Nick Cohen has a piece in the Norwegian daily VG, which he helpfully translates for us here:
The war in Libya is destroying the illusions of Europe’s liberal middle class. Think back to how its spokesmen and women talked about international politics in an Oslo or London television studio until only a few months ago, and notice how everything they assumed to be true has turned out to be false.
They agreed that it was an outrageous breach of international law for America and her allies to overthrow Saddam Hussein – a far worse tyrant than Muammar Gaddafi, incidentally. Now they have a war that meets their demands of “legality,” we find it to be a cruel and dishonest campaign that cannot meet its objectives.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 authorised “all necessary measures” to protect Libyans from the threat of attack.
It all sounded so reasonable. Gaddafi is the world’s longest serving dictator who has subjected his population to 42 years of corruption, oppression and indoctrination. (Imagine having to repeat and pretend to respect for all your adult life the deranged ideas of Gaddafi’s Green Book, which Libyan children had to learn by rote, and you will get some idea of the humiliation he imposed on his people.)
When he threatened them with massacre, the UN had an anti-totalitarian duty to intervene.
But the UN’s legal authority is treacherous....
Unlike the EU, unfortunately, the United Nations is a club without membership rules. On the Security Council sits Russia, aptly described by the US State Department as a “mafia state,” and the representatives of the Chinese Communist Party. Such are the arbiters of international law. And to get them to agree to the action in Libya, Europe, the US and their Arab supporters had to promise not to overthrow the regime or put soldiers on the ground to support the use of air power. We are now in the absurd situation where we can offer the rebels air support but not the military units they need to win the war. We cannot target the dictator personally, because his life must be protected, while the wretched people of Misurata suffer and die. We may have to live with the fact that Gaddafi will survive – and by clinging on to power give hope to the region’s embattled dictators and depress the morale of their opponents. What is the point of a humanitarian intervention that prolongs the conflict and leaves the abuser of human rights in charge? None that I can see. But apparently it is legal.
Christopher Hitchens was making a similar point last week:
In effect, this half-baked approach leaves the initiative with Qaddafi. It also means that the mounting death rate, which recently included the lost life of my much-admired Vanity Fair colleague Tim Hetherington along with several others, is not justifiable by any commensurate military or political gains. These are lives that are being frittered away. Hetherington's last tweet described what he saw in Misurata the day before his death: "Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO." How shameful. What is utterly lacking in Libya, still, is an entrance strategy.
I have been reading The Three Musketeers. In Chapter 5, D'Artagnan joins the three, Porthos, Athos and Aramis, in a fight against five of the Cardinal's men. He defeats one of the enemy, then turns to see how his three new comrades are faring. One, Athos, already wounded from an earlier battle, is in trouble, so D'Artagnan intervenes against his foe, Cahusac:
"Face me, Monsieur le garde, I'm going to kill you!"
Cahusac turned; it was just in time. Athos, whose extreme courage was all that sustained him, dropped to one knee.
"Sangdieu!" he cried to d'Artagnan, "don't kill him, young man, I beg you; I have an old matter to settle with him, when I'm healed and fit again. Just disarm him, wrench his sword away. That's it. Good! Very good!
Nick Cohen misses out the important point that the clause in Resolution 1973 ruling out an occupation force satisfied a demand not just of Russia and China, but of the Libyan Transitional National Council. There is an irrecoverable cost in lives to any delay, but there could also be an enormous political cost to denying Libyans control of their own liberation. The means determine the end, and the required end is a free, independent, democratic Libya.
It's also worth making a more careful reading of the resolution: it excludes "a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory", which is not exactly the same as ruling out ground forces. It was widely leaked recently that Obama approved CIA people on the ground, and it would be surprising if the UK didn't also have some intelligence or special forces people active. Add to that the amphibian forces that the UK and US are deploying to the area, and it suggests that a ground force contingency has been planned for some time in advance, and may yet play a part.
Posted by: Kellie Strøm | May 01, 2011 at 11:45 PM