Dennis Benson

A blustery but sunny morning as we wandered, in cynical mood, down the lane to the allotments. Cynical? Most of us are permanently cynical, this morning especially so, having just read that Clegg and Cameron had already agreed the changes to the NHS bill before the Sheffield Kid announced on yesterday’s BBC his intention to demand them. As we reached the gate, Albert remarked that expert though the pair are in the art of deception, they will need to produce something very special to explain the situation in Libya.

Almost forgotten it? Understandable, given all the things that have swept it from the headlines since we began our bombing mission there some six weeks ago. But we and the French are still bombing away. Bombing is perhaps the wrong term for we are mainly using missiles which cost a cool £850,000 per one-way trip. According to Reuters we have so far managed to kill or maim almost as many civilians as we have saved from Gaddafi’s wrath.

Shortly before the no-fly zone was imposed Barack Obama assured a bipartisan group in Congress that the action would take “days not weeks”. A week later he told the American nation the aim was limited to purely humanitarian ends. He refuted absolutely any suggestion of regime change. Two weeks later, in a joint letter signed by David Cameron and Sarkozy, he brazenly conceded that it was, after all, about regime change when he said “it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Gaddafi in charge”.

Perhaps that fits with the bin Laden execution. Assassination is now, apparently, the foreign policy du jour. Yesterday, the British defence secretary, Liam Fox, insisted that “Nato does not target individuals”. True, it goes for families. Just over a week ago they killed Gaddaffi’s son and three of his grandchildren. Much waving of American flags over bin Laden but on Libya the French and Brits will soon be left to bomb alone, for Libya is not a popular cause in the States and, having obtained his political pay-off from bin Laden, President Obama is poised to withdraw almost completely.

So here we are with a conflict supposed to last days, and was not about regime change, that has gone on for six weeks, cost a fortune in terms of lives and weaponry, and won’t end until the regime changes. Even as we prepare to negotiate a truce with the Taliban, Gaddafi’s offer of a ceasefire has been rejected out of hand. In the name of humanitarianism, the war must be prolonged. If need be for ever since there is stalemate on the ground.

Of course the bombing does have support to a degree from the United Nations, although many countries are now protesting that the French and British action is beyond that authorised. Many ask why not intervene also in Syria and Yemen, where many protestors are dying daily. There is no logical answer, only the one that the gung-ho French and Brits have already bitten off more than they can chew.

The only way in which they can exit without humiliation is to go in on the ground and some British ‘advisers’ are already there with the increasingly suspect ‘rebel’ forces. But it would need American troops to make up a strong enough force and that is unlikely. A prominent US senator in New Hampshire said ‘if the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of US troops is to prevent genocide, then we should have 300,000 in the Congo right now, where millions have been slaughtered. We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan. We would be staying on in Iraq”. The senator’s name was Barack Obama.

We can pontificate for ever on the Libyan ‘mission’. Unless we arrange an assassination or send in troops there will be no progress, only bloodshed. Surely we can only settle for simply  imposing the no-fly zone however ineffective that may be. Right now we are edging into something that we cannot control and which cannot succeed.

The prime minister must tap in to his self-understanding. Hoodwinking Clegg is one thing, doing it to a watchful world an altogether tougher task! 

               OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

THOUGHTS FOR TODAY;  WRITING “ Your life story would not make a good book. Don’t even try!”…..Fran Lebowitz   “Is there any living writer whose silence we would ocnsider to be a literary disaster?”……Cyril Connolly    “Advice to writers; sometimes you have to stop writing. Even before you start”……..Stanislaw J Lec     “Writing is the hardest way to earn a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators”….William Saroyan     “Writing is one tenth perspiration and nine-tenths masturbation”….Alan Bennett    “You, a writer? Listen, dear, you couldn’t write ‘fuck’ on a dusty Venetian blind”…….Coral Browne   “There was a time when I thought my only connection with the literary world would be that I once delivered meat to T S Eliot’s mother-in-law”……Alan Bennett    “Writing is not a profession, but a vocation of unhappiness”….Georges Simenon   “Writing is like the oldest profession. First you do it for your own enjoyment. Then you do it for a few friends. Eventually you think, what the hell, I might as well get paid for doing it”…….Irma Kalish

ANSWERS TO YESTERDAY’S QUIZ;   1.  Francis Ford Coppola   2.  Anthony Eden

TODAY’S QUESTIONS ; CAN YOU BEAT THE EGGHEADS?;   1.  What kind of sculpture was originated by Alexander Calder, who died in 1976?     2.   Who wrote ‘Whatever happened to Sex?’  ?   3.  Asuncion is the capital of which country?   4.  Which ‘Pop Idol’ star was born Jan 20 1979, in Berkshire?     5. Who had hits with ‘Take Your Time’ and ‘Got to Have Your Love’ ?    6.  What is a paravane used for?    7.   Dr James  Naismith devised which game?   8.  In which decade was Jeremy Paxman born?    9.   Which worldwide magazine was conceived by DeWitt Wallace?   10.. To within  two years, when were postcodes introduced to the UK?  

                           ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

4 Responses to “Libya; what is the exit strategy?”