Let’ see:
Britain and the U.S. make deals with dictator Ghadaffi for turning over to them his WMD materials. Was Ghadaffi a homicidal tyrant of a despot then. Yes. Should the nature of his regime alone have prevented our cooperation with him? Yes. Ghadaffi’s only gain for turning over his WMD materials should have been nothing more than our agreement to not come and get it ourselves.
Britain and their flagship oil conglomerate make back room deals to let Ghadaffi’s assasin - planner of the Lockerbie affair - out of jail in Britain, so he could return to Libya and freedom for the rest of his life. Was Ghadaffi a homicidal tyrant of a despot then? Yes. Did that prevent those deals? No. Should it have? Yes.
The oh so perfect and wise United Nations elevated Ghadaffi’s government to the Chairman’s position on their top human rights watchdog panel. Was there barely a peep out of Britain, France, Germany, Italy or even the U.S. at the time? No. Was Ghadaffi a homicidal tyrant of a despot then? Yes. Should the entire “west” have jointly and uniformly denounced that action and insured their own media did not bury that denouncement? Yes. Did they? No.
So some Libyan’s decided to copy-cat the street protests in vogue in some other Arab nations, and in keeping with the nature of his regime, which was never any different in the past, Ghadaffi summarily suppressed them; which was all that anyone could, all that anyone had a right to, expect.
And suddenly THAT changes the European and United States opinion of the nature of the Ghadaffi regime, sufficiently that they claim - on this new scandalous evidence about the Ghadaffi regime, that they have some non-existent RIGHT to militarily intervene in Libya?
Why didn’t they intervene in China in 1989? Why haven’t they intervened in Syria? Why did they never intervene in Zimbabwe as Mugabe sent murder squads after his opponents? Why didn’t they intervene when Chavez sent his thugs into the streets of Caracus against the protests of his opponents? Why didn’t they intervene in Iran, if they HAVE such a RIGHT to do so? HYPOCRITES. LIARS.
It all shows the massive and self-serving hypocrisy of convenience of western nations when it comes to homicidal dictators and dictatorships in general.
The nature of the Ghadaffi regime was such that it ALWAYS deserved absolute lack of cooperation, condemnation, opposition, and sanction from western nations, throughout the regime’s existence; and at no time ever deserved otherwise, for any reason.
Yet, in as much as that has not been the case, with the hypocritical western nations all along, their claim of any “right” for their actions today rings totally hollow, convenient and self-serving.
Ghadaffi and his regime always deserved our total opposition. But, the idea in vogue in the west that conditions today suddenly represent a change and suddenly anyone has some sort of “right” to take the action being taken against Libya, is an idea of pure fiction and convenient, self-serving invention.
A “right” cannot be a matter of convenience. You either have it or you don’t. You either exercise your demands for it or it’s legitimacy is denied by your own refusal to demand it. In time it’s rightful legitimacy dies with your complacency. If the west has the “right” to take the action it is taking against Libya, then, given the homicidal tyrannical nature of the Ghadaffi regime - nothing new about that today - it could have taken this action any day of any week of any year of the regime’s existence, and chose not to?
There was a time when “the west” MIGHT have been able and legitimate in making the case for a “right” to its actions in Libya. More than a century of hypocrisy toward tyrannical dictatorships has buried that possibility.
You don’t understand realpolitik very well. Please show me where in the East the same game isn’t played, with far more viciousness and lack of law or regret. Such as Russia shutting off natural gas pipelines to Europe to blackmail Ukraine & Europe, in the middle of winter.
IIRC all of the offshore and possibly onshore drilling is British financed/run. Britain isn’t going to let their investment just be handed over to some group of johnnie come lately muzzies who’ll just nationalize it.
Nor is Europe going to be put over a barrel anymore than they already are w no oil resources.
You know what happens when you try to fix all the East’s problems? You lose a lot of Westerner’s and not much else.
Also, all they’re trying to do is put a moderate muslim govt in place to guarantee their investment and supply. win/win. You get rid of ghadaffi and the “people” get a little better living. You can bang on the West all you want. We put the East to shame. Thanks to God & Jesus. Who knows how much longer we have their protection. Not long it seems.