Doing a Dubya on Libya

So, we are bombing Libya. As I wake up on this cool, grey, Sunday morning in March, listening to the birds tweeting and some distant church bells pealing over rural England, British service personnel, some of whom probably have a P45 from the government waiting in the post for them at home, are putting their lives at risk once again in the cause of naked political horse-trading and the sort of selective American foreign policy we thought we’d seen the back of when Dubya finally donned his spurs and stetson and rode off into the sunset.

My first thought, on hearing we would be sending our warplanes was “what warplanes?” We’ve got rid of the Harriers and we’ve mothballed so many Tornados, we’ve watched the Nimrods being cut up on the ground, on prime-time TV, I wouldn’t be surprised if all we had left to send was a couple of Tiger Moths, dropping hand grenades on elastic so we could get the bits back to use again! Still, at least with the RAF involved, you know that the bombs, such as they are, will hit their targets, whereas the USAF counts it a success if they can just manage to hit Libya.

Actually, before proceeding to the rights and wrongs of this situation, it shows up once again the criminal folly of the scale of the defence cuts imposed by the Tories. No aircraft carrier, no Harrier jets, no Nimrods, and now that the Tornados from Leuchars are presumably based temporarily in Malta or Cyprus or Southern France somewhere, nobody guarding the back door here, unless they’ve managed to rustle up an old Shackleton or an Avro Anson to stooge up and down along the coast off Skegness and count in the “bogeys”.

Why are we bombing Libya? If you believe the likes of David Cameron, it’s to protect the lives of innocent civilians. These would, of course, be the same innocent civilians who were being killed last week when we couldn’t give a stuff and were busy sending black helicopters in the middle of the night carrying “diplomats” to help resolve the situation.

It’s not exactly bothered us before; when Saddam Hussein was also killing his own civilians (much more terribly and efficiently that Gadaffi) using weapons which we in the west and other opportunist nations had sold him, (like we did to Gadaffi) we turned a blind eye then, because he was our ally, as Gadaffi was, briefly, in between two periods of being our enemy. And Cameron’s justification that we had to wait until it was legal rings very hollow with me, considering it didn’t bother Blair and we had no compunction in the past in acting illegally, on a lot flimsier pretext when it came to saving innocent civilians, in Iraq. If the UN hadn’t voted to allow this action, would that have stopped us, with oil at stake? And if we are that bothered about saving the lives of innocent arabs, what about Bahrain, inviting in the forces of a neighbouring dictatorship to suppress its own revolt on the streets?

No, I am afraid what is happening in Libya is that old favourite dish, Realpolitik, on the menu again, served up this time with a stinking garnish of hypocrisy. We ignored (by we, I mean Europe and Obama) the uprising in Egypt, because it became obvious that the only “freedom” the protestors in Tahrir Square were gaining was the freedom to get rid of one dictator and be ruled by the army instead. So they were unlikely to do anything to destabilise the region, because they were not exactly Jihadists to start with. Plus, Egypt has lots of sand, camels, pyramids, tourists and potatoes, but not that much oil, in comparative terms. Plus, once the army was in charge, it opened up another sales opportunity for selling them weapons! Kerching! We ignored the rising in Bahrain, because the US Fleet is quartered there, and therefore, naturally, Obama would prefer the status quo. We ignored Saudi Arabia’s rumblings for the same sorts of reasons.

What it boils down to is that if you are an innocent citizen in a country ruled by a megalomaniac with no oil and no strategic importance to the USA, bad luck, old chap.

We actually ignored the Libyan situation for long enough, because we thought, wrongly as it turned out, that the rebels would do “our” job for us and get rid of our former enemy then ally now enemy again, Colonel Gadaffi. But the rebels couldn’t cut it, and they started to lose. Realising that Gadaffi wouldn’t then be that kindly disposed in future to those who supported the uprising against him, Europe and Obama, given the crucial importance of Libyan oil, have painted themselves into a corner, and have now no option but to step in and ensure the rebellion succeeds, having realised belatedly that they had backed the wrong horse and it was on a one-way trip to the glue factory. Still, at least they can dress it up with high flown rhetoric, bollocks and bluster, and try and disguise what it is that British service men and women will potentially die for, when the body bags start trundling through “Royal” Wootton Bassett.

I have no brief for Gadaffi, and I never expected David Cameron to be honest about anything, not even for a nano-second. I had slightly higher expectations of Obama, but it turns out he’s just like all the others, only slightly more inept. More fool me, for harbouring a vestige of political idealism and investing it in a cracked vessel.

But I do want to record that this morning, as our planes are in the air, I am sad, disappointed, and just a tad furious at the way in which once again we are not being told the real reasons behind our colonial adventurism, and exactly what it is our people are, potentially, being asked to die for.

Not in my name.