"Our duty and our mandate under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect civilians, and we are doing that. It is not to remove Qaddafi by force. But it is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Qaddafi in power...so long as Qaddafi is in power, NATO must maintain its operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds. Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an inclusive constitutional process can really begin, led by a new generation of leaders. In order for that transition to succeed, Qaddafi must go and go for good."
--Presidents Obama and Sarkozy, Prime Minister Cameron, in a joint piece in today's NYT
So, getting rid of Qaddafi isn't part of our mandate, but we aren't leaving until he's gone. The bald-faced doublespeak would be appalling if it weren't so utterly predictable. Keeping your forces in country until something happens is making that thing happen by force. To assert otherwise is like me insisting that if I break into your house, heavily armed, and refuse to leave until you give me your television, I'm not actually robbing you.
To borrow a phrase: you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.
2 comments:
how will this end? i predict the people of Libya will be the next to end up under Obama's bus.
They already are under Obama's bus, if I heard correctly. News reports came out that Gaddhafi is dropping some sort of cluster bomb on rebels.
Meaning that his planes and helicopters are once again flying. How else can you drop bombs on people?
No matter what happens in Libya, we can depend on a majority of the people AND the government hating us now.
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