Civile i Libyen: Nej tak til vestlige bomber

Som Politiken skriver:

Et halvt døgn efter at de første krigsfly fløj ind over Libyen, er mange lokale allerede godt trætte af angrebet.

Det fortæller øjenvidner til en række internationale nyhedsmedier, efter at Frankrig, USA og Storbritannien natten igennem har kastet bomber og granater ned mod mål i det nordafrikanske land.

En af de utilfredse Tripoli-borgere er ’Sami’, der til The Guardians udsendte giver luft til de stærke anti-amerikanske følelser, der hersker i Libyen og resten af regionen.»Folk er trænet til denne slags konfrontation. Vi blev også bombet af USA i 1986. Disse folk har en agenda: De vil ruinere Libyen og trække landet ned«, siger ’Sami’.

I Twitter-universet – hvor der også er masser af USA-kritiske røster fra libyere – vælger ’OnlyOneLibya’ en modsat tilgang. Som han skriver:

»Jeg vil blot minde det libyske folk om, at luftangreb ikke fjerner Gaddafi. Vi er selv nødt til at gøre det. Libyen må rejse sig!«

I The Independent udstiller Robert Fisk de vestlige regeringers moralske fallit ved at spørge sig selv, om man mon ville være lige så hurtig til at blande sig i et lignende opgør i Mauritanien eller Elfenbenskysten – og påpeger, at de oprørere i Benghazi, der i dag vifter med franske flag,  meget hurtigt kan rette gå hen og rette geværerne mod de vestlige styrker:

Why not, when Gaddafi tells the people of Benghazi that “we will come, ‘zenga, zenga’ (alley by alley), house by house, room by room.” Surely this is a humanitarian intervention that really, really, really is a good idea. After all, there will be no “boots on the ground”.Of course, if this revolution was being violently suppressed in, say, Mauritania, I don’t think we would be demanding no-fly zones. Nor in Ivory Coast, come to think of it. Nor anywhere else in Africa that didn’t have oil, gas or mineral deposits or wasn’t of importance in our protection of Israel, the latter being the real reason we care so much about Egypt.

So here are a few things that could go wrong, a sidelong glance at those bats still nestling in the glistening, dank interior of their box. Suppose Gaddafi clings on in Tripoli and the British and French and Americans shoot down all his aircraft, blow up all his airfields, assault his armour and missile batteries and he simply doesn’t fade away. I noticed on Thursday how, just before the UN vote, the Pentagon started briefing journalists on the dangers of the whole affair; that it could take “days” just to set up a no-fly zone.

Then there is the trickery and knavery of Gaddafi himself. We saw it yesterday when his Foreign Minister announced a ceasefire and an end to “military operations” knowing full well, of course, that a Nato force committed to regime-change would not accept it, thus allowing Gaddafi to present himself as a peace-loving Arab leader who is the victim of Western aggression: Omar Mukhtar Lives Again.

Libya is not Egypt. Again, Gaddafi is a fruitcake and, given his weird performance with his Green Book on the balcony of his bombed-out house, he probably does occasionally chew carpets as well.Then there’s the danger of things “going wrong” on our side, the bombs that hit civilians, the Nato aircraft which might be shot down or crash in Gaddafi territory, the sudden suspicion among the “rebels”/”Libyan people”/democracy protesters that the West, after all, has ulterior purposes in its aid. And there’s one boring, universal rule about all this: the second you employ your weapons against another government, however righteously, the thing begins to unspool. After all, the same “rebels” who were expressing their fury at French indifference on Thursday morning were waving French flags in Benghazi on Thursday night. Long live America. Until…

Jeg forstår godt dem, der mener, der kan være bedre at gøre noget, og at selv om en aktion ikke er perfekt, kan den godt være bedre end ingenting. Jeg kan bare ikke se noget som helst tegn på, at den igangværende vestlige aktion mod Libyen ikke er værre end ingenting. Jeg håber meget, jeg tager fejl, men de fleste vil give mig ret i, at Vesten ikke har nogen god track record i området. Bortset fra, da vores flyveforbud og heroiske indsats i øvrigt reddede indbyggerne i Srebrenica fra massakren. Eller hvad det nu var, de gjorde.