Many readers will recall one of the most famous headlines in modern American newspaper history — the 1975 New York Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”
Substitute “Arab League” for “Ford” and “America” for “City” and you’ve got the perfect headline: “Arab League to America: Drop Dead.”
I always thought the best illustration of “chutzpah” was that of the boy who kills his parents and then pleads with the court for mercy, on the grounds that he is an orphan.
But given that that is only a hypothetical example, we now have a better illustration of chutzpah because this one is true.
Witnessing the Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s large-scale killings of Libyan civilians, the Arab League begged us, the Europeans and the Security Council to militarily intervene on behalf of the Libyan people.
So, despite the fact that America is rather weary of fighting Muslim mass murderers, is militarily overstretched and has a devastating national debt, America said yes. We are the most decent country on Earth, and even a liberal-left Democrat in the White House feels the moral pull of America’s legacy, values and unparalleled strength.
But no sooner have America and the Europeans intervened than the Arab League officially protests our intervention on the grounds that Libyan civilians — 48 claimed, 0 confirmed at the time of the protest — have been killed by the intervention requested by the Arab League.
What exactly did the Arab League, most of whose dictators have murdered thousands of their own people for political reasons, think would happen once the U.S. and the Europeans intervened militarily? Did they assume not one Libyan civilian would get killed? Has there been a military action in history in which no civilians died?
Amr Moussa, the outgoing secretary general of the Arab League, claimed in his statement that “What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians.”
Perhaps Moussa did not read the Security Council resolution. It does not limit anti-Gadhafi military activity to “imposing a no-fly zone.” The resolution authorizes U.N. member states “to take all necessary measures to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi (italics added).”
