Poll: Rebels rolling into Tripoli

Were we right to get involved in Libya?

  • Yes

    Votes: 291 49.7%

  • No

    Votes: 294 50.3%
  • Total voters
    585
XRAY said:
Then lets have his subjective answer. :p

I'm not interested in what was better for us. I'm interested in seeing justice for any crimes committed by Gadaffi including but not limited to:

The Lockerbie Bombing
The murder of Yvonne Fletcher
The Berlin Discotheque bombing in 1986
Funding the IRA, ETA, and the PLO
The systematic murdering of Libyan dissidents around the world
The 1996 mass murder of 1200 Libyan prisoners
The deliberate targeting of civilians since the uprisings began

OldCoals constantly goes on about the hypocrisy of the West's involvement. I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with his statements. I would merely like to know whether or not this possible hypocrisy is excuse for Gadaffi to go unpunished or at the very least criticised!
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The problem is that a decent percentage of the weapons Gaddafi had are from Europe. Even the howitzers he uses are Italian made and bought in the 1980s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmaria_(artillery)

In the 5 years upto the end of 2009 the UK allowed licenses for around 120 million Euro of defence related materiel:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/mar/01/eu-arms-exports-libya

European licenses were over 800 million Euro into total which is around $1 billion AFAIK.

The French were trying to sell him Rafale fighters in 2007 to replace the French F1 fighters he had:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/12/13/dassault-idUSL1358590620071213

They even flew a few over for a demo but it seems the price of the aircraft was too high(the irony).

In 2007 France sold Libya $230 million of MILAN antitank missiles too:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-08-02-libya-france_N.htm?csp=34

Europe has helped arm his regime for 30 years. It basically means we have assisted him in whatever he has done.

I still don't understand why Western Europe has been selling him all these weapons for 30 years outside of making a quick buck.
 
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Well two of the Libyans on my facebook seem very happy... The third is noticeable by his absence... I doubt he's happy about this...
 
Nerusy said:
It's bean explained many times why it is not hypocritical to help Libya but not Syria...come on.
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It's a tough one, but this is the way I see it:

Many of your neighbours houses are on fire, you own a fire hose and start putting out of the flames of the house across the street. But people shout to you "why don't you help the house two doors down as well?"

You reply, "I only have one hose. Or would you rather I do nothing and be fair?"
 
I really hope whatever bunch replaces Gaddafi are not another bunch of dictators or looney tunes. I also hope if they seem to be going that way we don't arm them or support them in any way too.
 
cmndr_andi said:
It's a tough one, but this is the way I see it:

Many of your neighbours houses are on fire, you own a fire hose and start putting out of the flames of the house across the street. But people shout to you "why don't you help the house two doors down as well?"

You reply, "I only have one hose. Or would you rather I do nothing and be fair?"
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Or rather, "I have several hoses but one might get damaged if i fight that fire, plus this house has tons of oil in it" :p
 
cmndr_andi said:
It's a tough one, but this is the way I see it:

Many of your neighbours houses are on fire, you own a fire hose and start putting out of the flames of the house across the street. But people shout to you "why don't you help the house two doors down as well?"

You reply, "I only have one hose. Or would you rather I do nothing and be fair?"
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"also this neighbours fire is a lot easier to put out and has the potential to massively increase the value of my house as opposed to all the others which have fires that are much more difficult to put out and may turn round and end up burning me to death or at least hurting my houses value"
 
Don't know where I stand with this tbh. Part of me thinks it's someone else's problem and that we shouldn't get involved as we open ourselves up to danger.

But at the same time, we signed an agreement saying that we'd help in the event of something like this happening. It's not like before where we rolled right in regardless of what NATO/EU/Europe thought.

I think I err on the side of not getting involved overall as we don't really have the resources or money to go wandering into every country that has the slightest civil unrest.
 
Well what i find hard to believe is that military action, especially in the form we are undertaking that seemed to be a snap decision can be classified as "helping". I mean, there's got to be a better solution.

Besides, in going into Libya it has to be said that we've somewhat killed the uprising, perhaps that's what they wanted anyway when they made that decision.
 
Tute said:
Don't know where I stand with this tbh. Part of me thinks it's someone else's problem and that we shouldn't get involved as we open ourselves up to danger.

But at the same time, we signed an agreement saying that we'd help in the event of something like this happening. It's not like before where we rolled right in regardless of what NATO/EU/Europe thought.

I think I err on the side of not getting involved overall as we don't really have the resources or money to go wandering into every country that has the slightest civil unrest.
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I know the money for war operations is coming from a separate fund but it seems at the end of June,the Libyan campaign cost £260 millon:

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/185948.html

However,it looks like there will a reduction of 20% in the number of people in the Police Force due to budget cuts:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/11/uk-riots-david-cameron-police-commons
 
PermaBanned said:
Well what i find hard to believe is that military action, especially in the form we are undertaking that seemed to be a snap decision can be classified as "helping". I mean, there's got to be a better solution.

Besides, in going into Libya it has to be said that we've somewhat killed the uprising, perhaps that's what they wanted anyway when they made that decision.
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I don't quite get what you mean. If you cast your mind back to march (just before the UNSC resolution) Gaddafi went on state television announcing that he will show "no mercy" to the "rats" and at the same time sent a large armoured convoy towards the civilian city of Benghazi that had risen up.

In that situation the International community had two options, ignore it and let Gaddafi "deal with the problem" in the way he had done in the past (though arguably not on the same scale) or intervene. We chose to intervene (with the support of the UN security council and Arab League).

As far as I can see, there was little else we could do, having a nice chat with Gaddafi doesn't seem to do a lot and once he has his mind made up there appears to be little you can do to sway him.

As for "killing the uprising", I don't understand what you mean. If anything we saved the uprising in march.

What happened afterwards was the controversial shift to effectively becoming the uprising's air force during a civil war (though anyone in power will deny this, as there are ways to justify it under UNSCR 1973 using a very broad definition, but i'm just calling a spade a spade) which many people are unhappy about.

But in the end it looks like it worked and with zero coalition casualties. Now it is a case of how the "new libya" is brought together once the dust settles.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
The problem is that a decent percentage of the weapons Gaddafi had are from Europe. Even the howitzers he uses are Italian made and bought in the 1980s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmaria_(artillery)

In the 5 years upto the end of 2009 the UK allowed licenses for around 120 million Euro of defence related materiel:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/mar/01/eu-arms-exports-libya

European licenses were over 800 million Euro into total which is around $1 billion AFAIK.

The French were trying to sell him Rafale fighters in 2007 to replace the French F1 fighters he had:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/12/13/dassault-idUSL1358590620071213

They even flew a few over for a demo but it seems the price of the aircraft was too high(the irony).

In 2007 France sold Libya $230 million of MILAN antitank missiles too:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-08-02-libya-france_N.htm?csp=34

Europe has helped arm his regime for 30 years. It basically means we have assisted him in whatever he has done.

I still don't understand why Western Europe has been selling him all these weapons for 30 years outside of making a quick buck.
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Military industrial complex, is massively profitable...its only reason for such a selling.

Plus military equipment is one of our ONLY exports, which is...somewhat controversial considering what we preach.
 
Another thing which is a bit worrying is what will happen to the very large gold reserves Libya already has and the large foreign investments they have too. I hope the gold is protected and some of it does not go missing.
 
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To the people wondering why we're not doing the same in Syria...wait for it, we might just intervene there.

So far arab league and protestors in Syria both do not want any intervention.

In Lybia both the arab league and rioters wanted nato help because Gedaffi was bombing civilians and rioters.

If we get arab support then why the hell not intervene?

If we don't have the arab support then intervening is not an option.

and that is the reason we're not doing anything about Syria...yet.
 
cmndr_andi said:
I don't quite get what you mean. If you cast your mind back to march (just before the UNSC resolution) Gaddafi went on state television announcing that he will show "no mercy" to the "rats" and at the same time sent a large armoured convoy towards the civilian city of Benghazi that had risen up.

In that situation the International community had two options, ignore it and let Gaddafi "deal with the problem" in the way he had done in the past (though arguably not on the same scale) or intervene. We chose to intervene (with the support of the UN security council and Arab League).

As far as I can see, there was little else we could do, having a nice chat with Gaddafi doesn't seem to do a lot and once he has his mind made up there appears to be little you can do to sway him.

As for "killing the uprising", I don't understand what you mean. If anything we saved the uprising in march.

What happened afterwards was the controversial shift to effectively becoming the uprising's air force during a civil war (though anyone in power will deny this, as there are ways to justify it under UNSCR 1973 using a very broad definition, but i'm just calling a spade a spade) which many people are unhappy about.

But in the end it looks like it worked and with zero coalition casualties. Now it is a case of how the "new libya" is brought together once the dust settles.
Click to expand...

And we intervened in a way that would protect our interests in the country (oil), not the peoples. Even if military action is the only possibility (which is nearly impossible to believe), who's bright idea was it to do it blindly firing shells at populated areas? Surely we would have had the capability to assassinate Gaddafi with minimal risk to innocent life.

As for killing the uprising, now rather than have a revolutionary movement of and for the people we have little more than a fresh set of puppets we can use to get oil.
 
PermaBanned said:
And we intervened in a way that would protect our interests in the country (oil), not the peoples. Even if military action is the only possibility (which is nearly impossible to believe), who's bright idea was it to do it blindly firing shells at populated areas? Surely we would have had the capability to assassinate Gaddafi with minimal risk to innocent life.

As for killing the uprising, now rather than have a revolutionary movement of and for the people we have little more than a fresh set of puppets we can use to get oil.
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If someone simply killed Gaddafi, his son would have take the "throne", thus almost nothing would have changed and the finger would be pointed at us.

Its best that the Libyans deal with their own leader, that way we seem like the good guys.
 
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