WAR BY INSTALLMENTS!

Let me first be very clear about how much better Libya would be without Colonel Gaddafi. I recently attended a fundraiser in Northampton with local Libyan families who are ever hopeful that regime change will be effected in their home country sooner rather than later, but despite their wishes and my support for that same outcome. I cannot turn a blind eye to the unfolding disaster the British Government have made of their input to the crisis thus far.

UN resolution 1973 demanded "an immediate ceasefire" and authorized the international community to establish a no fly zone and to use all means necessary short of foreign occupation to protect civilians on both sides.

To be blunt the British government alongside the French government and with assistance of the USA have extended their actions far and beyond any legal interoretation or boundary of the resolution. And to think that in all three countries thier leaders played such a huge part in protecting Gadaffi reign over all these years. I bet President Sarkozy of France regrets the picture here (left) as much as Obama and Blair do their own snaphots with the crazed dictator. Cameron it seems has only been spared the same humiliation by way of good timing!

First of all it was the West's interpretation of the no fly zone to enable air attacks on Gaddafi's forces on the ground if they looked to be threatening areas where civilians were congregated and then it extended the action to excuse attacks on Libya's air defences and then on their static defence positions and finally to attacks on government buildings and palaces which were being protected on a voluntary basis by civilian human shields!!

Then we took to sending over armed troops to assist in training of the rebels in flagrant breach of the foreign occupation ruling and now we hear that British Apache attack helicopters are to be deployed! We have step by bloody step purposely embroiled ourselves in another bloody civil war this time wholly of our own making and in doing so we have weakened the UN's position and also made a mockery of the governments so called defence spending reductions to help ease the national debt.

We have led brave freedom fighters from East Libya on the march to Tripoli by illegal use of attack planes and then left them in the desert to fend for themselves without protection, and we have (unbelievably) in doing so left Gaddafi in a stronger position now than he was at the start of the Arab spring. Don't be fooled Gaddafi still has his supporters in Libya in large numbers and the best outcome most can see is eventual partition of the country into pro and anti Gaddafi enclaves. Meanwhile back in Benghazi and in Misrata where the rebels still hold power, normal governance has come to a halt, medical supplies and care are in short supply, kids have no schools to go to and the rubbish is being picked up by football club supporters groups.

William Hague and David Cameron must be very pleased with themselves, I always disagreed with Tony Blair over our involvement in Iraq, but at least he took us to an illegal war with an air of competence about it rather than us ending up embroiled in an horrific human stew of our own making which will damage further relations within the Arab world for many more years to come (if that is possible)

One more depressing thought though is that no one in the UK seems to give a fig? Where are all the protests? from either side? Has Jeremy Paxman lost his nerve or his voice in questioning what is going down in the name of UK PLC, and what about the printed press? If we are at war then why no Sun headline declaring GO GET GADDAFI and if we are not at war then where are the Guardian or Independent headlines questioning the legitimacy of the military intervention?

Perhaps it is only me that is concerned?