Odds and Ends.

Someone told me recently that an anti-war group staged a demonstration against both NATO AND Colonel Gadaffi. I never quite understand the logic of the position they put forward on this. They support the uprising, yet oppose air support for the rebels (let’s call a spade a spade), so how do they propose the rebels defeat Gadaffi’s superior military machine? They seem to believe that through some type of political osmosis, Gadaffi’s military will turn on him. Yet surely that is far more likely if Gaddaffi’s actions have left the Libyan military getting the tar kicked out of them by NATO? This is a messy business, in that we don’t really know who the rebels are, and if Libya were to go in an Iranian direction post-Gaddaffi NATO might have to bomb them again, but the reality is that we’d be one dictator down, which is always a good day’s work. The far-left always seem to want an absolutely pure result, which humanity has never, ever delivered. But then, neither has the far left. Name one model nation run by far left principles. Oh, go on.

There’s a guy I know who has a friend on Facebook who is quite pretty. So pretty, in fact, that in nearly every photo she is in she turns her head to face the camera from an angle, showing what I assume she believes is her “good” side. The funny thing is, everytime I see a picture of her now I start giggling at the idea that she walks around like that, talking to people like she has a permanent crick in her neck. Then it occurred to me: maybe she does! I made discreet inquiries, because I realised that I could have been disgracefully mocking someone with a terrible affliction. Turns out she doesn’t. She just walks around at an angle.

3 thoughts on “Odds and Ends.

  1. Pidge wrote ‘any protest against NATO action could and should reasonably also make clear that they are anti-Gadaffi.’

    But what’s the left’s answer then? It’s the same with the left’s no cuts whatsoever mantra. Populist yes, but practical?

  2. I’m not saying their pro-Gadaffi, which I know they aren’t. I’m just bewildered at what they think the west should actually do.

  3. I don’t think it’s all that crazy. Do you think it was tenable to be both against Saddam Hussein and the invasion of Iraq? I’m aware that they’re different situations, but the same principle holds: you can abhor a dictator, but also abhor the means by which he is removed. I reckon pretty much everyone with a conscience is in both of those camps, so the question is less about wanting a “perfectly clean” result, and more about the relative levels of abhorrence with which you treat Gadaffi and NATO action here.

    Besides, if any group protests against NATO action, they’re inevitably and cheaply smeared with being “pro-Gadaffi”, just like those who opposed the arms race were “Communist sympathisers”. From that point of view, any protest against NATO action could and should reasonably also make clear that they are anti-Gadaffi.

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