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Libya is not NATO's success

NATO's aid to a successful rebellion does not give it ownership of the success.

I got very angry listening to a radio show recently which had pundits talking about whether or not foreign troops should enter Libya to 'help out' and what arrangements ought be made after Gaddafis ousting.

It was a bunch of fools speaking as if NATO had somehow won Libya's freedom and was owed participation and recompense.

They were sounding a lot like the reactionary fools who had previously been condemning U.S involvement as just another imperialist war against the mid-east as if there were no distinction between the U.N Security Council and Arab League sanctioned support of Libyan rebellion and the U.S conquest of Iraq.

The U.S did not ask for involvement in Libya and was dragged into it by British and French enthusiasm to answer a call for help. Such help being sanctioned legally (as much as there is international law) and requested by largely legitimate representatives of Libyan people and wider Arab populations.

And then it was delivered sensibly without imposition of unwelcome troops or authority. So far it has been what should be a text book example of lending aid to righteous rebellion against tyranny.

Those people who condemn it as Obama adding to Bush's wars are idiots who speak ideology and not reality, they neither know of how the U.S became involved nor of a distinction between doing good and bad it seems.

Having won their liberty, with NATO help in overcoming armoured opponents, the victory is the rebels to exploit, not NATO's or other western interests. So far NATO has been a good actor in this and if it remains an honest provider of aid should maintain a friendship of benefit to all.