And two wrongs make a right, and other examples of common sense turned upside down.

A quorum of hawks was assembled and all agreed that even though they couldn’t afford the bullets, the right and proper thing for them to do was to kill some of Gaddafi’s citizens for him.

Only the citizens who are supporting him of course, they won’t mean to kill any of the citizens who oppose him – unless they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It’s all dressed up in something called a ‘no-fly zone’, which like all euphemisms is meaningless. What they mean is only the planes we approve of will be allowed to fly. Like ours. Then common sense will be turned on its head, and because it is so totally, utterly abhorrent and wrong that Gaddafi should kill Libyans in Libya, the US, Britain and France, will kill Libyans in Libya, because that is the right thing to do.

You see, Gaddafi’s problem is that he’s been killing the wrong sort of Libyans. They may all look the same to you and me, but this is the thought police writ large – some Libyans have the right thoughts in their heads, and some have the wrong thoughts. It is perfectly OK to kill the Libyans with the wrong thoughts in their heads. Didn’t a quorum of hawks just agree on that?

Now Gaddafi thinks the ones with the wrong thoughts in their heads are the ones in Benghazi, the ones who like some errant Muslims in Afghanistan, think that the way to change the country they are living in, is to plant bombs, kill policemen, shoot planes out of the sky. We British, we call them terrorists, and we lock them up without a trial, even bomb them from the air. Sometimes we exchange them with the country they come from – like Libya – in return for some oil. We close our eyes for a few minutes, and when we open them, we have cheap petrol, and they have a martyred hero back home. Miraculous.

If Gaddafi had had the sense to join the nato forces and bomb Afghani’s rebels – he could have bombed from the sky to his hearts content; instead of which, he used his tanks to shoot the one-man’s-terrorist-is-another-man’s-rebels in Benghazi.

Big mistake Gaddafi. Benghazi rebels are the wrong sort of Libyans to kill. That’s not like killing Al Kharma Libyans. Or even Kabul rebels. It’s not that bombing people from the sky is wrong, it’s not even that bombing people who are trying to take over a government by force is wrong, nor even bombing Libyans, you just don’t get it do you? You can’t go around bombing people we could have done business with. The Benghazi rebels are the ones we could have bought oil from with no more talk of Al-Megrahi. We’d even sent a diplomatic mission out to meet them.

Even some Libertarians are now saying it is perfectly OK to kill Libyans, so long as they are the right sort of wrong thinking Libyans.

Gaddafi is not stupid, no sooner had the hawks decided all this than he announced that he wouldn’t kill Libyans from the air any more, he would just aim howitzers and mortars at them.

We have decided that we will only kill Libyans from the air.

We are watching him carefully; so long as he only kills wrong thinking Libyans that we can’t possibly buy oil from then we will leave him alone to get on with it, but if he harms one hair on the head of a right thinking Libyan, even Libertarians are happy to demand the right to kill Libyans for him.

If I were a Libyan gunman, I’d be out there writing ‘psst, wanna buy some oil’ on the back on my tank, before any nato pilots get confused with the morality of who it is OK to bomb from the sky.

Half of them will be fresh from Afghanistan where it is the rebels they are supposed to be bombing. They all look the same from 3,000 feet up…….

Obviously keeping our nose out of it all didn’t appeal to our glorious government.

ad March 20, 2011 at 22:00

Look on the bright side. We did nothing to stop the Rwandan genocide, Pol
Pot was allowed to kill Cambodians to his hearts content, the North Korean and
Burmese regimes get to do what they like, and even Milosevic had a good
run.

We follow the noble path you advocate far more often than otherwise.

Cascadian March 19, 2011 at 21:47

Operation OD-ya gotta laugh. OD’d on stupidity.

And under cover of the chaos Hamas start firing mortars into Israel, lets
see if we can have another “Just stop it” moment from the camoron. Silly me
it’s only the jews, no cause for concern.

Obama wants his force out in days not weeks, well done Euroland you have
just inherited a war on your doorstep, get ready for the exodus of refugees
into your cities, and many more when the caliphate is established.

Mr Blonde March 19, 2011 at 21:43

Surely the arguement for itnervention would be that we have been
intervening steadily over the last few decades in Gaddafi’s favour, so in a
peverse way non-intervention would essentially be intervention in the regime’s
favour.
The only way to level the playing field would be to destroy all the
weapons we have merrily sold to Gaddaffi before everyone realised what a bad
bastard he actually is.

Andrew Duffin
March 19, 2011 at 21:32

The worst joke of it is, Call-me-Dave has so emasculated our forces, that
we can’t actually DO anything, all we can do is cheer someone else on and
maybe ask nicely if we can borrow one of their ships to replace the ones we
used to have that we’ve now scrapped.

So we get the worst of all worlds, upsetting everyone without accomplishing
anything either good or bad.

Thanks, Dave. So glad we voted for you. Well, some of us anyway.

Matt
Wardman March 19, 2011 at 19:38

Do you have a suggested alternative course of action?

I’m tempted to draw comparisons with Northern/Southern Sudan or
Morocco/Western Sahara, and to wonder if a single assassination would help.
Perhaps we could send Lord Mandelbrot.

Rgds

1party4all March 19, 2011 at 08:01

@annaraccoon2010 If the Libya situation were reversed … http://networkedblogs.com/fBeaV

Hysteria March 18, 2011 at 22:59

yup – it’s all clear as mud.

We will have some Arab despots support us in Libya, while we support them
putting down their own rebellious people, but we won’t support rebellious
people in lands that really are nasty – such as Iran.

And of course we will support nasty people who surround Israel, although
they are not democratic, but constantly argue against the rights of the only
true democracy in the region.

Realpolitik sucks…..

Snowolf March 18,
2011 at 22:51

Thanks for that, Anna. It’s a concept I’ve been wrestling with for the last
couple of days. You’ve helped me come to a conclusion.

Ed P March 18, 2011 at 21:23

Libya, rather like Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, is composed of many
historically separate tribal groups, held together by force for 40 years. Mix
in religious differences, then add the seemingly golden prospects revealed by
the internet and it’s little wonder it’s broken down.
“You don’t count the
dead, when God’s on your side.”

Livewire March 18, 2011 at 20:31

After Iraq, Afghanistan, and in particular Vietnam, instinct says that
interventions aren’t the clean surgical operations that the planners hope
for.
It was tempting to put the opposite point of view just to see what the
enigmatic woman promising pottymouth stuff two topics ago would do, I suspect
she misunderstands the shockability of Liberationist blog readers…

Grumpy Old Man
March 18, 2011 at 20:09

Anna.
Libya produces just 2% of the world’s oil. To stabilise supply,
just Saudi Arabia has to turn up the tap a notch. It’s speculation, not oil
supply, which is forcing prices up.

Gadaffi is such a bad bastard that the UN – an organisation run by and for
the benefit of bad bastards the world over – voted for the no-fly zone. Even
China and Russia, to name but two of the countries in which bad bastards rule
unchallenged, abjured the veto.

Lybians who want democratic governance didn’t start the fighting – Gadaffi
did.

I am no longer a supporter of Cameron, However his tour de force in getting
UN approval for direct intervention against a bad bastard should be given the
praise it deserves. I think it’s the first time since the Korean War that this
has happened, but I’m willing to be corrected on this.

Gaddafi had to buy – in mercenaries from central Africa to bolster those
who remain loyal to him. That is not the act of a leader who is beloved by his
nation .

There are very few wrong-thinking Lybians. Take out the bad bastards and
there are just Lybians who want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
just like everyone else. They won’t get that with Gadaffi, and if the
international community can help Lybian self-determination by taking some of
Gadaffi’s toys from him, I’m all for it.

Cascadian March 18, 2011 at 23:06

Tour de force-pfffft!

The camoron joined with France and Lebanon (that well known peace-loving
nation run by Hezbollah and Iran) to achieve your tour-de-force
“no-fly-zone” vote which Anna has already sliced-and-diced, at the most
corrupt international group in existence (the UN) where Libya was the
president of the U.N. Security Council in January 2008 and a member of their
Human rights Council until recently-does the irony not register with you?

Stated as plainly as possible, politicians will side with anybody if it
suits their purpose, at present it does not suit the camoron’s purpose to
support Gaddafi. Much better to distract the population from domestic
news-have you noticed how much bad news is emanating from euroland recently?
Portugal is about to default, greece is NOT making any cuts, the euro is
doomed, inflation in the yUK is higher than Zimbabwe, food and energy prices
are skyrocketting, insurance and mortgage costs will follow. What am I to
do? “Oh! look over there, there are some bad men”. We ignored them
previously when they were being bad, but really this is just too much.
(Smiles at camera, can I get my Nobel peace prize now? obambi has one and
I’m jealous, I’ve being doing the shirtsleeve thing and everything to get
attention)

I am hopeful that Obambi will remain indecisive and avoid use of the
military, he is after all the Commander-in-chief of the US military. I would
dearly love to see the camoron and sarkozy spluttering trying to impose a
“no-fly-zone” without stealth bombers and smart bombs, with (I am guessing)
miniscule supplies of cruise missiles, incompatible command and control
systems .

Of course we can all look forward to the guardianistas and bbc shouting
loudly-”no blood for oil”.

The camoron is too dumb to realise any of this or indeed the cost of so
stupid an enterprise, I hope not too many people get killed by his
foolishness.

Châtelaine March 18, 2011 at 20:01

I will translate this to Maman later this evening. We had a VERY heated
discussion tonight …