The dangerous doubts of the U.S. administration
Il Giornale, March 2, 2011
“If you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk,” said Eli Wallach in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", as he guns down the murder who had come to bump him off and who instead, lost himself in unnecessary threats. The parable is not fierce, it's just realistic: we talk and talk and meanwhile, destinies are fulfilled. And also those of young people, women and innocent children, if the tyrant who is determined to sacrifice their lives is not stopped. Even now that, after two years of Obamian hesitations, the U.S. has been trying to appear determined in the face of the revolts in the Arab world, still Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sought meanwhile to exorcise the recent memory of a too interventionist America, by saying one thing and denying another, wanting one outcome and rejecting the other: to intervene yes, but with good judgment, to stop Qaddafi, but without weapons. Clinton knows well that one of the principle reasons of Obama's election was his violent opposition of George W. Bush's figure and the refusal of the idea of the exporting democracy on the tip of the spear.
Now Clinton is embarrassed. While on one hand she maintains with determination, and with good reason, that Qaddafi must relinquish power and leave Libya, or rather, that for the U.S. “all options are on the table,” she stresses the need of avoiding the use of military force. As Clinton says the latter, the Pentagon is moving its military forces towards Libya with the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge, which has helicopters and 1,800 marines on board, and as it moves near to its coast, NATO is implementing the no-fly zone and preparing to eventually shoot down Libyan MIG's that could take flight. It cannot be done by sending a bouquet of roses.
Britain has already sent its C130 aircraft to remove its countrymen from the desert: it has succeeded, and it is a miracle that there were no clashes. Italy too, now that our 2008's treaty of friendship with Libya has been suspended, can have its ports serve as a basis for eventual military actions. Meanwhile, Qaddafi repeats and demonstrates that he has no intention of leaving: he is weakened but not defeated and he even uses his aircrafts against his population, while trying to recover some cities lost to the rebels. His enemies haven't succeeded in penetrating Tripoli and his stronghold of ruthless intimidation, of power, of aimed weapons and of blind loyalty.
Secondly, there are many reasons to think that the dictator wants to continue to fight. On Tuesday, an article in The Telegraph reported that the British have found in the Libyan desert as much as 14 tons of chemicals required to create mustard gas, an unconventional weapon similar to that which Saddam Hussein used against the Kurds. And also on Tuesday, moreover, the control towers at the airports monitored by the dictator, recorded the take off and landing of aircraft by Qaddafi. The Libyan dictator laughed outright when Christiane Amanpour of ABC News asked him earlier last week if he would leave his country. He went on during that interview to deny using his air force to attack protesters, stating instead, that he had used planes to bomb two military sites in Bengasi in order to demonstrate his dislike for armed violence. Fancy that!
The fact is that two ammunition depots were really bombed, just as someone probably already lurks among the rebels in Bengasi in order to give them support. And we all know very well that NATO would be developing an air force to send weapons to the rebels. In short, the idea of stopping the well holed up Qaddafi with force seem realistic. Qaddafi, like a shooting star that extinguishes before launching high and destructive fiery red-hot jets of material, can become ever more crazy, killing many and doing a lot of harm.
Ahmad Chalabi, the Shiite leader who was among the first brave Iraqi dissidents, recounts how in 1991, at the end of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein had lost 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces and found himself with an army in a state of coma and with his fanatical personal guards, very similar to Qaddafi's today, in pieces. But Colin Powell, then Chief of Staff, and Brent Scowcroft convinced George H. W. Bush to give Saddam the possibility of flying his military aircraft in order to calm the rioters. They feared that they could not control this crazy situation in Iraq. The result was a frightful massacre of about 330thousand Iraqis, while the Americans looked on. Chalabi says that it is no coincidence that Qaddafi has mentioned Iraq in his mad tirades, because it is his implicit threat to use brute force. It is a mockery to fear the West, a wink to maintain any kind of stability.
Chalabi remembers when they found 313 enormous mass graves and when he saw one of them with his own eyes, which horrified him: in that mass grave 12 thousands bodies had been thrown, slaughtered simply because they were rebels.
The world, after what Qaddafi has done in recent weeks, knows what he can still do to his people. But from figure like this, responsible for the 1986's attack in Berlin and for that of Lockerbie and who has continuously supported terrorism, with an extraordinary record of human rights violations - despite the fact that he is a member of the UN Human Rights Council until today - anything is possible.
For example, for the sake of “stability”, leave him to resist for a long time more in his bunker in Tripoli, so that he may prepare for a second round, that has actually already started.
Translated by Amy K. Rosenthal