More bombs bursting in Libya. What for?
Moammar gets his mojo back. And the next thing you know...
By Michael Kinsley
LA Times
March 22, 2011
Wait a minute. How did this happen? A month or so ago, massive bombing of Libya was on no one's agenda. Libya's government was just as tyrannical and its leader was just as loony then as now. Other governments around the world were even worse, and still are. In fact, among the usual enthusiasts for this sort of thing, Libya was considered one of the least urgent cases of awfulocracy because we had supposedly de-fanged Col. Moammar Kadafi in 2003, when he suddenly surprised everyone by promising to dismantle his secret nuclear program, permit inspections and abide by the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Kadafi was like a Middle Eastern Fidel Castro — dead. We were just waiting for him to lie down. What's more, credit for this tremendous victory was assigned to George W. Bush as a bonus side effect of his decision to invade Iraq and take down Saddam Hussein. This put the fear of Allah in the mercurial colonel. Or so they said. But apparently not. Somehow, Moammar got his mojo back.
So how is it that the United States is now more or less committed to overthrowing the Kadafi regime, and soon? That's not yet our official position, of course. Officially, we are merely enforcing a no-fly zone imposed by the United Nations, and trying to protect a dissident movement from being crushed.
What's more, we are supposedly mere participants in a multilateral effort. Supposedly, in fact, we're not even the leader of this coalition, a role we have turned over to the British and French. (You knew the war was serious when the New York Times started to refer to our side in headlines as "the allies.") It's true that France jumped the queue rather than waiting its turn to bomb like all the other, better-behaved countries (even while delaying the official start by summoning all the players to Paris over the weekend). But that doesn't make them the leaders. That just makes them French.
(More here.)
By Michael Kinsley
LA Times
March 22, 2011
Wait a minute. How did this happen? A month or so ago, massive bombing of Libya was on no one's agenda. Libya's government was just as tyrannical and its leader was just as loony then as now. Other governments around the world were even worse, and still are. In fact, among the usual enthusiasts for this sort of thing, Libya was considered one of the least urgent cases of awfulocracy because we had supposedly de-fanged Col. Moammar Kadafi in 2003, when he suddenly surprised everyone by promising to dismantle his secret nuclear program, permit inspections and abide by the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Kadafi was like a Middle Eastern Fidel Castro — dead. We were just waiting for him to lie down. What's more, credit for this tremendous victory was assigned to George W. Bush as a bonus side effect of his decision to invade Iraq and take down Saddam Hussein. This put the fear of Allah in the mercurial colonel. Or so they said. But apparently not. Somehow, Moammar got his mojo back.
So how is it that the United States is now more or less committed to overthrowing the Kadafi regime, and soon? That's not yet our official position, of course. Officially, we are merely enforcing a no-fly zone imposed by the United Nations, and trying to protect a dissident movement from being crushed.
What's more, we are supposedly mere participants in a multilateral effort. Supposedly, in fact, we're not even the leader of this coalition, a role we have turned over to the British and French. (You knew the war was serious when the New York Times started to refer to our side in headlines as "the allies.") It's true that France jumped the queue rather than waiting its turn to bomb like all the other, better-behaved countries (even while delaying the official start by summoning all the players to Paris over the weekend). But that doesn't make them the leaders. That just makes them French.
(More here.)
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