The White Man's burden in Libya

Today the House of Commons is set to vote on a Govt motion concerning air strikes in Libya with both front benches appearing to be in broad support for the UN Resolution.

I think it was Churchill who once dismissed the Indian demands for independence claiming they were not ready which begs the question given the current crisis in Libya are some Muslims not ready for nationhood.

LM has written about Libya previously and readily accepts I got Gaddaffi wrong but then so did the world community which is presumably why he has managed to cling onto power for over 40 years. 

In a complex region with injustice, hypocrisy and colonialism just a few western legacies LM believes it's high time we Muslims step up and readily accept our own responsibility for the chaos engulfing the Arab Muslim World.

Lets try and keep Libya simple, we have a situation where a Muslim tyrant is killing fellow Muslims and are presented with a case for Non Muslim white folk intervening militarily to prevent the slaughter of innocent Muslim civilians in Benghazi.

We do not have the Muslim equivalent of NATO although we do have the Arab League & the OIC whose gatherings are more like a film set from Carry on Up the Khyber rather than of any political or military value. As a result Muslim Regional powers like Egypt, Jordan, Syria or Turkey are completely silent while a fellow Muslim country becomes engulfed in chaos and violence.

Unlike Turkey who have expressed reservation and opposition to the Military intervention the other states are governed and ruled by autocracies where family business building rather than nation building are the priority. Mubarak in Egypt, the House of Saud, The Khalifa's in Bahrain, Gaddafi in Libya, Saleh in Yemen, Assad in Syria, Ben Ali in Tunisia etc are/were all Muslim tyrants killing Muslims so who is left to protect defenceless Muslim civilians from a Muslim tyrant?

Muslims and Arabs have shown themselves unable or unwilling to protect innocent Muslim civilians. My simple principle is if your family were being killed by Muslims would you want non Muslims to protect and save you, of course you would. LM has spoken to a number of Egyptians recently who said if Mubarak was killing Egyptian Muslims they would have supported western military intervention in the absence of collective Muslim regional engagement to stop a human catastrophe.

LM respects the BRIC nations who abstained in the UNSC over entirely understandable and legitimate concerns regarding further western military intervention in the Muslim world. However, in the absence of collective regional Arab Muslim support for innocent Muslim civilians and given UN legal authority sadly LM finds myself supporting the white man's burden of resolving ultimately an Arab Muslim issue by removing Gaddafi rather than indiscriminately bombing Libya into the dark ages.