Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

‘Canada’s help is required’

by Aaron Wherry on Thursday, July 14, 2011 12:38pm - 20 Comments

John Baird explains why we’re bombing Libya.

That’s what took me to Libya late last month. I wanted to meet senior members of the NTC for myself. I must say they and their organization impressed me.

That is not to say that anything to do with Libya in the coming weeks or months will be easy. No one should be under any false illusions of that. Nor is the NTC likely to be a perfect interim government once Gaddafi is gone. They will likely make mistakes. All governments do from time to time. But their intentions are good. I honestly believe that.

Tags: Gaddafi, Gadhafi, John Baird, Libya, military, NATO

More by Aaron Wherry

Anonymous

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein

Anonymous

“Insanity: saying the same thing over and over and over and over and over again and expecting different results.” — OriginalEmily1

Anonymous

Well with you, nothing helps.

lawoh

And Madam, you are most certainly nothing.

Anonymous

You guys can give up the tag-team effort of attacking me personally whenever I criticize Harper, anytime. It’s boring.

Anonymous

“A columnist in another newspaper called my support for the rebls “naïve.”"

Thank goodness there was another newspaper more dedicated to calling the minister to account by giving him free space to publish his opinions wihtout question or criticism. I suppose this means we can now define media competition in Canada as the National Post vying with Sun Media for the job of Conservative Party Newsletter.
Anonymous

I think John Baird will find himself on the right side of history when it comes to Libya. Let’s hope the rebels can hang on…

Anonymous

I hope so but I think it will take a very long time for everything to work itself out.

Anonymous

This gentleman seems to differ in his opinion:
Anonymous

“But their intentions are good. I honestly believe that.”

Famous last words on the road to another military quagmire, leading to another corrupt North African regime. Next, NATO boots on the ground.

Anonymous

Yeah, we wouldn’t want to see a corrupt regime in Libya after so many years of peaceful democratic rule under the Colonel!

I’m pretty sure that the people who were being killed by Gaddafi’s tanks and fighter jets are willing to risk that our intervention might lead to a regime that is corrupt replacing the regime that was actively trying to exterminate them.

Anonymous

On the other hand, I wonder what Baird’s assessment of Syrian state terrorism is. I guess it’s a domestic dispute beyond the mandate of international justice.

Anonymous

Isn’t that simply the old, and tiresome, argument that if we can’t do everything everywhere we should’t do anything everywhere? The circumstances in Libya and Syria are substantially different, but the primary difference would seem to be that we can aid the Libyan revolution without substantial risk of the conflict escalating beyond Libya’s borders, and without the need to contribute more than modest resources at modest risk. The same could not be said for any attempt to assist the Syrian opposition militarily.

Anonymous

Ahhh, I see…. then the trick is to only pick on people we know we can beat!

That worked out so well in Afghanistan
Anonymous

No Emily, the trick is that we should only try to save people we have a chance of saving.
Anonymous

@Lord_Kitcheners_Own:disqus

You don’t ‘save’ people by bombing and invading them.

You do it with aid and trade
Anonymous

You don’t save people by letting the oncoming tanks blow up their homes, you save people by destroying the tanks that are coming to blow up their homes.

It’s true that we’re not saving the people we’re bombing, we’re saving OTHER people from the people we’re bombing. Innocents will always suffer in the crossfire of course, but I’m personally convinced that the number of people the West has saved by stopping Ghaddaffi’s forces from slaughtering them is exponentially higher than the number of innocent people that have been killed by errant NATO bombs.

If you think that some amount of monetary aid and trade with the rebels was going to stop Gadaffi from wiping them off of the face of the Earth then you’re entitled to that view. I’m pretty sure, however, that the majority of the people of Libya are thrilled that you weren’t in charge of sending them cheques and trade representatives while the Colonel was killing them with tanks and MiGs.

Gaddafi’s forces had already killed around 2000-2500 rebels and well over 800 civilians before we even intervened (link). Even if we believe the outrageously inflated NATO-caused civilian casualty numbers coming from Gaddafi’s own forces, the number of civilians killed by NATO bombs is still less than the number of civilians killed when refugee-laden boats sunk while attempting to escape Gaddafi. Four full months of NATO bombing later and even Gaddaffi himself claims that NATO has only killed around a third as many civilians as his own forces did in the first month of fighting, and besides which, if you believe that Gaddaffi’s numbers are anything short of grossly inflated then I have a bridge to sell you.

The absolute worst case scenario is that NATO has tragically (though inadvertently) killed around 1000 innocent civilians since intervening in March. I’m personally completely comfortable in my belief that had we not intervened, Col. Gaddafi’s air force and tanks would have killed 10 or 20 times that many Libyans.
Anonymous

@Lord_Kitcheners_Own:disqus

Ahhh yes, it all sounds nice and noble….just like the ‘white man’s burden’ did.

The results are another matter entirely.

And don’t confuse time-lines here….trade and aid wouldn’t help AFTER Gadaffi started attacking….the time to do aid and trade was BEFORE that.

I’m glad YOU are comfortable killing a thousand innocent people….their families may see it differently

‘Killing for peace is like fu*king for virginity’
Anonymous

“Isn’t that simply the old, and tiresome, argument that if we can’t do everything everywhere we should’t do anything everywhere?”

Either that or hypocrisy. Or maybe opportunism.
Anonymous

No, I think Mike’s right, the argument being made here is that if we can’t save everyone we shouldn’t even try to save anyone. If we’re not going to intervene to save the Syrians or the Chinese then we should let the Libyans suffer too because it’s better that tens of thousands of Libyans be killed and we remain perfectly consistent in our foreign policy than that we should try to save their lives and be labeled hypocrites. It seems to me that you and Emily are simply saying that because evil regimes exist all over the place, and we’ll never topple them all, we should just ignore them all because people dying beyond our shores are none of our business. Personally, while I acknowledge the validity of an isolationist foreign policy, I find it pretty repugnant.