those words are pretty damn rare in modern politics.Originally Posted by BBC
Get out of Benghazi in Libya NOW if you're a Westerner... now.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21181742
those words are pretty damn rare in modern politics.Originally Posted by BBC
Get out of Benghazi in Libya NOW if you're a Westerner... now.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21181742
Originally Posted by Advice Trinity by Knoxville
and the west was supposed to make it better.
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ignore him peter... he's trolling mate
Originally Posted by Advice Trinity by Knoxville
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The US ambassador was killed in the same city too.
Worse than what? Residents being massacred by Ghaddafi's air force, if jthe West had't stopped him? Worse than the bloodshed that caused?
Worse than the West sending in ground troops after keeping Ghaddafi from slaughtering people? Worse than us installing a puppet government to do our bidding?
Rule number 1 of international politics, especially betseen east and west. You're damned if you do (Iraq) and damned if you don't (Balkans), and you hste Muslims eithsr because you oppress them (Iraq) or you fail to prevent a slaughter (Balkans).
The simple pragmatic fact is that we, the west, are not going to please Muslim extremists whatever we do, because we espouse a fair degree of personal freedom, and they espouse evrryone doing exactly what they interpret Islam as demanding. Note, not what most Muslims see as Islamic, but what the extremists see it as.
So, about all we can do is to prevent a massacre, as was heading for Benghazi in Ghaddafi's own words, and then leave it up to Libyans to work out how to govern themselves, offering reasonsble help and assistance if asked for it, and keeping our hands off and noses out until asked for it. Meantime, hold your breath and hope not to get bitten in the ass by the law of unintended consequences.
Also, bear in mind that advice of a specific and imminent threat now doesn't necessarily mean leave forever, but that there is evidence of something specific, and imminent. My guess is intelligence received of impending terririst attacks targetting westerners. It may be comms interception, or undercover operatives, or someone disillusioned in the terrorist network, or it may be feedback from the Benghazi "authorities".
But whatever it is, we can help give the Libyan people the chance at self-determination, but we cannot do it for them, and we cannot dictate what form that self-determination takes. And we shouldn't try. Just as we should not seek to be the world's policeman, or tbe junior sidekick to the world's policeman, we shouldn't seek to be the world's moral conscience either.
Interfering in Libya might not have had the results we would have preferred, but so far at least, it's better than a Ghaddafian bloodbath.
A certain amount of Gaddafi's weapons were supplied by western countries anyway, which meant we helped keep him in power. Gaddafi was a dictator for decades,and its not like even all of a sudden he started acting the way he did in the last few years of his rule.
Palmaria howitzers,Mirage F1s fighters,Assad class corvettes,La Combattante IIa FACs,etc up until the 1980s and hundreds of millions of Euro of anti-tank weapons and other munitions,cleared for export since the sanctions were lifted on his regime. The french even demoed Rafale fighters to Gaddafi a few years ago,and ultimately their per plane cost sunk that deal.
So,the whole we support the democratic rights argument is beginning to sound a bit hollow TBH,just like when people were selling state of the art weapons to the Shah of Iran and countless crackpot dictators ever since. We have no problems supporting dictators as long as they are useful to us,or supporting movements irrespective of whether they
are doing more harm to the people of a country. FFS,the US supported UNITA, and Europe allowed shipments through its countries to them, and that kept the Angolan civil war ticking over for 27 years with over 500000 dead.
In fact,during the MRCA competition in India,combat data from the Libyan campaign was used in the evaluation of the two frontrunners,ie, the Rafale and the Eurofighter as experimental and new generation weapons were tried in the conflict,and it was the first proper combat use of the Rafale and the new tranches of the Eurofighter. That competition was worth $20 billion and initially was for 126 aircraft with possibility of extension in the future to even more. The Rafale won.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 25-01-2013 at 06:07 PM.
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