Ever since the Franco/British-led intervention against Gaddafi in March, the Guardian and the Daily Mail — whose foreign policy in all matters relating to the Muslim world is oddly similar — have been droning on about the Libyan ‘quagmire’.
Ever since the Franco/British-led intervention against Gaddafi in March, the Guardian and the Daily Mail — whose foreign policy in all matters relating to the Muslim world is oddly similar — have been droning on about the Libyan ‘quagmire’. Nor would you ever have known from the BBC, until last weekend, that the rebels had a chance. In the Guardian, my friend Simon Jenkins, clever and original though he is, has said (1 April) that Gaddafi would win a victory over the West like the one he claimed after the American bombing in 1986, that (19 April) ‘The great lie has once again been rumbled, that air power can deliver any sort of victory’, and that (2 August) nearly six months of combat had produced ‘full-scale fiasco’ and ‘no sign’ of the rebels winning. All the critics may well be right that the next phase will be difficult, but they put themselves in an absurd position by arguing that the combination of the rebels and Nato could not defeat Gaddafi. Because of our rather ignominious association with the ‘mad dog’, we British knew about what weapons he had and didn’t have. We also knew that he had virtually no support from other Arab regimes. We were able to get inside information against him, and the National Transition Council told the truth when they said that they had people on their side in every Gaddafi brigade. He ended up only with mercenaries, and his hard core. And the bombing worked exactly as intended, to overcome otherwise insuperable obstacles for the rebel troops on the ground. The modern doctrine that the bomber can never win is just as rigidly mistaken as the 1930s one that ‘The bomber will always get through’.
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Simon Jenkins complained (2 August) of ‘sound advice’ being drowned by ‘a tide of patriotism’, but actually patriotism was rather shockingly absent. People seemed uninterested in just how skilled, brave and restrained British pilots were being. Even if things turn out messily, the likely end of Gaddafi is surely a good thing for the patria. He has done more damage to this country, for longer, than any other foreign leader. He supported the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, and of Messrs Douglas and Padfield, the hostages in Lebanon, and, of course, the death of 270 people over Lockerbie. He corrupted some of our universities and elements in our previous government. He even invented the Third Way. Now that Britain and France have led, Nato’s European arm has at last shown muscle. We have a chance of being on the right side of change in the Middle East, assisting it but not running it; we make life more difficult for Assad in Syria; we strengthen those in the US administration who do not share Obama’s tenderness towards Muslim, anti-western dictators. ‘Gaddafi remains stubbornly in power, and the Prime Minister is staging a humbling retreat’ said the Daily Mail (27 July). No.
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One postscript, though. It is not true that military success in Libya proves that the Strategic Defence and Security Review is just fine. The order of battle for Libya was pre-SDSR. It would not have been possible if the review had already been enacted.
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We keep being told not to have a ‘kneejerk reaction’ to the riots. The cliché is an odd one, because when doctors tap your knees, the jerk is exactly the reaction they seek: anything else shows that there is something seriously wrong with you.
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Another argument that seems misapplied is the ‘’twas ever thus’ one. We are reminded that riots have often taken place in Britain, as if that should comfort us. It is true that, if something has happened before, we are more likely to know how to deal with it, but this ‘Oh yes, we often get bubonic plague in these parts’ line of reasoning is not reassuring. It shows how bad most human societies are at containing, punishing, reforming human nastiness. It also shows how wrong it is to describe rioters as ‘mindless’. Surely most rioters, in their base way, do exercise their reason quite carefully. They observe how the police are behaving and how available are the pickings. They use the technology needed to communicate, and then they strike. As soon as the authorities respond firmly, as they did from 9 August, the rioters slip away, having enjoyed themselves and, if they are lucky, escaped with trainers, phones etc. If the authorities believe that such people are mindless, they cannot work out what they might do. If they recognise that they have minds, they can then try to read them.
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Perhaps it is a symptom of ‘Broken Britain’ that I and seven others were able to walk out in broad daylight last week, fully armed, and kill about 250 of our opponents. There was no visible police presence. We were shooting grouse on the Duke of Northumberland’s moor in the Lammermuirs. Actually, the Duke is now a popular hero because of his resistance to the building of wind farms and his refusal to allow them, despite the colossal bribes offered with public money, on his own land. The survival of these wild hills so close to Edinburgh has been miraculous (it is as if, in relation to London, there were grouse moors in Croydon), but now, each time I go, the appearance changes because of the turbines, as if an army of alien giants was stalking over other people’s moors. There are currently 1,038 commercial turbines constructed, consented or applied for in the Scottish Borders local authority area alone. Across the country, this is the biggest despoliation of landscape since motorways. Unlike motorways, the wind-farms are of little use to anyone. We felt like vigilantes defending our landscape.
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After my day on the moors, I drove down to Edinburgh to see our son perform in the Fringe. His was a serious play, a relief after the industrial amounts of comedy on offer. My wife’s constant reading at present is A Field Guide to Bird-Dropping Mimics (the tortrix moth variety). Bird-Dropping Mimics would be a good name for an Edinburgh comedy gig.
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