Mar
21
2011
The United States, France, and Britain carried out air strikes against Libya this weekend, claiming to have destroyed Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s command-and-control center in Tripoli. The strikes were authorized by a United Nations resolution that passed last week. The resolution was meant to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya in an attempt to hamper Qaddafi’s ability to strike at his opposition from the air. A Libyan government official told the BBC that the air strikes had claimed the lives of 64 people. The two main cities under opposition control, Misurata and Benghazi were still experiencing attacks from pro-Qaddafi forces despite Qaddafi’s ceasefire declaration on Friday. Here in the US, a poll this morning by CNN and Opinion Research found that Americans are about split on President Obama’s handling of the Libya situation: forty-five percent of respondents approve, while 40 percent disapprove. With an economically depressed nation in no mood to enter a third war, Democratic Senator John Kerry explained President Obama’s decision to authorize air strikes on NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday by saying “This is a very limited operation that is geared to save lives and it was specifically targeted on a humanitarian basis.” Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League initially criticized the Western air strikes over the reported deaths but then backed off and defended the strikes saying that the Arab League backed the UN resolution. Arab heads of state are facing a crisis of legitimacy, on the one hand being forced to support pro-democracy stirrings in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, and on the other hand, attempting to defend their regimes, particularly in countries like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
GUEST: Dr. Mahmoud Traina, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, recently went to Libya as part of an independent medical relief effort.
Tune in on Tuesday March 22nd at 8:20 am PST for another perspective on the Libyan air strikes with our guest Phyllis Bennis.
