LIBYA: DON’T ARM THE REBELS
Posted by Steve CollViktor Bout, a former Soviet Air Force officer who allegedly became an unscrupulous arms merchant, currently resides in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. Thailand’s government extradited him to the United States following his arrest in Bangkok during a sting operation in which American agents allegedly fooled Bout into believing that he had a chance to make money selling weapons to Colombian rebels. (Bout, who will go on trial this fall, denies the charges.)
I first heard about Bout when I travelled in West Africa during the nineteen-nineties, covering some of its rebellions and struggling states. My then Washington Post colleague Douglas Farah was based in Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, around the same time, and became intrigued enough about the mayhem Bout was alleged to have been aiding, through arms sales to ragtag West African rebel groups, that he co-authored a book, entitled “Merchant of Death.”
It might be justifiable to arm the rebels if that were only way to achieve the humanitarian objectives of the intervention. Yet there isn’t any evidence that it would be necessary to do so to defend Benghazi as a sanctuary. It seems clear that Benghazi can be defended from the air by NATO, even if that requires enforcing “no-drive” zones occasionally
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/03/libya-dont-arm-the-rebels.html#ixzz1IHUVDrRc
All of us, every single man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth were born with the same unalienable rights; to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, if the governments of the world can't get that through their thick skulls, then, regime change will be necessary.
Pages
▼
Someone with experience speaks, and Obama is sure to ignore the advice.
ReplyDelete