The BBC are reporting that Col Muammar Gaddafi has been killed in his home town of Sirte in Libya. Al-Jazeera TV has broadcast video apparently of Gaddafi’s body being dragged through the streets. It is unclear whether Col. Gaddafi was killed by forces of the National Transitional Council or in a NATO airstrike which apparently destroyed two vehicles earlier today. TurgonThis author has not written a biography and will not be writing one.
As the frontlines in Libya have swayed back and forth, just as they did almost seventy years ago, so the advisability of David Cameron’s foreign policy adventure has ebbed and flowed. Before Cameron became Prime Minister, the Conservative Party was markedly cautious about an interventionalist foreign policy and said that their foreign policy would: “promote human rights, economic liberalism and political freedom, with humanitarian intervention when it is necessary and when it can be effective”. When he became Prime Minister …
So why not intervene in Bahrain, Yemen, even Saudi Arabia, the BBC among others asks? “Take it case by case,” is the holding reply. And then that little phrase “oil rich states” crops up. Is default cynicism the right reaction to the attacks on Libya or is it just impotent chatter? Is there no middle way between doing nothing in Libya and launching a crusade ( good word!) against all Moslem despots? If the latter, we could stoically and ruinously accept oil rationing …
