They just don't get it...

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

It turns out that a British diplomat turned up at the border and asked to be taken to rebel commanders in Libya. he had with him a detail from the SAS, a crack British Special Forces outfit, similar to the American Delta Force, only with stiffer upper lips and no chewing gum to hand out.

Anyways, the Libyan commanders didn't ask for, and didn't want any forign troops involved in what they see as 'their' struggle against Gaddaffi. So they captured the SAS guys and threw them into the brig, only releasing them unharmed once they had got the british diplomat out of their country.

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/03/05/libyan-rebels-capture-british-sas-unit/

So, there you have it. The Libyans are asking for a UN backed intervention in their struggle.
They want the UN , not the UK or the USA to send in any ground troops.

Seeing as if the rebels win, they are going to have to go to their own people and say that' we are not the sellouts to Western Powers like Gaddaffi was ( remember that the jets and tanks he is currently using to murder his own people were supplied by the same people who want to start an invasion) - well , i think it is only fair that they should be the ones who set the terms on how Gaddaffi is otten rid of. Ok, he has to go, nd his own people are the ones to take him down.

Ii don't see the military dictators and undemocratic despots who rule Arab League countries being very enthusiastic about establishing a bit more democracy in the world , somehow - esp. in a place like Libya.

And that leaves the UN. So, what is the UN for? UK/USA forces have basically been acting like the military wing of their countries corporate interests of late. i don't blame the Libyans for telling the SAS that they were unwelcome.

I do think that the Libyans have every right to appeal to the international community, via the UN , which pledges itself to uphold human rights , to which they belong , to give them a hand by way of enforcing a no fly zone and supporting the Libyan Ground forces with airstrikes on Gaddaffis mercenaries, together with his tanks and artillery.

I am suprised that the UK Government didn't get it that the age of gunboat diplomacy is over, but what else can we expect of ex public schoolboys like 'Call Me Dave'? Cameron and his cronies in the British foriegn office 'just don't get it' - but I hope that someone out there in the wider world does, and does what the rebels are begging the international community to give them without delay.

But if you disagree with the idea of airstrikes, and the Libyans are not going to co operate with any foriegn troops that they regard as 'invaders', then what role or position do we want the UN to adopt here? It has been said in this community that ' this is not what the UN is for - well, ok, what should it be doing instead?

Comments

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

well, maybe I am looking at the korean war down the wrong end of my telescope, but it seems to have stablised the situation. not a complete sucess, but at least South korea was not over run by the regime that has reduced North korea to abject poverty.

South korea is a democratic republic that is only there today because of the UN .

So, what exactly is wrong with that? it may be that military and logistic mistakes got made in the way the war was fought, but i think the UN did the right thing there and should intervene in Libya right now.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Korea was one of the instances in which we can be said to be one of the parties deliberately responsible for the war insofar as we (and the Soviets) decided to divide the peninsula in the first place, contrary to the original plans. We created the conditions for their civil war by trying to engineer an outcome. We were already involved in the situation before it turned hot. You're proposing opening up new theaters every time some hotshot gets medieval on his own, and somebody calls out for help. I'm sorry, but the state of the world is in constant flux, and its unsustainable to think that its anyone's role to fill in order to quell them externally.

We are not responsible in any such way for the battle going on in Lybia today.

In the brightest of outcomes as underlankers said, the best outcomes of these involvements has been a protracted and uneasy stalemate.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Only if by stabilized you mean half the peninsula is the most backwards, over-militarized dictatorship in the world and one of the few things everyone in the USA agrees on is that Kim Jong Il is a bad man and his regime is very bad. A regime that has accumulated 50 years' worth of artillery, maintains a huge army, Stalinist artificially-induced famines and prison camps, and now has nuclear weapons.

For the South Koreans the outcome was indisputably an improvement over 1950. For the people in North Korea and whenever that rotten structure finally implodes the Korean people as a whole, it's been a disaster. The truly horrific thing is that as I said, this is *the best case scenario.*