Discussing the crisis in Libya with diplomat Sir Jeremy Greenstock on Radio Four this morning, the ever gung ho 'Lord' Owen was calling for foreign air strikes on Libya and foreign intervention in that country. Libya is apparently 'ringed with NATO airfields'.
Owen was always a Tory, wasn't he...
I know he reads my blog so the thing is, David, the amazing and inspiring revolutions and uprisings which have taken place across the region have been led by the educated young people of these countries taking control of their destinies. These revolutions have been blissfully free of the religious nutters that are supposed to infest every Arab country. Well, we've seen very clearly that they don't and that Arabs are perfectly capable of doing it for themselves. Libya is a terrible disaster at the moment but we must let Libyans free themselves from this dictator, as it seems the east of the country already has.
Send in a few thousand US and British troops or air strikes to help and bingo, you've got yourself a conflict with the West, whatever the motive and however careful the operation. As any fule kno, war is chaos and it would be a matter of hours before the wrong target was destroyed. Gaddafi is a madman and he would not hesitate to hide in a school or a hospital.
As Owen's disastrous and impotent intervention in Bosnia demonstrates (doubt me? Check out the ludicrous Vance-Owen Plan), he simply doesn't get grown up foreign policy. He is like a child with a set of soldiers. If this fool had ever got control of the newly formed Social and Liberal Democrats all would have been lost, which is why I remain a huge fan of Saint Paddy, not to mention the honourable Robert McLennan, who saved us from a fate worse than David.
UPDATE: I changed the heading from 'idiot' to 'fool' because, like a good Lib Dem I find it hard to be nasty even to the man who very nearly killed the party at birth because of his own selfish ambition.
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