European and American leaders weighed the pros and cons of arming Libya's rebels today.
British Prime Minister David Cameron told the House of Commons today that the United Nations Security Council mandate "allows all necessary measures to protect civilians and populated areas (and) this would not necessarily rule out provision of assistance to those protecting civilians in certain circumstances."
"As I've said before, we do not rule it out but we have not taken the decision to do so," he said.
Obama had also said, on Tuesday, that he, too, is open to the possibility of arming the rebel fighters. "I'm not ruling it out, but I'm also not ruling it in," he told NBC. In a separate interview with ABC, Obama said that "if we wanted to get weapons into Libya, we probably could. ... We're looking at all our options at this point."
One main problem would be the fact that we would have to train opposition forces on how to use advanced weaponry.
A former commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center had said that with the more advanced weaponry we have, there just wouldn't be enough time to train the rebels. this definitely would be an issue and I'd have to agree with it.
Another problem: There could be a possible al Qaeda and Hezbollah presence within Libya's rebel movement.
In my opinion I feel like Egypt should help more, I'd say they have a pretty good military. They should send some reinforcements to help out. I think the big issue here is that there just is never enough time. training rebels would take too much time I think. Arming rebels with weapons would only cause more deaths.
What are your opinions on this?
Do you think that this is the best way? Is there something better we can do?
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I do not think that this is the best idea. Honestly the first thing that comes to mind when I see this is the Taliban in Afghanistan when we armed them against the Soviets and how it has now come back to bite us in the butt. I just feel like we should have learned are lesson from that because i can already see what will happen we will arm these people or help them fight there war and then when Gaddafi's gone we will disappear as well and leave the Libyans in a state of chaos with a bunch of weapons. So please either we help them with weapons AND REBUILDING or we just back off and let it resolve itself.
I totally agree with Ross and would also add that the President has gone against his policy of making America a promoter of diplomacy and democracy for that matter. We don't need any more "astroturfed" democracy in modern society... we have seen how successful that has been in Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan (among other nations). President Obama is supposed to be making the U.S. involvement in foreign wars significantly reduced. All P5 nations are IDIOTS! !^&#@$!*&^#%@*&^T$%#@*&^#$@*&^$#@*&^$# UH!!!! SOOOOOOOOOO ANGRY!!!!!!!!!!!! Qaddafi should remain in power, we don't need another nation in the Middle East to be overrun with radical Muslims, as a moderate/left leaning Muslim (as compared to other muslims) Qaddafi has managed to make Libya one of Africa's more developed and successful nations with regard to education and GDP (we are learning about this in ECON!!!!). The rebels are the problem, the U.S. should not help further the problem.
HAHAH... my word verification box word is (WARACK) just replace the "W" with a "B" or rotate it counter clockwise by 90 degrees and it reads "BARACK." This must be a sign!...
The main problem with providing arms to a faction is that once you do so, you can't take the guns back. If we did arm the rebels, they'd have them to keep, no matter what they decide to do with them in the future. This creates problems like the one Ross referred to with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Moreover, whether the rebels turn out to hold extreme views or not, which I personally doubt they do, introducing more arms into such a chaotic region is probably not a good idea. After all, the guns could easily fall into the hands of less savory groups.
Post a Comment