What is it good for?
There are some things that are repeated so often they blur one’s attention. But they need to be said.
In 2011, NATO bombed Libya with the aim of ‘preventing’ a massacre that the leaders of NATO said was bound to happen. ‘Responsibility to protect’ was the rationale given for that intervention.
No massacre happened then. But NATO’s intervention led to the collapse of Libya’s government, the murder of its ruler, civil war, the deaths of thousands, and the displacement of many more to the shores of Europe and elsewhere, where their existence, inter alia, fomented a populist revolt that has yet to subside. Libya still lacks a viable central government.
Today we see in eastern Libya a terrible flood. Thousands of people have died, and many thousands more are predicted to follow – certainly more than the presumptive victims of the massacre that never happened in 2011.
Has NATO, that most formidable alliance devoted to defending not only interests but also human values, moved a single inch to help the people suffering next door in Derna? Has any NATO official offered a word of support?