by David Webb
I don’t have time to write on this subject, but I want to get my view out there that this is no revolution in Libya. It is not the “Libyan people”, but rather an SAS- and NATO-led operation to get rid of Gadaffi. Do we care who runs Libya? Do we know for sure the new Libya will be a democracy? The whole thing is repugnant. Do we even stop to ask what the human toll is when we are bombing whole cities assumed to be inhabited by tribes that support Gadaffi? Respect for national sovereignty has been at a zero throughout this.
The worst thing is seeing Cameron and all the rest strut their stuff, as if they appear so moral and righteous only on the world stage. Cameron is a pro-technocrat who is determined that democracy should not be restored in the UK – we ought to be run, so he thinks, by public-sector bureaucrats and agencies and the EU based abroad – so if Libya is going to be a democracy, what about the UK? Should NATO be bombing Downing Street? And does Cameron have escape tunnels in place? Why do our leaders, so determined that our own polities should be run according to predetermined agendas, promote democracy abroad, or at least appear to do so?
Downing Street sources say there is no sense of triumphalism in the Cameron camp over the Libyan outcome – but you would need to be senseless to believe this. Cameron would rather everyone in Libya dropped dead, if he could spin it in a way that he could present as burnishing his moral image – he cares not a fig (and either do I) for the Libyan people – these wars seem to be being used to create the frisson of a sense of a moral purpose – which Cameron sorely lacks at home.
