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Nightly Britain bombs Tripoli. Bar death, what do we achieve? | Simon Jenkins http://gu.com/p/3xxb4/ip via @guardian
Nightly Britain bombs Tripoli. Bar death, what do we achieve?
Britain should never have got involved in Libya. But Whitehall constraint has been eroded, and none in power admit their folly
The aftermath of a Nato airstrike on Tripoli in June. Photograph: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA / Rex Features
Britain's half-war against Libya is careering onward from reckless gesture to full-scale fiasco. As it reaches six months' duration, every sensibly pessimistic forecast has turned out true and every jingoistic boast false. Even if the desperate and probably illegal tactic of trying to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi gets lucky, Britain would find itself running a shambles of its own making, with troops having to go in to "keep the peace". Unlike in Basra or Helmand, there will be no Americans on hand to bail them out. It is frightening how deep the imperial gene runs in generations of British politicians.
The Libyan rebels, portrayed by Whitehall propagandists as plucky little democrats, are hardly more sympathetic than Gaddafi's supporters, with those in the east at odds both with each other and with those in the west. While Britain claims to be "protecting" the population, the latest, admittedly unreliable, estimates put the civilian toll from bombing at 1,100 dead and countless injured. Certainly hundreds must have died. The RAF is clearly running out of targets and must justify each new attack in terms more appropriate to a Maoist hysteric. Last week the Tripoli television station was destroyed and reporters killed, "to disrupt the broadcast of Gaddafi's murderous rhetoric". What has that to do with the original war aim?
There remains no sign that the terror bombing of civilian areas now is contributing to military victory any more effectively than when Bomber Harris advocated it. The enterprise has been delegated to the navy and air force, each desperate to show its latest kit can be of use. They have duly deployed costly cruise missiles and Typhoon bombers, which have done no more than impose stalemate on a distant civil war at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds.
