Jingo Bells.
We don’t want to fight but by Jingo if we do
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men,
and we’ve got the money too;
The euphemisms are being run up the flag pole, and the international armchair warmongers are gathering round the most popular – the ‘no-fly zone’. Now if a ‘no-fly zone’ actually meant no planes in the air, the entire Libyan question being settled on the basis of ‘knickers an’ vest in the ‘oller’ as several generations of sectarian violence has been in Liverpool, then I might be in favour.
It doesn’t of course; it means none of Gaddafi-currently-on-the-naughty-step’s planes being allowed to take off, by the simple expedient of filling the airways with American war planes, as sold to each and every friendly oil consuming nation that could be persuaded to sign up in time, screaming overhead bombing innocent citizens if they happen to be anywhere near where the co-ordinates say it was ‘earnestly believed’ that three screws that could be used to assemble a nuclear bomb were last seen.
But Gaddafi’s bombing his own people, you say, he must be stopped! Yes, but the only way in which you can ensure his planes don’t take off is by bombing them, bombing the airfields, bombing the air control towers, and bombing all the people who work in them, are anywhere near them, or happen to be anywhere near the one plane – ‘in an operation of this size’ – that happened to veer off course and bomb the local primary school. See? We bomb Gaddafi’s people for him, this is called moral superiority.
From the news clips which I have seen, most of the damage to human life seems to be coming from the tanks of Gaddafi’s elite forces – are we going to bomb them as well? This ‘no-fly zone’ which is so popular is, after all, being suggested because of the loss of Libyan life – is it OK to be felled by a howitzer but not be bombed from the air? Care to experiment to ascertain how you would feel given the choice?
If we bomb the airfields and the planes, what would be our justification for not bombing the tanks? How do we tell the difference between half a dozen tanks racing across the desert full of defecting elite guards en route to donate their weaponry to the rebels, and half a dozen tanks racing to obliterate Benghazi?
If we do nothing, and stop drooling over pictures of photogenic babies with a leg missing on news at ten by way of stoking our jingoism, then what will happen? Innocent citizens will die – as they will if we intervene. One side or the other will end up with the oil – as they will if we intervene. We could just leave the Libyans alone to slug it out together, we could then make a decision as to whether we wish to support the winning side by buying their oil – or not. 80% of Libya’s oil comes into Europe.
Losing 80% of your income is pretty devastating no matter how much of a modern multi-billionaire despot you are. Losing 80% of your income and waking up to find you have trashed your entire estate – and the servants have all fled – is a crippling result. That is assuming Gaddafi’s forces win! Alternatively, the rebels may win, and Gaddafi will have been dealt with in time honoured way with a length of wire and the nearest lamp post.
Either way, we won’t have added to the carnage, nor will we be financially responsible for rebuilding the country – pace Iraq and Afghanistan – the armchair warmongers may have to turn the central heating down a notch or two, but by the time we had finished paying for the rebuilding of Libya, they would have had to do that anyway.
Drive slower, turn the heating down, bring home the excitable Sky correspondents, it’s not the Superbowl, nor a spectator sport: just give us a calm account of the result in a few weeks time and if we don’t like the look of the winner, we can all play our part by refusing to buy oil.
We don’t have the ships, we don’t have the men, and we certainly don’t have the money to bomb Gaddafi’s citizens for him.
We could usefully have a ban on selling arms to any other country whilst we are about it. Perhaps we wouldn’t feel so guilty watching them turn them on their own citizens then.
March 11, 2011 at 19:48
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Isn’t Libya a sovereign state?
When the students were trashing Whitehall
a few weeks ago, did we hear of (other) sovereign states supporting the
students and plotting no fly zones over the UK? Was it kept quiet? Shouldn’t
we be told the truth?
- March 11, 2011 at 12:47
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True, This! —
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The word is
mightier than the plane. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand! — itself a
nothing! —
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the
Cæsars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! — Take away the plane
—
States can be saved without it!
With apologies to Edward Bulwer-Lytton
- March 11, 2011 at 12:06
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You can’t force planes to stay on the ground without bombing them. Hmm,
this is a good point. I wonder if NATO has thought of this?
- March 10, 2011 at 22:33
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It is most important to be making powerful statements that can – at a later
date – be withdrawn as misunderstood or ‘mis spoke’. It shows you care and are
‘doing something’.
- March 10, 2011 at 20:33
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Never mind NATO, where is the rest of the Arab world?
Always ready to mouth off against the US or the West in general.
Always
shouting about what’s right and wrong and telling us what to do.
Apparently
happy to watch their “brothers” being shelled and bombed.
-
March 10, 2011 at 20:00
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Re: the photo at the top of this item… bags-I the weapon-wielder on the far
left of the photo. I just thought I’d put my dibs in before Sister E stakes
her claim on him and carts him off for a bit of cloistered
weaponry-training.
- March 10, 2011 at 21:09
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looks like a 500 pounder to me. Which means that it is empty and nothing
is what it appears to be. If that is right, I wouldn’t be surprised to find
find he is a lady boy. Against which I have nothing, but from a personal
point of view I prefer real men. Or women. Not the “inbetweenies!”
- March 10, 2011 at 19:55
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Britain’s policy towards Libya should be to persue Britain’s best
interests. If there was nothing there but sand, leave well alone. However,
they do have a lot of oil, and that makes it more complicated. It’s easiest to
just buy the stuff, but we’d prefer to buy it off people that like and respect
us, even if only slightly. That makes picking the winner of the civil war a
matter of greater import, and if we have to nudge, or help along the side we
want to win, we will probably end up doing so. Of course, there’s no guarantee
what Libya’s government will look like if Qaddafi goes, so that makes it all a
bit of a headscratch for the FO.
Damned if I know what the ‘right’ answer is – but the developed world is
addicted to oil, and that will colour it’s response to the Libya question, for
good or ill.
-
March 10, 2011 at 19:37
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“… Losing 80% of your income is pretty devastating …”
***
Quite
right. Ask anyone who has recently found their pension fund maybe not 80% less
than they thought but a hefty chunk down anyway.
As for Libya … ????????
- March 10, 2011 at 18:31
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If you believe that Gaddafi is attacking his people as shown by the Western
media then you are very much mistaken. Watch RT or Al Jazeera for a more
honest reporting of what is happening.
It is none of our business to intefere in Libyan affairs, it is a sovereign
country. Besides, after Cameron’s cuts in the armed forces, we don’t have the
capability anymore, we can just about look after our own country.
- March 10, 2011 at 18:18
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We rarely hear anything wise from the Secretary of State but in to-night’s
news on the Home Service they report her saying, “If it were easy, we’d have
already done it !”
ΠΞ
- March 10, 2011 at 17:58
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Oh Anna, you are so right ..
- March 10, 2011 at 17:30
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I thought a NO FLY zone was a health and safety policy forbidding
TROUSERS
Ta la la!
- March 10, 2011 at 19:45
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So we’ll have to send either the Black Watch or the Girl Guides. Not sure
which would terrify Qadaffi more….
-
March 10, 2011 at 19:54
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Ooooh! That’d be the Black Watch and their ‘aired’ arsenal, surely?
-
March 10, 2011 at 19:57
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Well, if you can cope with the legendary Scottish Midge, a bit of
sand should be no problem.
- March 10, 2011 at 20:10
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I used to live in Brighton, mate! You wouldn’t believe the size of
pebble that can get involuntarily lodged under an ample sac during a
‘kilted moment’ on the beach, only to declare its presence by
‘pinging’ out some hours later to break a shabby bedsit window. Midges
? Pah!
-
March 10, 2011 at 20:06
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Oh Lord, grant me strength
-
March 10, 2011 at 20:13
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Turn to the Lord, Gildas my friend, turn to the Lord and read not the
rantings of lost souls, there’s a good lad.
- March 10, 2011 at 20:39
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I have been called a lad since AD 522! I fear that I shall take
refuge in mead, and my recently delivered copy of Monk’s World. This
months feature: S&M: Is it habit forming?
- March 10, 2011 at 20:53
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It may be. It may be of some comfort to you to think on this:
Hair-shirt today, gone tomorrow.
- March 10, 2011 at 20:59
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That should have read “haven’t”. There is no training in multi
tasking or spelling for us poor monks.
Meanwhile i have been
enjoying an evening of reminiscing and nostalgia, in the face of…other
matters.
This was our college song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1a_nXU4jX8&feature=related
Enjoy
- March 10, 2011 at 22:42
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Hrrmph. That says a lot about Patricia. I warrant she’s not one for
the scratchy-overall. And it says much about the secret thoughts of an
apparent MONK. Switch off your search-engine, you Gildas, and surf no
more. Please. Lest SisELongoria catch you with stimulating images on
your laptop screen.
Go, delete ‘Favourites’ and sin no more. There’s a good lad.
- March 10, 2011 at 17:29
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Never fear Obama and his mini-me OCama are in full control.
I believe they are both flipping through the TV channels at this very
moment to get the latest intelligence update. I fully expect that OCama will
once again be deployed to tell Gaddafi to “Just stop it” but this time he will
stamp one foot emphatically. Obama has lost all credibility at home with
Guantanamo and Afghanistan he is not looking for a new war so he can lose the
last dregs of his mandate, and quite frankly the yUK has ably demonstrated in
the last two weeks it is incapable of anything beyond apologising about the
latest failure .
Tomorrow will reveal how the problem will be resolved, after prayers when
the Muslims pour out of the mosques after their latest bit of
indoctrination.
No matter how this is resolved-I think this will eventually resolve to a
continuous low-level civil war and the country returning to an impoverished
African hell-hole.-It is not going to be good for Europe. If Gaddafi survives
he will do a deal with China, who know a thing or two about repressing a
population and will happily buy his entire volume of petroleum products, if
Gaddafi goes the Muslim Brotherhood move in, Euro liberals will rejoice until
gays and women are repressed and killed and petroleum sales are cut off to the
Infidels.
The best case scenario here is for a repressive regime (China) to extend
its control of Africa and bring about some adult supervision. Maybe at last
the yUK will accept that the age of empire has passed them by and concentrate
on solving the myriad problems within their islands.
And casualties will be kept to a minimum.
- March 10, 2011 at 17:11
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‘No-fly zone’ ? Ch’è questa ? Does this mean all the
blokes would have to walk about in 13-button trousers : the most
ridiculous garment imaginable ?
On a more serious note : it is a relief to hear the Secretary of
Defense’s cautious approach to the subject. One might think that, after
two disasters in the Muslim World, the West would have learnt its
lesson : stay out and let the locals sort it out ; even
when they quite like what we’re offering to impose upon them, they still
resent our presence in their lands.
Anna puts it well : the same deaths will occur whether we
intervene or not ; we have never been able to stop tribes fighting
one another.
ΠΞ
-
March 10, 2011 at 17:22
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Quite right
-
March 10, 2011 at 21:23
- March 10, 2011 at 16:12
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Unfortunately, HM Government is subject to the global groupthink which
comes packaged with the New World Order, so whatever is ordained by the chimps
on high will be slavishly obeyed by the participating nations, and once more
we’ll witness a litany of bloodletting on all sides. A pointless waste of
life. I’m sure a no-flies zone would be welcome, though…
-
March 10, 2011 at 16:02
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Very well set out reasoning about why a no-fly zone is pointless. Even we
didn’t kill any innocent civilians and got rid of all it’s airforce (which
will be ideal as the west can sell them new planes), Lybia will end up with
any defences just waiting for any other Arab neighbour to attack it – then who
will we deal with for the oil then?
Have they not learnt from Afghanistan and Iraq. Do not get invovled unless
you have an exit strategy.
- March
10, 2011 at 17:49
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Bugger the exit strategy, just don’t get involved.
- March 10, 2011 at 22:45
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Seconded.
{ 31 comments }