We’ve had sanctions against Iran for more than a decade. It should be clear to anyone paying attention that sanctions have little if any effect. Has it slowed down their nuclear program at all? No. Has it helped against their complete lack of respect for human rights for their citizens? No.
So now that Mumar Gadaffi is strafing protestors from the air, hiring African mercenaries to fire upon citizens gathered on the streets and abducting protestors, do we really think this is more than an act of symbolism?
Everyone knows that even when sanctions do have an effect, it takes months, if not years, to show up. How many Libyans of the opposition will be left? How will those that inherit Libya after the fall of Gaddafi to think of Americans after we sat back and watched their countryman be brutally murdered? Haven’t we learned anything?
But what are we to do? Well, a start would be to stop this B.S. of sending the Secretary of State to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Amongst the many corrupt and powerless groups that make up the U.N. they are likely the most useless. Libya sits on the Human Rights Commission. Sudan sits on the Human Rights Commission. If these nut cases at the U.N. had their way, Mumar Gadaffi himself would chair the council.
The U.N. has been the most powerless organization for more than 50 years. It spends the majority of its time waving a finger in disapproval of Israel, and yet it manages to sit by and watch genocide from the Balkans to Rwanda. U.N. troops stationed in Southern Lebanon had zero effect on missiles being launched into Israel in 2006. When Sadam Hussein routinely violated the no-fly zone, the U.N. did nothing more than offer up the corrupt Oil for Food program that did more to inflate the coffers of Sadam Hussein than his oil wells.
Now we’re going to see sanctions against Libya while hundreds or thousands die on the streets and we tip-toe around gingerly in fear that the oil wells will be shut down.
Once again, the Obama administration has shown that they’ve learned nothing. I’m not advocating bombing Tripoli, but an aircraft carrier task force off the coast would at least warn that our patience is not without limits. But under Obama we are not feared. We are not respected. Every country in the world knows we are a paper tiger, because our President is more likely to give a speech than an order. He came out in public, two weeks after the problems developed in Libya, and offer up a milk-toast statement of our concern about Gadaffi’s violence against his people. I’m sure that sent Mumar quaking in his boots.
Here’s my short, but to the point, statement, Mr. Obama should have given to the world:
“The United States will not sit back and watch innocent people being killed by the Libyan government in an attempt to hold onto power. Control of the government is the domain of the citizens, and if the government is incapable or working with the citizens, without engaging in violence, the United States will step in to protect the citizens of Libya. Furthermore, if the U.N. fails to act in an immediate and forceful way, the U.S. government will deploy whatever resources are necessary to neutralize the forces brutalizing the citizens of Libya. A government that will use violence against its citizens cannot be treated as legitimate.”
Sanctions. A thirty year experiment in futility. We might as well drop leaflets stating, “Gadaffi in a very naughty boy!” onto the crowds in Tripoli. At least before they’re all dead.
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