Sir, The way in which our Government is distorting the intent of the UN resolution on Libya to cover regime change when all it was meant to cover was protection of civilians, is a fundamental breach of trust that will bring our country into disrepute with other UN member states, and will likely scupper our chances of obtaining similar resolutions in future.
If we wanted rid of Colonel Gaddafi, this should have been done as an Allied effort, without using the UN as an umbrella for it.
We are being very blinkered if we think that Libya is the only country that brutally suppresses its civilians. By intervening in Libya our Government is setting itself a moral obligation to intervene militarily in other nations that brutally suppress their civilians in this way. We, as a nation, have neither the political will nor the military and financial resources to do this. The UK is therefore being hypocritical and cynical by singling out the Libyan regime, particularly given the appalling way our government has cosied up to Gaddafi in recent years.
If we were going to topple Gadaffi, the time to do it was in the late 1980s or early 1990s, as soon as possible after the murder of WPC Fletcher and the Lockerbie disaster. By waiting more than 20 years, we have lost all moral authority to do this.
The Government has yet to make a convincing case that what will replace Gaddafi will be any better (for Britain or the Libyan people). We will have shot ourselves in the foot if all these bombs we have been dropping lead to an anti-Western extremist state right on Europe’s southern fringe, or a civil war that tears Libya apart for years to come and leads to thousands of refuges pouring into Europe. Our action in Libya has stirred up the hornets’ nest that is the Middle East, and reinforced our reputation for meddling in this long-suffering part of the world.
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Dr Mark Campbell-Roddis
Dunblane, Perthshire