Fighting Battles
If memory serves, this is the very motley group that banded together, ignoring ideological differences and historical tribal and clan agitation to forge a working group to remove their dictator whose enforced popularity on his unwilling subjects has worn too thin for continued fealty. Before they gave themselves the honorific of National Transitional Council, that is, when the Libyan warriors declared they needed no outside assistance, thanks but no thanks.Oops, on second consideration, wait just a minute. Overflights, you say? Covering the rebels' backs? Oh, protecting the innocent citizens of Libya. Certainly, certainly there's an obvious need for that when the Lion of Africa's military minions concentrated on following his bidding to stifle the insurrection of the lowly insects who dared oppose his continued rule. The foreign elements and the terror groups that worked to bring him down. The Islamists awaiting opportunity.
So, please, they said, and thank you very much. And the United Nations agreed on the need for NATO to perform in its much-practised role as defenders-of-hapless-Muslims-from-their-tyrants. Without NATO involvement how successful might the opposition to Libya's Moammar Gadhafi have been in the final analysis? Even with NATO's investment in the bombing ritual, taking out loyalist troops' tanks and artillery, warplanes and assaults, the rebels struggled.
And as they struggled, complained that NATO was just sitting on its haunches when it should be fiercely attacking. Not protecting Libyans from heavy-metal onslaughts, but attacking. Who should be fighting their battles for them, after all? After all, wasn't it they who pridefully boasted they neither needed nor wanted nor would allow foreign boots on the ground? They were capable and more than capable of fending for themselves.
And now that the battle for the country is all but won, and the international community has pretty well unanimously recognized the new leaders of Libya to be the National Transitional Council, there they go again. Complaining that NATO is not sufficiently pulling its weight. The rebel troops, armed and even trained by NATO-member countries, well provisioned and encouraged by NATO's hovering presence, insists NATO must intensify the air war.
The rebels are wearying of the struggle to free themselves from tyranny of their own volition on their own dime. Government forces are out-matching their ferocity in Bani Walid and Sirte. It's those damned sons of Moammar Gadhafi, hanging in there, spurring the loyalists to prove their loyalty to the governing clan. The rebels are chafing, champing at the bit, fed up.
Whose war is it, pray tell?
Labels: Africa, Chaos, Conflict, NATO, United Nations
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, September 29, 2011
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