may prove to be an important step towards a less cruel world.
