Everybody also knows that China and Russia will veto any UN resolution to sanction a no-fly zone. This is why all of the talk about imposing one is just hot air.
(“No-fly zone over Libya?” The iPINIONS Journal, March 16, 2011)
I was wrong. Because last night the UN actually approved a surprisingly robust resolution (1973) authorizing not just a no-fly zone over Libya, but “all necessary steps to protect civilians from Muammar Gaddafi’s forces.” This is effectively a declaration of war.
Which begs the question: why not intervene in places like Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran and, most glaring of all, China where dictators are brutalizing their citizens far worse than what Gaddafi is doing in Libya?
Not to mention that black Africans in places like Darfur, Congo, and Zimbabwe must be wondering why the same humanitarian concerns that prompted this international intervention to protect Muslim Africans have not prompted similar action to protect any of them from the genocidal dictators who have brutalized them for decades.
I reiterate that this action reflects nothing more than good old-fashioned Western hypocrisy coupled with a healthy dose of bullying. And, yes, one can be forgiven for thinking that the warmongering George W. Bush, not the Nobel Peace Laureate Barack Obama, is president of the United States….
Why don’t you organize a group of respected Americans and ask for a meeting with Gaddafi, you can’t order him to step down and get out, who the hell do you think you are?
(This was some of the wise counsel Minister Louis Farrakhan offered Obama during an interview on WVON-AM 1690 Chicago, March 18, 2011)
China and Russia did not support the resolution. But they did not veto it either. Instead they abstained, which enabled its passage while preserving China and Russia’s ability to criticize the countries involved in its execution if (or more likely when) things go wrong.
This means that the U.S. will soon be leading yet another coalition of the willing to fight yet another war in yet another Arab country. But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it abundantly clear that Arab leaders who called for this action will be required to put their money where their mouth is by sending troops to participate – even if only in token roles – in the execution of this no-fly zone.
Nevertheless, I maintain that this (still very limited) military intervention will prove no more effective in getting rid of Gaddafi than it proved in getting rid of Saddam Hussein. More to the point, just as the no-fly zone over Iraq did nothing to prevent Saddam from massacring Kurds and other Iraqis who dared to oppose his dictatorial rule, enforcing one over Libya will do nothing to prevent Gaddafi from doing the same. And let’s face it, what the rebels – who are now under siege in their last stronghold of Benghazi – really want is not just air cover, but targeted bombing of key Gaddafi military assets, if not the bombing of Gaddafi himself.
(U.S. law prohibits the targeting of foreign leaders. But everyone knows that Obama will be targeting him just as surely as former President Ronald Reagan did when he launched cruise missiles against Libya in 1986 after he found “that mad dog” responsible for the bombing of a Berlin night club that killed two American servicemen. Of course, all Reagan succeeded in doing was turning Gaddafi’s home into rubble and killing one of his children, which is why Obama is faced with the same bedeviling challenge today.)
Meanwhile, Gaddafi has vowed that this UN resolution will only increase his determination to squash the rebels with dispatch and without mercy….
Finally nothing demonstrates how ad hoc and unprincipled this American-led war is quite like Obama spending weeks proclaiming that “Gaddafi must go” and everyone in his administration now saying that “Gaddafi is not a target”. What’s more the head of the Arab League is already issuing warnings about Western military forces exceeding the amorphous bounds of this UN mandate. What a reckless farce! At least Bush knew what he wanted.
NOTE: The fact that its own brutal dictatorship compels China to sit on the sidelines as democratic revolutions reform and reshape the Middle East demonstrates, yet again, why – even if it eventually supplants the U.S. as the biggest economy in the world – China will never replace the U.S. as the world’s only indispensable superpower.
Related commentaries:
No-fly zone over Libya?