Tag: NATO

We’re not embarrassed to admit that we can’t make up our minds about the war in Libya.

One one hand, we’re tempted to say, “Screw you and the camel you rode in on” to the leader of the Libyan rebels. On the other hand, we’re tempted to say the same thing to President Obama for getting us involved in this fiasco.

Sky News has the inflammatory information:

Libyan rebels have accused NATO of being too slow to act – and asked them to suspend operations unless they “do the job properly”.

Rebel leader Abdel Fattah Younes has complained the alliance takes hours to respond to events on the battlefield because of an overly bureaucratic process.

He claimed the alliance’s inaction was allowing Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces to advance and was letting them kill people in the rebel-held city of Misrata “everyday”.

He said: “NATO is moving very slowly, allowing Gaddafi forces to advance. NATO has become our problem.”

Mr Younes also said if NATO wanted to lift Col Gaddafi’s weeks-long siege in Misrata, it could have done it weeks ago.

NATO took over from a coalition led by the United States, Britain and France on March 31.

So let’s see if we can follow this. First, the Arab League begged NATO to help the Libyan rebels. Then the Arab League condemned NATO for getting involved. Now the leader of the Libyan rebels is complaining that NATO has become the problem instead of the solution.

Oh, yeah, this is all going to turn out well.

Source: Sky News

It’s a tragedy, but what’s a NATO pilot supposed to do? From 30,000 feet, everybody down there kind of looks alike what with all the women in burkas, all the men in keffiyehs, and all the goats in fear.

Reuters has details of NATO’s mission gone wrong:

At least 40 civilians have been killed in air strikes by Western forces on Tripoli, the top Vatican official in the Libyan capital told a Catholic news agency on Thursday, quoting witnesses.

“The so-called humanitarian raids have killed dozens of civilian victims in some neighborhoods of Tripoli,” said Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, the Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli.

“I have collected several witness accounts from reliable people. In particular, in the Buslim neighborhood, due to the bombardments, a civilian building collapsed, causing the death of 40 people,” he told Fides, the news agency of the Vatican missionary arm.

Libyan officials have taken foreign reporters to the sites of what they say were the aftermath of Western air strikes on Tripoli but evidence of civilian casualties has been inconclusive.

Western powers say they have no confirmed evidence of civilian casualties from air strikes, which they have carried out under a U.N. mandate to protect civilians caught in conflict between Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s forces and rebels.

“It’s true that the bombardments seem pretty much on target, but it is also true that when they hit military targets, which are in the middle of civilian neighborhoods, the population is also involved,” Martinelli said.

Translation: Shit happens.

Is it just us or does this sound suspiciously like “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

Source: Reuters