That horrible feeling is back again, it seems to be happening all too often over the last two decades. The sight of cruise missiles being fired from American / British / UN warships towards another Muslim country. We have all been here before, in Iraq at the start of the 1990’s when a no-fly zone was eventually put up it led of years of sanctions, millions of dead civilians and the eventual take over of a whole land.
Just like Saddam years ago Gaddafi was and maybe still is the West’s dictator of choice for Libya. The world would love to believe that this no-fly zone has nothing to do with the 40 billion barrels oil that is in Libyan control, but the track record doesn’t bode well.
Tony Blair was famed for showing off his moral standpoint on all things international by vowing that events like the Rwandan genocide should never be allowed to happen again. This has been the pretext for much of Britain’s foreign policy for a long time, not much has changed with Cameron.
However this new found love of humanitarianism doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The democratic elections in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast have all in the recent past led to mass killings and violence. No action has been or will be taken to stop the killings as it is not in the best interests of the powers of the world. The only thing worse than the foreign policy of America , Britain et al. are the hypocritical reasons given for it.
It is true that Gaddafi needed to be brought to book but are the UN the only people able to do so?
What happened to the Muslims of the world, the millions of well trained men in the Muslim armies who could in the blink of an eye end the tyranny of Gaddafi?
To go with the revolutions sweeping the Muslim world there needs to be change of mind-set whereby we don’t look to others to solve our problems.
We have to become the masters of our own destiny.
