[Closed] Libya no-fly zone, for or against?

how do you justify interfering in Libya but not in the other countries mentioned?

It depends what this conversation is actually about.

Should the world community take an active role in the prevention of Gaddafi murdering his own citizens? I would say a definite yes.

Should the world community take an active role to protect civilians of any nation against state-led agression whether or not its the state against its own civilians or others? I would say a definite yes.

Is the UN capable and willing to accept the mandate? No

So those in support of intervention, would have no problem with another country supporting an uprising in the UK?

Like if some people in Northern Ireland decided that taking on the government with weapons was ok and say for example, Libya was to fund it.

That would be ok?

would have no problem with another country supporting an uprising in the UK?

Depends if I was winning or not......

(Good point though)

I don't get this bombing his own people bit, we can bomb libyans to knock out the air defences ...... and thats ok. I'm not a gaddafi supporter far from it, help the people fighting a dictator give them arms etc, but don't bomb their country.

So those in support of intervention, would have no problem with another country supporting an uprising in the UK?

If CallmeDave turned into an evil dictator and he decided to use Tornados to bomb the good people of Liverpool because they were protesting against the government I would like someone to step in I think yes.

epicyclo - Member

Like if some people in Northern Ireland decided that the use of terrorism was ok and say for example, Libya was to fund it.

Which actually happened, of course.

So did our great pals in the US...before they got a taste of the rough stuff on their home turf, obviously.

So those in support of intervention, would have no problem with another country supporting an uprising in the UK?

again this is a different question

the UN's integrity has been massively undermined by UK/US etc involvement in the Libyan situation.

TJ:

Gaza: who is going to impose a no-fly zone over an area controlled by the 51st American state?

Tibet: about half the population is of chinese origin and quite happy with being Chinese. It's a bit like protestants in NI under the protectorate of the British government. Who do you attempt to stop doing what? Declare war on China. A golden rule is don't start a fight you can't win.

Tchetchenie: I don't think anyone is capable of stopping the Russians flying.

If CallmeDave turned into an evil dictator and he decided to use Tornados to bomb the good people of Liverpool because they were protesting against the government I would like someone to step in I think yes

What about if it was Manchester?

We mustn't forget that just as in Iraq, what is happening in Libya will be a division along tribal lines. Regardless of how it looks from outside, UN/France/Britain will be backing one tribe against another. Never a recipe for long term harmony in a country.

Having said that I am in favour. A good friend of mine only just got out from Libya by the skin of her teeth- her husband is still there and they can't get him out.

we can bomb libyans to knock out the air defences ...... and thats ok

At a risk of posting without googling, the civilian death toll from US/UK aircraft enforcing the no fly zone in the Iraq war is pretty shocking.

[Edit] I believe it's estimated at 1400 [/Edit]

Edukator - Member
Anyone who thinks it will take days to act should think 45 minutes because unlike Saddam, France

Certainly the planning will have started weeks ago but I bet there's still a lot of stuff to work out and I can guarantee countries aren't going to have 100's of millions of pounds worth of aircraft buzzing around North Africa until all the details are resolved.

If CallmeDave turned into an evil dictator and he decided to use Tornados to bomb the good people of Liverpool because they were protesting against the government I would like someone to step in I think yes.

What if Callme used police to beat the children of London because they were protesting about education cuts? Does the evil dicatator have to be using planes before our moral rights are triggered?

[url= http://lci.tf1.fr/monde/afrique/2011-03/libye-l-info-minute-par-minute-6321302.html ]It's moving fast[/url] Anyone got an equivalent minute by minute news feed in English to link?

Qatar is on board and Saddam wants a cease fire.

Europe 1 reports gave the impression France was prepared to act immediately and alone initially if necessary FuzzyWuzzy.

#
TandemJeremy - Member

Gaza and Chechnya both have done in the past - not so sure about Tibet.

Tibet however we see an illegal occupation of a sovereign state by another country
Posted 30 minutes ago # Report-Post

You may have missed this, but theres been a change of government recently

What if Callme used police to beat the children of London because they were protesting about education cuts? Does the evil dicatator have to be using planes before our moral rights are triggered

Arresting rioters for attempted murder, assaulting police officers, desecrating war memorials, destroying buildings and for a multitude of public order offences is a little different, but nice troll all the same.

Arresting rioters for attempted murder, assaulting police officers, desecrating war memorials, destroying buildings and for a multitude of public order offences is a little different, but nice troll all the same.

Agreed. But that is a [i]non sequitur[/i] to my post

Against it.

A war which would probably be over in the next 48 hours will now drag on indefinitely - possibly for years.

I can see why they've done it though. Despite the very carefully crafted propaganda, the claim that Gaddafi has no support within Libya, that his army was defecting on mass, and that he could only rely on paid foreign mercenaries (some as young as 13 - that's how evil he is) has proved to be a complete lie.

Otherwise the rebels would easily have managed to deal with Gaddafi's army of under-age foreign mercenaries.

.

CaptJon - Member

I'm amazed they have taken so long. You can't allow a leader to kill their own people.

That's a pretty serious allegation CaptJon - a leader killing his own people, therefore I'm sure you wouldn't make it without substantial evidence and without being able to provide facts and figures.

So how many has he killed ? Just an estimate will do. Because the only vaguely reliable estimates I've managed to find suggests no such thing has occurred.

One week ago in this article [url= http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/libyan-rebels-on-the-run-west-divided-20110311-1bqx5.html ]Libyan rebels on the run, West divided [/url] which is not sympathetic to Gaddafi, they reported : [b]"Medics say 400 people have died and 2,000 more been wounded in eastern Libya since February 17"[/b].

So even if you took it that not one single one of those 400 dead was a rebel fighter, ie, they were all civilians, then that it is an extremely low figure which is comparable to how many died in Egypt.

How could it be possible if Gaddafi had ordered he daily bombing of civilians for 4 weeks, for the figure to be so low - the Americans can easily kill more civilians than that through collateral damage in just one bombing raid.

I would be interested in your figures and your sources CaptJon.

BTW in no way am I a supporter of Gaddafi, he clearly is a sandwich short of a picnic, and I remember when the first reports arrived from the opposition that he was bombing civilians, saying to my bother that they should impose an immediate no-fly zone.

Obviously at that point I wasn't aware that it was just worthless propaganda, along with the claims that Gaddafi's army was refusing to fight and he was having to rely on foreign mercenaries to do his fighting.

Lets put it in perspective.

The UN have voted for this action.

No one at the UN voted against it.

The arab league have voted for this.

At the same time as Gadaffi declares no mercy in benghazi.

This is not an American led directive, this is a world led directive. A bit disappointing for the conspiracy theorists out there i know

Lets put it in perspective.

The UN have voted for this action.

Lets put that comment in perspective.

The UN voted that the Palestinian people should be driven off their lands so that a Zionist state could be created for Jews from across the world.

Lets [s]put[/s] troll that comment [s]in perspective[/s]

fixed it for you.

Is the UN a moral authority that stands for democracy?

A lot of its members are anything but democratic.

So your option would be to sit back and do absolutely nothing? 🙄

You think I'm trolling LHS ? You don't think I believe what I'm saying ?

Or couldn't you simply think of anything else to say ?

So your option would be to sit back and do absolutely nothing?

I don't think that necessarily follows. Whatever we do we, should not do it because the UN says we should.

Ok, so what would your solution be? How would you resolve this?

The UN was originally set up to fight the Axis powers in WWII. It's role afte the war became one of international policing. A US initiative, it has always been US led with all that that implies. Look at who has influence in america and you'll see how that is reflected in UN policy.

No country wants to do anything. Gadafi will be renegotiating oil contracts soon.

Shell and BP will have been lobbying Cameron hard over this. To dither means the matter is taken out of the politicians hands. By the weekend there wont be any opposition.

Then the misinformation will start, the opposition will be painted as commiting atrocities (lots of tortured bodies found in towns liberated)- pictures showing this of corpses dressed in Gadaffi troops clothing.

etc etc. It may only be 2% of the worlds resources but its high quality oil.

No doubt you have a point on that edukator but why wasn't there a UN backed invasion of Iraq?

How would you resolve this?

Well it would have resolved itself in the next couple of days without interference. The UN sanctioned interference will now guarantee that it will not be resolved.

I'll remind you that the UN has not sanctioned the invasion of Libya and the replacement of the government. It therefore has not offered a resolution to the problem, just the means to keep a war going on indefinitely.

LHS - Member
Ok, so what would your solution be? How would you resolve this?

By keeping out of a war that is not ours.

We go in and we will be at war for a long time.

The Iraq invasion was very much the US and UK going it alone. Check that news feed on TF1 and you'll find an increasing number of nations pledging military help in Libya. Countries such as Norway, Denmark and indeed France that refused to participate in Iraq. Remember Dominique de Villepin's prophetic speech in which he predicted exactly what would happen if the US and UK invaded Iraq.

This situation is very different, you have geographical separation of the factions and a clear request for help from those under attack.

We have no business interfering with this civil conflict!

I guess it might be something to do with BP's oil deal that Blair and Brown instigated, or that the government are thinking about the potential for new arms sales (world conflicts are big business, peace doesn't sell military hardware!).

We tax payers are getting caned by the revenue for all manner of the expensive inefficient schemes which successive governments have committed us to, wasting our money.

Considering the a massive and still burgeoning public debt, we should be butting the **** out of things like this!

The arab world resents our intrusion, we can add no stability to these regions as we don't understand their medieval ways which are dictated to by an overbearing religion! Fairness, democracy and equality are incompatible with the core values of Islam!

Once again, the governmnents of the west are foisting their soft liberal idealism onto a culture that rejects political correctness and pretty much everything western culture stands for.

All that will result is a lot of innocent lives wasted, families' lives torn apart, our reputation on the world stage further damaged and a huge amount of money wasted.

Well it would have resolved itself in the next couple of days without interference.

[b][i]Col Gaddafi has promised to retake Benghazi, saying his forces would show "no mercy".[/b][/i]

Yes, you are right, it would have been resolved!!
🙄

Resents or welcomes spongebob? Lets not forget that there's no love lost between many of these arab leaders and even allowing for the propaganda merchants it seems a lot of French flags are being waved. If you find an arab leader openly supporting Gaddafi please link it.

If a minority of this country rose up, started attacking the police and the army in major cities and tried re appropriating government resources do you really reckon it would be free of bloodshed?

Leave 'em to it I say, what right does any country have to interfere with the internal affairs of a sovereign nation?

Against.

There are a number of reasons discussed in length here:

[url= http://www.septicisle.info/index.php?q=/2011/03/giant-leap-into-dark.html ]A Giant Leap into the Dark[/url]

One main point for me is that we don't know who we're dealing with, as Septicisle says in the article linked

What began, like in Tunisia and Egypt as leaderless, classless uprising against a loathed regime has since then been changed by necessity into something quite different: an uprising spearheaded by two former senior officials in the government, neither of whom should normally be trusted as far as they can be thrown. As incredible it seems, it was less than two weeks ago that we were so cautious about the likes of Mustafa Abdul Jalil and Abdul Fatah Younis that we were sending in spooks masquerading as diplomats protected by the SAS in a bid to make first contact proper with them. Now we've agreed to intervene militarily on their side. If this worries our political leaders, then they haven't shown any sign of it.

[url= http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3120/is_6_76/ai_n29096537/ ]Deja vu, anyone?[/url]

Define a sovereign nation. You could pack lots of European countries into Libya. Gaddafi probably controls a similar territory to Napoleon before he was kicked out. Why should "tribes" respect those straight lines on the map?

Presently against if the UN started taking sides. For if they are purely there to protect civillians - not sure how this could be compared to Libya and NI.

Col Gaddafi has promised to retake Benghazi, saying his forces would show "no mercy".

Gosh, The leader of fighting forces about to embark on a decisive battle talks fighting-talk .........whatever next.

Gaddafi has also offered an amnesty to rebels in Benghazi if they lay down their arms, scaring them increases the chances of that be successful.

One of the reasons why Gaddafi's forces have been so successful as they have swept through Libya, appears to be precisely because if rebels give themselves up they generally get to live - therefore many have surrendered without a fight.

I wouldn't say that surrendering will automatically mean you will live of course - war isn't like that. In Benghazi the rebels murdered over 200 Gaddafi supporters after taking control. Although I'm sure you haven't heard of that, or that you are prepared to believe that both sides are capable of that sort of stuff.

So, Edukator, you're entirely confident that two men involved with Gadaffi's Administration at the highest levels have suddenly embraced the idea of democracy?

You could pack lots of European countries into Libya

There are only about 6 million people in Libya and the vast majority of their country is desert. Most of the population is concentrated into 3 cities on the coast. It is hardly the French Empire under Napoleon now is it?

It's not often I find myself concurring with Tandem Jeremy (albeit for different reasons). 😆

Its one big game of realpolitik being played out in front of us.

As far as the US is concerned the main threat in the region is Iran.

The US's major ally in the Gulf - Saudi Arabia is worried about possible Iranian influences in the uprising in Bahrain so will be looking to help crush it. By tacitly supporting action against Libya, Saudi Arabia will be looking for the US to look the other way when it puts down the uprising in Bahrain.

The US who who will be looking to keep their pet despots in Saudi and Bahrain happy and also limit any Iranian influence in that part of the Gulf will probably complain a bit and call for "restraint" and let the Bahrain uprising be put down.

Meanwhile Gaddafi will be ousted, probably going into exile and a friendly "democratic" regime supported by the US can be installed in Libya

I think it's interesting Lebanon helped draft the plan. Perhaps they've got someone in mind when they voted on:

*Authorises member states to "take all necessary measures" to "protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack"