Taken fromThe Highchair Analyst
Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy reaffirmed their commitments towards a Gaddafi-free Libya saying,
Britain, France and the United States will not rest until the United Nations Security Council resolutions have been implemented and the Libyan people can choose their own future.
While getting rid of Gaddafi is clearly a stated goal of these leaders, what isn't discussed is that Resolution 1973 does not authorize his removal. How they realistically propose this is still unclear. Additionally if a cease-fire is implemented how that will affect future allied or NATO operations remains to be seen. Furthermore, as NATO has appeared to balk at the continuance of the aggressive pre-NATO approach against Gaddafi loyalists, is this setting the stage for an American/British/French reassertion of control over operations? Although it's somewhat heartening to see a commitment to rebuilding post-war Libya in this Op-Ed, an obvious necessity, how that scenario is going to be achieved--and who is going to pay for and do it--is still pretty much up in the air considering the continued stalemate.
And yet a continued theme from Obama and Co.:
Tens of thousands of lives have been protected. But the people of Libya are still suffering terrible horrors at Qaddafi’s hands each and every day. His rockets and shells rained down on defenseless civilians in Ajdabiya. The city of Misurata is enduring a medieval siege, as Qaddafi tries to strangle its population into submission. The evidence of disappearances and abuses grows daily.
That these leaders keep insisting that tens of thousands of lives have been saved is not only a politically empty justification that, as Andrew Sullivan
brought up today, bases these fantastical numbers neither on facts nor the reality on the ground and ignores the relatively
limited, although still terrible, deaths and atrocities that have occurred in Misurata, but also overshadows their complicity in prolonging a civil-war that has no end in sight.