I’ve not read the resolutions and don’t dispute what the OP says. But I’d make the point that even if the resolution does allow us to arm the rebels – or if it is the case that there are multiple interpretations – then surely it is against the spirit of the UN Charter, even if not the letter, to regard something as endorsed by the Security Council if the Council did not realise that it was endorsing it.

On the subject of the letter of the UN Charter, it’s interesting that it states quite clearly and unambiguously that a Security Council resoluton is legal only if it has the affirmative votes (not merely abstentions or absences) of the permanent members. But the US chose to ignore this when it wanted to go to war in Korea, and subsequently this bizarre US misinterpretation of the Charter has become generally accepted, with the World Court even appearing to endorse it as the received practice (albeit in an advisory opinion).

If a resolution is ambiguous – as some claim 1973 is – surely there should be (if there isn’t already) some independent mechanism for deciding what it means, rather than just American and British say-so. I suppose the World Court could fulfil this role if given sufficient time; failing that surely the Security Council itself ought to rule on the meaning of its resolutions.

Like I said last week… This has mission creep written all over it.

Arming the Afghans to fight the Russians 30 years ago turned out great! Nobody, apparently, could imagine that they would become Islamic fundies.

Humanitarian Intervention. Not regime change.

Repeat it till you believe it.

Whether its legal or not, it won’t be a wise move. We’d be arming people we have no idea who they are, or their ultimate goals long term.

Very bad idea.

But we do know who a big proportion of them are.
Hardline Islamists.
Known terrorists who are also known to come mostly from the areas that sent more suicide bombers to Iraq than anywhere outside the country.

Yeah…Lets arm the very people our troops are fighting in other countries right now!
And hell, let’s arm THEM while OUR troops fighting others of their kind struggle with a lack of supplies and back-up!
Seems to be the way the self-hating, Islamic appeasing, Western World has been going for years.

Ignore this civil war! The Middle East and those ever peacful Muslims have screamed hate at us Infidels for sticking our noses into their SO CALLED ‘Muslim World’.
So let them get on with it. Gaddafi is scum but he’s no longer a Jihadist threat.
The ‘rebels’ are!

So let them kill each other off. Do us all a favour.

This is manner from heaven for the neo- cons. Another chance to use deadly force to reshape the world in their own image !

@2 sally: “Arming the Afghans to fight the Russians 30 years ago turned out great! Nobody, apparently, could imagine that they would become Islamic fundies.”

I was 16 years of age at the time and could work out that the anti-Russians were fundamentalists. Afghanistan was a satellite USSR state and the “invasion” was rational. Arming the anti-Russians was clearly bonkers at the time (no hind sight required) but it was part of the Cold War strategy. (A shit strategy that couldn’t lose in the USSR/Eastern Europe. but which crapped on the world.)

I do not imagine that the Libyan rebels are entirely nice liberals. I find it difficult to believe that a hidden mujahideen army existed in Libya but I accept that there will be interlopers and converts.

News reports suggest that Libyan rebels have acquired *new* light weaponry — not things nabbed from the Libyan army. Somehow or other, the rebels will get new weapons if they have not done already.

Who provides new weapons — the West or Al Qaeda? Who wins influence from supplying weapons? Who helps to build a new state?

Incidentally, the OP gets ravelled in knots at the end of the piece; failing to notice that intervention is legal and moral without UN sanction. The UN blanket for intervention is nice (in some countries, a political necessity) but is not essential. Moral acts do not require UN sanction.

@6 Skooter: “This is manner from heaven for the neo- cons. Another chance to use deadly force to reshape the world in their own image !”

So what is a neo-con? How would a neo-con create a world in the image of him/her self? Do neo-cons use deadly force when they are frustrated by the queue at the co-op because the queue defies their perfect world?

There’s a massive, whacking great number of reasons not to arm the rebels – aside from common sense and a quick peek at history, of course – but here’s one damn big deterrent: The rebels don’t exactly look like the world’s most competent military force, do they?

If you want Gaddafi’s men to get their hands on whatever weapons kits we’re sending out, it’d be quicker just to mail them direct to M. Gaddafi, Pile O’ Skulls Palace, Tripoli. If we want to kit out the Taliban with tank-busting warheads, cut out the middle man by sending ‘em straight to Pakistan.

Plus, there’s one good thing about air strikes, folks – the recipients of that type of military aid can’t sell them on to the nearest Al Qaeda nutter.

This is before we consider whether it’s wise to send even machine guns and ammo into the midst of a civil war. If there’s a civil war in history that wasn’t filled with atrocity and brutal reprisal, I can’t think of it. Probably best to consider that now, before UN investigators start pulling hundreds of M4 rounds out of dead civilians in loyal cities.

@ Charlieman

I’m confused.

Is Libya Eurasia or Eastasia?

Are the rebels insurgents or freedom fighters this week?

It’s all so confusing…………

Yesterday someone posted this in the Guardian CiF:

Really, It might not be wholly tribal but it’s roots are certainly religious fundimentalism.

“The revolt was started in Benghazi on February 15-17th by the group called the National Conference of the Libyan Opposition. The protests had a clear fundamentalist religious motivation, and were convened to commemorate the 2006 Danish cartoons protests, which had been particularly violent in Benghazi.

The NCLO web site (Arabic) carries a document (Arabic; Google Cache; legible in automatic translation) dated February 15th (the day the protests began), which clearly spells out NCLO’s objections to Qaddafi’s rule. The main points of “Qaddafi: Islam’s no. 1 enemy” are as follows:

•Qaddafi has closed an Islamic university and a seminary, has forbidden some Islamist publications, and has thrown thousands of Islamist activists into jail.
•Qaddafi has urged to put the Qur’an on the shelf, as no longer appropriate for this age.
•Qaddafi has made fun of the Islamic veil, calling it a “rag” and a “tent”.
•Qaddafi has dared to say that Christians and Jews should be allowed to visit Mecca.
•Qaddafi has rejected the Hadith and Sunnah, and said he follows the Qur’an alone.”

Makes yer fink dunnit?

Libya: WikiLeaks cables warn of extremist beliefs

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8365432/Libya-WikiLeaks-cables-warn-of-extremist-beliefs.html

Former jihadi fighters who underwent “religious and ideological training” in Afghanistan, Lebanon and the West Bank in the 1980s have returned to eastern towns in Libya such as Benghazi and Derna to propagate their Islamist beliefs, the cables warn.

Derna has become a particular stronghold for the former fighters and conservative imams who have shut down “un-Islamic” social and cultural organisations such as sports leagues, theatres and youth clubs, the cables report.

One cable sent to Washington in February 2008 reports a conversation with a local businessman who described the increasingly incendiary rhetoric at backstreet mosques in Derna, where coded talk of “martyrdom operations” had become commonplace.

The cable states: “By contrast with mosques in Tripoli and elsewhere in the country, where references to jihad are extremely rare, in Benghazi and Derna they are fairly frequent subjects.”

Another confidential cable to Washington from the US embassy in Tripoli in June 2008 described Derna as a “wellspring” of insurgent fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq.

The so called ‘summit’ this week in London was mainly to formalise the bidding process for new Oil contracts through Qatar.

BENGHAZI, Libya: Oil fields in rebel-held territory in Libya are producing between 100,000 and 130,000 barrels a day, and the opposition plans to begin exporting oil “in less than a week”, a rebel representative said on Sunday.

“We are producing about 100,000 to 130,000 barrels a day, we can easily up that to about 300,000 a day,” said Ali Tarhoni, the rebel representative responsible for economy, finance and oil, at a news conference.

He said the rebel government had agreed an oil contract with Qatar, which would market the crude, and that he expected exports to begin in “less than a week”.

Tarhoni said he had signed the contract with Qatar recently and that the deal would help ensure “access to liquidity in terms of foreign denominated currency”.

“We contacted the oil company of Qatar and they agreed to take all the oil we export and market that oil for us,” he said.

This is an Oil War built on lies about why we are there, with no end in sight.
Just like Iraq was.

10. pagar: “I’m confused.”

Indeed, we should not be confident. Do we know whether who wears a white hat today will be wearing a black hat tomorrow?

I will defend my decision to um and ar. I’m a liberal

It looks like the circus will be going on for a while yet:

“Libya leader Muammar Gaddafi’s armed forces are not close to breaking point despite hundreds of allied air strikes, American military chiefs have said.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12924807

Do we know whether who wears a white hat today will be wearing a black hat tomorrow?

Gaddafi was perceived as wearing both hats within a few weeks and it never left his head!!!!

As with the most diverting of the Roman circuses, there is a cost in human lives:

NAPLES, March 31 (Reuters) – NATO is taking reports of civilian casualties in western airstrikes in Libya seriously, the commander of the alliance’s military operations said on Thursday.

At least 40 civilians have been killed in air strikes by Western forces on Tripoli, the top Vatican official in the Libyan capital told Reuters on Thursday, quoting what he called reliable sources in close contact with reisdents.
http://af.reuters.com/article/libyaNews/idAFLDE72U1H920110331

Many regular discerning listeners of BBC radio news bulletins will have realised this Friday morning that with all the exciting stuff about Libyan defectors and envoys, there was certainly no room to include peripheral items of passing importance like this:

Government to amend NHS reforms as pressure on Lansley grows
http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=35&storycode=4129003&c=2

What will most affect the welfare of those eponymous “hard working people” in Britain, Lanley’s reforms of the NHS or tales of Libyan defectors and envoys – or even of heroic events during WW2 like the cockleshell heroes?

Well done, Government Communications and salutations to the new director:

The prime minister has chosen a senior executive at BBC News to replace Andy Coulson as Director of Government Communications. Craig Oliver, controller of English at BBC Global news, and a former editor of the BBC News at Six and Ten will take up the post shortly. [2 February 2011]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12348159

But I reckon that politicians have almost as much integrity as estate agents.

Btw as I recall, it was a defector from Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq who fed to the Blair government that Iraq could deploy WMD within 45-minutes of a command from Saddam, information which featured no less than four times in the then government’s dossier on Iraq’s WMD published on 24 September 2002 and drafted, of course, by Alastair Campbell.

It would be like giving children poison and razor blades to play with !

Quite apart from ‘is it legal’, is it not plainly clear its an absolutely terrible idea?!

When asked directly the politicians are quite clear that the aim of the mission isn’t to remove Gadaffi – Hague got quite shirty the other day when repeatedly saying the aim is to protect civilians the aim is not to remove Gadaffi. Then the next sentance was ‘Gaddafi has to go’.

But is there a profit in it?

The OP is just plain wrong.

UNSCR 1973 says:

Authorizes Member States that have notified the Secretary-General, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, and acting in cooperation with the Secretary-General, to take all necessary measures, notwithstanding paragraph 9 of resolution 1970 (2011), to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory, and requests the Member States concerned to inform the Secretary-General immediately of the measures they take pursuant to the authorization conferred by this paragraph which shall be immediately reported to the Security Council…

….. therefore, so long as arms supply is necessary to protect civilians and is promptly reportrd to the Secreatry General and the SC, then it IS legal.

Note the “notwithstanding para 9″ clause. The word “notwithstanding” sweeps aside the whole argument of the OP.

I feel sure that news about the Libyan civil war would be much more diverting if we sent in the weapons.

@8

Hope this helps your understanding of egarvacneicon is?

A neo-conservative (abbreviated as neo-con or neocon) is part of a U.S. based political movement rooted in liberal Cold War anticommunism and a backlash to the social liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. These liberals drifted toward conservatism: thus they are new (neo) conservatives. They favor an aggressive unilateral U.S. foreign policy. They generally believe that elites protect democracy from mob rule. Sometimes the spelling is “neoconservative.”

@8

And if yon think neocons are US based here are Michael goves views on the subject.

“A week later Gove wrote that, ‘What the West is dealing with, once more, is an ideological challenge to our existence and values.’ He rejected the use of diplomacy and called for ‘total war’. He continued:
Where should our steel be directed? It cannot, I fear, be deployed with the speed for which emotion pleads. But the swath we must cut is clear. First, the military eradication of bin Laden’s headquarters and training camps. Next, the assembly of a coalition against the threat from his most dangerous accomplice, Saddam Hussein, and his weapons of mass destruction…” [14]

@19: But is there a profit in it?

Duh.

George Bernard Shaw: There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles, and cuts off his king’s head on republican principles. His watchword is always duty; and he never forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the opposite side to its interest is lost. [The man of destiny]
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4024/4024-h/4024-h.htm

24
That would be a ‘yes’ then.

“”‘‘What the West is dealing with, once more, is an ideological challenge to our existence and values.’ “”"

And what part of that isn’t 100% correct!?

That is exactly what we face…Burt Give won;t admit that the enemy that wants that is already here and is hard fighting that war while we’re to suicidally PC to fight back.

Ironically one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds is the culturally suicidal idea to open yet more, even less controlled, Islamic child brainwashing centres disguised as Islamic schools.

Fuck Libya! The war that Gove mentioned takes place every minute of the day on our own UK streets.

@ 26 Davey Boy

Who exactly do you mean by “the enemy”, and in what way would you go about fighting back?

Who do I mean? Er…The Buddhists!?

Fucking idiot.

@ 28 Davey Boy

There’s a number of things you could mean. For a start, you could mean extremist Muslims or all Muslims.

But if you’re unable to answer the question, so be it.

Davey Boy

– Your hatred is destructive, and your anger reduces the value of any discussion you have

https://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/04/05/the-french-left-shows-it-islamophobia-in-supporting-niqab-ban/#comment-257295

https://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/04/06/why-do-israels-cheerleaders-in-the-uk-ignore-its-racism/#comment-257296

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20110409/tpl-uk-libya-islamist-81f3b62.html