A dithering response to mass murder in Libya
Image by dbking via FlickrWhile Col. Moammar Khadafy continues his massacre of the Libyan people, major powers, led by the United States, are engaged in diplomatic hand-wringing.The no drama Obama approach seems to be getting a lot of people killed. The administration seems to think the Libyan mass murder epidemnic is a "distraction" from important things like rooting for the deficit in Wisconsin while not solving the one in Washington.
Never mind if the streets of Tripoli are covered with corpses; the Obama administration is negotiating a deal to expel Libya from the UN Human Rights Committee, where it shouldn't have been in the first place.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has put a phone call in to the colonel, advising him to consider nonviolent "means of resolving the situation."
To describe a massacre as "a situation" is a bit rich.
But, of course, we have been here before.
This is what happened when Saddam Hussein killed 6,000 of Iraq's Kurdish citizens in Halabcheh with chemical weapons and slaughtered Iraqi Shiites in Najaf and Karbala. We saw the same when the Serbs were massacring Bosnians and Kosovars.
As always, the rationale for inaction is that intervention by Western powers, especially the United States, might portray the opposition as pro-American -- as if that were a heinous crime.
Those who use this argument think that Libyans would rather die under the colonel's boots than be described as pro-American.
Yet, as everyone can see, there is a thirst for freedom in Libya to the point that thousands are prepared to die for it.
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So far, the administrations "handling" of the "situation" is disgraceful. We still have little in the way of naval power in the Mediterranean, not to mention no Marines either. We have no carriers to enforce a no fly zone.
There is something very wrong and very weak about this administration.
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