The Challenge of Libya: Where Will it End?

[tekisui]

Source: The Economist

THE spectacle of American, British and French missiles pulverising an Arab and Muslim country at the dead of night arouses a sense of foreboding. Such ventures have too often begun with good intentions and naive overconfidence, as oil-rich despots see their armour crumple and burn beneath superior Western technology. Within weeks, though, vainglory turns into a costly and bloody quagmire.

Yet nobody could accuse Barack Obama and his allies, chiefly Britain’s David Cameron and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, of overconfidence in attacking Libya on March 19th. It is hard to think of a military enterprise that has been conceived in so much doubt and anxiety. What if Muammar Qaddafi sits out the raids in his bunker? What if Libya is partitioned? What if, chastened by news footage of dead women and children in a Tripoli market, the coalition starts to fall apart? What if many of the eastern Libyans whom the outside world is protecting turn out to sympathise with al-Qaeda? What if they go on to behave as murderously as the colonel and his paid killers?

The answers to those questions start with the case for intervening in Libya. Western sceptics complain that they have “no dog in this fight”. Libyans, they say, should be left to submit to the colonel or kill him off, as best they can.

That view is too parochial. Colonel Qaddafi is the Arab world’s most violent despot. In one day in 1996 his men killed 1,270 prisoners in a Tripoli jail. He has backed terrorism and assassinated dissidents. Western leaders were right to have given him a chance to turn a new leaf after 2003, when he renounced his nuclear programme. But when peaceful protesters marched for change a few weeks ago he shot them—seemingly with relish. Whatever the course of the coming weeks and months, do not forget that the colonel and his sons had vowed to slaughter the people of Tobruk and Benghazi, house by house. In the narrowest of senses, a mission that many said was pointless and too late has already chalked up one success.

more: http://www.economist.com/node/18441153

[Lasher]

1. Libya? I'm still wondering when we'll get out of Germany.

It's been 66 years now since Germany surrendered. So I'm hoping any day now they'll wrap things up and get those 50,000 or so soldiers out of there.

[TomClash]

2. Hmmm

The comments are better than the article.

The part about defining the mission is horrible. Dictator's timetables have nothing to do with the goal of the incursion.

[Kennah]

3. With a Mission Accomplished banner?

[Turborama]

4. K&R

Thanks for sharing.