*Arab League: We Don't Want No Bombs * (Washington Note)

[chill_wind]

Arab League: We Don't Want No Bombs
Sunday, Mar 20 2011, 11:21AM
Steve Clemons


Inevitably, it had to happen.

Despite amazing diplomatic efforts to first secure Arab League support for a No-Fly Zone, always a false hook because a no-fly zone would not have affected the military equation significantly, and then getting a UN resolution through, the head of the Arab League is now saying the organization never signed off on what the US, French and allies are now doing -- meaning, bombing military sites inside Libya.

There is no doubt that Arab League members knew that what was really being debated was something that might become more intrusive than the language of an NFZ, but politically, they are feeling heat domestically for having supported large scale Western intervention against an Arab neighbor.

Hopefully -- and I'm one who tends to be cynical about hope and best-case scenarios -- President Obama's intention to be involved in the Libya conflict will really just be days rather than weeks. We'll see.

more: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2011/03/arab_league_we/

[bhikkhu]

1. Clever positioning

Nobody wants Gadhafi at all, but in Africa the history is very much against intervention. This way, the Arab League gets us to do it for them, then gets to play the victim and drum up local nationalism to bolster their own regimes.

[chill_wind]

2. Whocuddanode?

Western leaders brandished the Arab League decision as a justification for their decision to move militarily and as a weapon in the debate to obtain a U.N. Security Council resolution two days before the bombing began.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/arab-league-condemns-broad-bombing-campaign-in-libya/2011/03/20/AB1pSg1_story.html