Reply #22: Let's hope not.

[Igel]

The problem is whether or not the "revolutionary leaders" are 100% reliable. Look at it this way: We hear that Gaddafi's folk shelled Misrata. We heard that they bombed at least one ambulance. We hear that in fighting civilians are killed.

We don't hear if the fighting was before or after the ceasefire. If after, it's bad. If before, well, there was a revolution on and nobody guarantees every revolution 100% chance of a blood-free success. The "revolutionary leaders" have no interest in clarifying the issue unless it all occurred after the ceasefire was to start. It also matters if the lines of communication are open--there were reports of jamming Libyan military communication. "This is General Gaddafi. I hearby order you (hiss, hiss, crackle crackle)."

We don't hear if the ambulance was targeted or just hit. Artillery bombardments aren't errorless. (Unless the way we think of NATO bombardments. In Afghanistan, we know that they're quite fallible and kill scores. In Libya, we know they're infallible and won't harm a soul, just Libyan soldiers.)

We don't hear if the bombardment was because of activity by the revolutionaries or not. In Ajdabiyah, were the rebels trying to take territory after the ceasefire? They're not going to say. They're the good guys.

In many respects it might be like Kosova. For months the press was full of reports of police stations taken over and policemen killed. Of villages being under essentially martial law and of ethnic minorities being terrorized. Of the government losing control. Then the government decided to go in and everybody assumed, because *they* didn't read about the dead policemen and the like ahead of time that the Kosovars were utterly innocent. Even after the fact, a number of "progressives" found excuses for ethnic cleansing, funneling arms into groups destabilizing neighboring territories, running drugs, etc. It was important to cleanse the news stream to ensure that we were supporting the right side--and the fact that the side we supported wasn't ratting themselves out was taken as evidence that they were good, clean, upright, and virtous. Even the war crimes trials got less notice. (It was the same in Bosnia. There was a minor massacre of Serbs by Bosnian Muslims that was cited as one of the reasons for the lack of mercy at Srebrenica. Nobody noticed the allusion; therefore the allusion wasn't acknowledged. Bad acts by our buddies are forgiveable; bad acts by our enemies are magnified to crimes against humanity.)