Saturday 16 April 2011

Why Libya?

It seems the failure to maintain military or diplomatic credibility over the Libya intervention continues to promote a sense of incredulity. It would verge on the amusing if only people weren’t suffering in the middle of it.

I had serious reservations over that issue from the outset. Not that I have any reason to support Gaddafi, of course; it’s just that I’m innately suspicious about the motives behind the military alliance. Lights flash and bells ring when I see America, Britain, France and the Arab League joining forces to ‘subdue a tyrant,’ especially when the tyrants in the Arab League have their own rebellions to contend with. I think I’m right in believing that the US in particular has a proven track record of supporting tyrant dictators when it suited American interests, and we didn’t send NATO off to bomb the Chinese when they were committing atrocities in Tibet, did we?

4 comments:

Maria Sondule said...

Obama gave a speech about how we must "prevent genocide," so I think that's the official reason we're going to war here. Just another excuse to give the military more bloated funds and such. I want to help the libyans, of course, but we can't really afford to do that right now...

JJ said...

The question remains, Maria. Genocide has been going on down the centuries all over the place. So why only Libya? As for whether you can afford it, doesn't that depend on how America decides to use its wealth?

Maria Sondule said...

Exactly. Although it's not bad that we want to stop genocide here, even if we let it go on somewhere else.
And what wealth? We're owned by China. :/

JJ said...

China is it? We used to say we were owned by America. In fact, I suspect we're all owned by whoever controls the bankers.