Shipbucket

I understand that point, but how can you fight a foe with air power? without logistical support? please don't list Vietnam or mudjahadin as sample, they were supported by Chinese or CIA.

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Worklist:
- Victorian Navy - LINK
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- RHKAAF / HKGFS - 皇家香港輔助空軍 / 政府飛行服務隊
- Gunbucket - LINK

天滅中共全黨死清光!

I stick with DP. We can not allow our self to talk about fairness, righteousness and peoples right and then let a brutal dictator commit genocide. Off course it gives a lot of problems when you act, but not to act will give larger problems. Right now it seems to western politicians having a great lack of balls!

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Work in progress:
DD County Class PNS Babur (1982)(PAK)
FF Type 21 Class D182 PNS Babur (2000)(PAK)
All relevant Coat of Arms

What do you want?
A bloody civil that ends within a few months at most"
or
A new Iraq?

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

Excatly, I agree with Thiel. Any intervention is likely to end up in those armed civilians turning those AK47s and RPG-7s at any Western force and Libya will then attract the extremists and terrorists like bees to nectar. The West has had a taste of Libyan terrorism in the 1980s and the failures of US action in retaliation have left scars. Once bitten twice shy.

Starting a bombing campagin against Libyan air bases is bound to cause unwelcome collateral damage and Gadaffi has superior firepower even without air support, so then you begin to use NATO airpower against the Libyan Army and then you end up with the whole Kosvo thing all over again. It took from 1992 to now to sort out the mess in Yugoslavia. Iraq is 8 years and counting, Afghanistan has had 23 years of warfare. Do we really want to prolong Libya's sufferng for another 10+ years? For what end? They'll be no freer in the long term. Even Egypt after mostly peaceful protest still has a military government in control.

I notice no-one here whining about Mugabe's regime, or North Korea, the Democratic Republic of Congo etc etc. The Americans have propped up more dictators and brutal regimes than anyother nation in the 20th century, today Britain and the EU still upholds and supports several despotic Arab and African leaders. Thus I find all this sentimental imploring to action in one sole case rather hypocritical and distasteful.

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Interwar RN Capital Ships
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Never-Were British Aircraft

No, I don't want a new Iraqi situation! But the circumstances are quite different. In Iraq Saddam was attacked without securing there was civilian organisations and security forces to take over the power. In Libya it's people uprising against Gaddafi. These people are just now building up governance, civilian organisations and security forces. Important that it's a mix of idealist's and proffesionals. The security forces have a lots of officers and soldiers defected from Gaddafis army.
The situation is therefore totally different from Iraq. That gives the opportunity to support the freedom fighters with the means they needed, and amongst that a no-fly zone!

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Work in progress:
DD County Class PNS Babur (1982)(PAK)
FF Type 21 Class D182 PNS Babur (2000)(PAK)
All relevant Coat of Arms

You meant people can better live in a totalitarian another 50 years then have a chance to get free? You two had never lived in an authoritarian regime, it is mind killing existence, wishing for someone else to live like that IS hypocritical and distasteful. If that is better, perhaps American and India should go back to British rules. Perhaps we should not have fought the Axis power and South Africa should go back to apartheid, because the price of freedom was too high and not worth it.

About the other countries, it is my option that we should interfere when they provide a excuse for it. Perhaps I am a idealist, It is every men's duty to stand up against tyranny. I stand on my point that we should send forces to help the Libyan opposition.

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Worklist:
- Victorian Navy - LINK
- ROC/Taiwan - 中華民國空軍 / 陸軍航特部 / 海軍航空兵 - LINK
- RHKAAF / HKGFS - 皇家香港輔助空軍 / 政府飛行服務隊
- Gunbucket - LINK

天滅中共全黨死清光!

YES! I'll stick out with you DP If western politicians says freedom is every peoples right, they have to realise it's cheap to talk but expensive to act! When they don't have the guts to give their word value and action it's better they remain silent. They will probably not be reelected, so what
I'm not saying we just attack Libya with all our military assets, but talk to the freedom fighters. Listen to their prayers and support them with political recognition, money, arms, medicin, food, no-fly zone and blocking all harbours of Gaddafi.

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Work in progress:
DD County Class PNS Babur (1982)(PAK)
FF Type 21 Class D182 PNS Babur (2000)(PAK)
All relevant Coat of Arms

I have to state the next:

War is the last thing I want to see, you all know my background. I am not a warmonger, it my friends lives at risk on the line. It is my solemnly wish that the crisis can conclude speedly and with minimum lost of lives.

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Worklist:
- Victorian Navy - LINK
- ROC/Taiwan - 中華民國空軍 / 陸軍航特部 / 海軍航空兵 - LINK
- RHKAAF / HKGFS - 皇家香港輔助空軍 / 政府飛行服務隊
- Gunbucket - LINK

天滅中共全黨死清光!

No Darth that's not what I meant at all. You are going over the top with those kinds of suggestions, I hate these kinds of governments as much as you do. I'm just being realistic. There's no need to make personal attacks on anyone. Keep it civil.

The main aim should be to end the violence with the minimum of bloodshed on either side. Of course we want the freedom fighters to win but we don't want to inadvertently make things worse either. Only a few days ago in London Libyans were in the streets of London parading saying they wanted to sort their own problems without outside intervention. They have national pride, they want to be free but they want to win it on their terms and construct a new fairer state for themselves. Certainly the Middle East has changed for the better in the last few months and the ripples are far from over. I agree far too many opportunities to intervene have been wasted over the years, like Rwanda for instance and Somalia. All too often its easy for the politicans to find excuses not to help and in these days of economic constraint the excuses are all too easy to find. Afterall after cutting the Armed Forces the government wouldn't want to admit it needed a carrier and more Herks and more troops within a few months of the brutal defence cuts. Just as the government slashed the defence budget in 1990 the Gulf War sprang up to show those cuts as nonsense, now the same thing is happening again.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Sorry I haven't been contributing to this discussion, but I've had the chance now to catch up. On balance I would have to agree with Hood and Thiel about the limits of intervention; the Western powers just don't have a mandate to intervene and I doubt that without considerable US involvement any intervention would even work. And here we are still talking about imposing a no-fly zone. The British PM Cameron wanted a no-fly zone, but both the USA and Nato have told him its no go. There is the possibility of other Arab nations getting involved, and this would have to have U.N. support, and both China and Russia would not back that.

When I heard that a small contingent of SAS had been arrested by the rebels I had hoped that they were there to begin organising the rebels ahead of deliveries of shoulder held sam's and anti-tank missiles; but no, they were there to protect a Foreign Office chap who was equally wrong-footed. So yes, my option would be to run an illicit operation into Bengahzi, supplying the rebels with some decent arms, with no strings attached. As they are they are fighting with AK-47's, RPG's, some heavy machine guns and mortars, and maybe few artillery peices. But against the goverment forces, who have tanks, artillery, helicopters, aircraft, plus the navy, they haven't a hope of defeating Gadhafi.

The irony is that it is harder to remove a real despot like Gadhafi, and by extension Mugabi and Kim in North Korea, than it is a leader like Muburak in Egypt, who though still a despot is more reliant on the support of the West to remain in power; and of course, Egypt is a very different society than Libya, the former already had an opposition and in the end the army was able to call the shots. Gadhafi and his family, and his supporters have no exit strategy, they have to win to survive, and they have nothing to loose by killing a lot more of their own people.

I know it isn't the same, but the British originally sent the army into Northern Ireland to protect the Catholic minority, and look where that led.