toast wrote

• At 07:27am on 23rd Mar 2011, uk_is_toast wrote:
  I'm guessing that soon Gaddafi's forces will be called 'insurgents'.
  
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• 80. At 08:33am on 23rd Mar 2011, JunkkMale wrote:
  'Some of it is mischief-making by media looking for a story'
  
  The. Very. Idea.
  
  War by 24/7 news cycle. Chilling.
  
  The media 'thrust' today being 'explored' (on SKY at least, with Kay Burley in Libya for some reason trying to wipe the hair out her eyes as the wind makes her interview from a hotel balcony with folk in London inaudible) is the lack of an exit strategy.
  
  Which is, I concede, one heck of an issue.
  
  But by worrying this bone, again without any concern for the big picture, the media seem to have neatly forgotten that if you see a person drowning in the river you don't immediately book a 4pm meeting to discuss H&S first.
  
  Unless. of course, you come from a mindset that reckons this is exactly what you do.
  
  Frankly our pols have the media they deserve. Trouble is, we vote for our pols to represent us, yet they dance to the tune of media who don't. And by them having no loyalty to anything save petty ratings or agenda, the result is a short-term, knee-jerk dog's dinner.
  
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• 81. At 08:56am on 23rd Mar 2011, JAR wrote:
  I have a problem with people saying this is just all about oil. A great deal of diplomatic effort has been put in by western countries of late to rehabilitate Gaddaffi and of course that was certainly about oil and trade and the "war on terror".
  
  Why waste all of that effort on a high risk strategy of, in effect, supporting the rebels when the quickest, cheapest and easier solution would be to leave Gaddaffi to suppress the rebellion as we now know he is quite capable of doing in the absence of western intervention? Western governments are not known for looking to the long term where their vital interests are concerned.
  
  No, there is something else involved here. There is indeed a humanitarian issue here and a sense that things are changing in the Arab world. There is an undercurrent of the Arab peoples being fed up with totalitarian government and even if an alternative form of governance is not achieved by them in the short or mid term, it is certainly going to happen in the longer term.
  
  If it was just about oil we would need troops and contractors on the ground as in Iraq, and this time around that is not going to happen