Better stable dictatorships that hunt down and kill their Islamist terrorist, than those nations collapse and the Jihadists escape to Europe.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-overthrowing-gaddafi-will-ensure-jihadists-find-sanctuary-in-europe-2589003.html
Overthrowing Gaddafi will ensure jihadists find sanctuary in Europe
Tuesday March 22 2011
ALL things considered, it was rather thoughtful of the Libyan rebels in Benghazi to shoot down their only fighter aircraft on Saturday, killing the poor unfortunate pilot.
Otherwise, the British and French aircraft enforcing the UN-endorsed no-fly zone might have been obliged to do it instead. No doubt that's not quite what the UN intended, but it's the kind of thing that happens when well-intended and ill-worded UN resolutions policies have the weight of "international law" behind them.
But why should the internationally accredited government of Libya, hitherto recognised by the UN and just about every country in the world, adhere to a ceasefire demanded by the UN when it is putting down an armed insurrection within its borders? Did not the United Kingdom not do much the same in Northern Ireland? Did not the Irish Free State in 1922/23? Did not the US so deal with the Confederacy after Fort Sumter? As did Russia with Chechnya, and China with Tibet? And as for the UN Resolution 1973, "Deploring the continuing use of mercenaries by the Libyan authorities", one might ask: What? You mean like the Gurkhas? Or the French Foreign Legion? Or the Swiss Guards?
Gaddafi is a loathsome monster, who has throughout his sordid career been feted by the witless liberal-left of Ireland for his support for the IRA, with whom of course he has so much in common. UN resolution 1973 against Libya condemns "the gross and systematic violation of human rights, including arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and summary executions": ah yes, just like the IRA's disappeared.
He created casus belli with the US and the UK from the 1970s on, through his support of terrorism. This became an outright act of war with the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. NATO should then have broken his regime by force of arms, regardless of the opinions of the UN. But an abject weakness towards Gaddafi was one of many Western policies that convinced the Arab/Muslim world that Western Christian secularists were noisy cowards who need not be taken seriously.
Well, if there's still anything to be said for the Iraqi debacle, it's that no one believes that of the US any more.
Now I can't be the only observer who feels deeply uncomfortable that pilots from the wheatfields of Saskatchewan and the fjords of Norway might soon be bombing the deserts of Libya. Since the noble gentlemen of the Arab Union (no need for the niceties of gender-free nouns or pronouns in their exalted company) have approved action against Gaddafi, why are aircraft from Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Jordan and Saudi not bombing their fellow Arabs? And what next? Are aircraft from white Christian countries to decide on ceasefires in Libya? Are such aircraft mysteriously to police the demarcation lines across the dunes between the two sides? How? And is a post-Gaddafi Libya to become a NATO-EU protectorate like Kosovo?
Ah yes, Kosovo: the home of the Islamic terrorist who recently murdered some US servicemen in Germany, in apparent gratitude for the US making Kosovo Muslims free of Serbian tyranny. Well, if there's one lesson we should have already learnt, it is that many Muslims, far from thanking us seculo-Christians for giving them the omelette of freedom, usually find a fresh grievance in the eggshells on the floor.
Furthermore, every observer writing about the upheavals from Casablanca to Yemen knowingly proclaims that the reasons for them vary according to location. Good. But what all these places have in common is that the riots usually start after prayers at the mosque; and the one cry that unites all protesters is "Allahu Akbar!".
So, though the local afflictions might indeed be different, the cure is always the same, and is certainly not democracy as is understood by those nice Canadian or Norwegian pilots overhead.
Not long ago, Gaddafi was welcomed back into the comity of world leaders. France and Britain agreed to billions in sales of arms and aircraft; and the SAS, God help us, even trained his special forces. Lockerbie, which could never possibly be forgiven, was nonetheless forgiven. Yet now he is a pariah. What changed? Was it because he behaved like a murderous thug who depended on murder, torture and imprisonment without trial?
Oh please. That's what Gaddafi has always done. Indeed, it's what almost all Arab states do. But the one time that such measures are almost justified -- when the very existence of the state is threatened, as in Ireland in 1922 -- is precisely when the UN gets all sniffy about them. Moreover, eastern Libya, the centre of the resistance to Gaddafi, is also home to proportionately the largest body of foreign Islamicists fighting in Iraq.
So here, now, is a delightful thought: just as the US intervention against Saddam actually freed al-Qai'da cells in Iraq, so similar consequences might result from the overthrow of Gaddafi's power over much of Libya. And better still, as war-refugees and 'asylum-seekers' from Benghazi and Tobruk flood across the Mediterranean, various UN resolutions will, of course, be invoked to insist that European countries give all escaping jihadists a permanent sanctuary. Not so much a Trojan horse as a Trojan herd. Lovely.
- Kevin Myers
