Since February, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s “anti-terrorist” forces have been clashing with antigovernment rebel forces, but it wasn’t until March 19 that American and European forces intervened with air and sea power, initiating a no-fly zone and arms embargo from the sea. President Barrack Obama received some criticism for not getting Congress’s approval for sending armed forces to Libya, but for what seemed the first time in decades, the campaign was authorized by the United Nations Security Council, and has become an international effort.
“This is how the international community should work. More nations, not just the United States, bearing the responsibility and cost of upholding peace and security,” Obama said in his weekly address last weekend.
Obama also said that this week NATO forces and U.S. partners will be taking over responsibility for operations in Libya, relieving pressure off of the United States, while increasing pressure on Qaddafi’s regime.
The American people should feel proud, that while deploying armed forces abroad is not rare or popular, Obama made the right choice in joining the United Nations in its quest to stop the bloodshed in Libya.
Now that Qaddafi’s air and armor capabilities are limited, it is an urban battlefield in which the rebel forces fight. With explosions and gunfire going off in the city of Misurata, Libya’s foreign ministry has announced a government cease-fire, and in its statement to Jana, the state news agency, said, “Anti-terrorism units have stopped firing at the armed terrorist groups that have been terrorizing.”
Quite ironic, coming from a regime that has threatened massacre in Benghazi, the eastern bastion of the antigovernment forces, and has been found to condone, if not support, the rape of innocent civilians. This is not unusual coming from Qaddafi’s government; it seems all the statements Libya gives are playing to American media and trying to relate with American sensitivity to terrorism. It was Qaddafi who in February blamed the uprising on Al-Qaeda, an obvious aim at seeking sympathy from the American and European public.
It is time for Qaddafi to fall, and a new civil and sympathetic government to replace his fas
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