Libya
Wallace1492
Posts: 3,707
Well, should we or should we not arm the rebellion.
He has sponsored terrorism for years yet we have tolerated him.
Recently seemed to become better friend to west - gave up WMD's, handed of Megrahi (although we Scots handed him back!).
Now he is clinging on to power, crushing the rebellion.
Does the majority in Lbya want rid of him, or is it a minority rebellion, then we would be supporting a lost cause.
He has sponsored terrorism for years yet we have tolerated him.
Recently seemed to become better friend to west - gave up WMD's, handed of Megrahi (although we Scots handed him back!).
Now he is clinging on to power, crushing the rebellion.
Does the majority in Lbya want rid of him, or is it a minority rebellion, then we would be supporting a lost cause.
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It worked with the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. Oh. Hold on....0
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No we shouldn't.
It's still a sovreign state - Humanitarian Aid is one thing, stopping civilians being killed is more than acceptable., but it needs to be up to people of the Country to fight their own fight.
However - if a recognised Govt requested aid to stop a mass murderer then that would be different.Chunky Cyclists need your love too! :-)
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We will be arming the rebels now and then toppling the rebel leaders in a few years. Then we will be allying ourselves with a new set of rebels and toppling a previously supported government.....and so the story revolves around the same theme, just the names that change.
Noted that no one intervened in Zimbabwe.....oh, yeah - no oil, thats right.0 -
Sure we should. And in a few years when we've withdrawn from Afganistan we should send our soldiers over to Lybia to fight whomever is in power (gadafi or the rebels) because they'll no doubt be be our enemy by then.
I mean if we're going to be paying army/navy/air force wages, we might as well have them doing something other than "training".
It also means we can use Lybia as a stopping off point for helping restore democracy to all the other parts of Africa who lost it when dictators stepped in after their western rulers moved out.0 -
Arming the rebels would continue our proud heritage of escalating or starting wars illegally. That our government is even considering the possibility is deeply worrying.
This stuff ALWAYS returns to bite you.[/b][/i]0 -
Arming the rebels would continue our proud heritage of escalating or starting wars illegally. That our government is even considering the possibility is deeply worrying.
This stuff ALWAYS returns to bite you.0 -
Arming the rebels would continue our proud heritage of escalating or starting wars illegally. That our government is even considering the possibility is deeply worrying.
This stuff ALWAYS returns to bite you.0 -
The rebels seem to be a poorly organised collection of groups and individuals only united by the fact that they oppose (not unreasonably) Gaddafi - as you would expect from a popular uprising. If we did supply arms, it wouldn't remove this problem. They would just be a better armed disorganised group. Also, who exactly would we supply them to? Although there has been some sort of administration set up, it doesn't appear to be any substantial form of overall rebel government, or military command that could deploy these arms in a controlled and co-ordinated way.
More fundamentally, it seems that Gaddafi is only going to leave feet first, and he appears to still have some significant level of popular support in the west of the country. It looks as though the best the rebels could achieve in the near future is some sort of partition of the country. Supplying arms is unlikely to change this - just increase the number of dead.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
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The rebels seem to be made up of disparate groups, so when Gaddafi is overthrown Libya will be left with many well armed groups all wanting power.
Next stop, all out civil war.
So,no, I don't think they should be armed.FCN 3: Raleigh Record Ace fixie-to be resurrected sometime in the future
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When the rebels get into the pro Gaddafi areas are we then going to bomb the rebels to stop the slaughter?
Its going to be a massive fudge whatever happens.Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel0 -
I always thought those that thought the war in Iraq was about oil were being naive or simplistic, but can't help but notice how once again we're getting all excited about a country with some bubblin' crude under its turf.
No, we shouldn't be arming the rebels. It's an underhand way of bringing about regime change, which we can't do, Tony, because it's illegal.
As for Megrahi, the man was innocent anyway, and a victim of an atrocious miscarriage of justice. If you want to know why Lockerbie happened, have a snoop around what the USS Vincennes was getting up to.Rules are for fools.0 -
Of course the rebels should not be armed. It's delusional to think otherwise. If anyone wants to up the stakes then please just ditch the hypocrisy and go straight for Gaddafi in person since this is the nub of the whole sorry episode.
Who honestly expected anything but a fecking shambles from start to finish? It's bad enough that half of Libya has been let down by a half-arsed campaign (not only from UN sanctioned forces but also from the home team's fighters on the ground who evidently lack any capability or discipline) while the other half have seen their preferred leader globally vilified again.
If the Sarko-Dave-PornMaestro axis have a clue about the logistical demands of a further step such as arming the rebs, then we should have it very plainly spelt out beforehand.
There is nothing in Libya that needs doing beyond enforcing a no-fly zone, and that is probably by now, de facto, in force. Or have we already seen another few hundred million go to waste?"Consider the grebe..."0 -
"Should we?" is the undergrads-after-the-bar-has-closed question. Will we? Yes. Why? In short, because he's an arsehole terrorist. You go through life making enemies of major Western Governments and sooner or later your "strategy" will come home to roost. Not unlike Saddam. It's like the really annoying kid in the playground. Sooner or later someone will decide that clipping him round the ear isn't good enough, and the poor shite will reap years of crap in a single beating.
Unfortunately we don't have a great track record in putting up a replacement for the shithead dictator. We sure as hell won't want a ragtag bunch running a country in which BP and Total have massive oil interests.0
