'What Libya actually needs is not a no-fly zone, but a no-Qaddafi zone.' Libya's Backseat Drivers

No one analyses the UN and its motives better than Claudia Rosett [Excerpts, read the full article at this link.]

Libya's Backseat Drivers - National Review Online

MARCH 23, 2011 by Claudia Rosett

The Arab League is not a force for good in the Middle East.

Maybe the next time Pres. Barack Obama is tempted to follow the leadership of the Arab League, he’ll think twice. Having brandished the Arab League’s call as the classiest of multilateral credentials for going to war in Libya, and praised its members as partners, Obama is now left with little more from this crew than promises and the on-again off-again hectoring of Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa.

To be sure, there are good arguments for intervening in Libya. As leader of the free world, the U.S. is called upon by its own decency and democratic values to act when longtime tyrant Moammar Qaddafi embarks on the wholesale slaughter of Libyans trying desperately to overthrow him. If this war ends up spelling the long-overdue end of Qaddafi’s 42-year reign of terror, it could send an important message to other tyrannies, not least Iran’s, that it is becoming more dangerous to deal with massive protest by murdering protesters. The big question, then, is what might follow.

That’s exactly why the 22-member Arab League, far from being one of the best regional fixers in this effort, is one the worst. The League of Arab States — to use its official name — is not a club of democratic reformers hoping to bring civil liberties to Libya. It is a fractious collection of 21 Arab governments plus the Palestinian Authority, which it has already dubbed a state. Among its members, along with such relatively moderate Islamic countries as Morocco, are some of the world’s most unregenerately despotic, anti-Semitic, terror-breeding or terror-supporting regimes. These include Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and — although the League on Feb. 22 suspended its participation — Libya itself....

But to a U.S. administration that values multilateralism above all — the more the better — none of this detracted from the Arab League’s allure as an arbiter, guide, and partner for policy toward Libya. For more than three weeks, as Qaddafi’s forces turned Libya’s uprising into a bloody rout, Obama dithered. Then, on March 12, the Arab League called for a no-fly zone over Libya. Hailing the wishes of the Arab League, though not bothering to seek a resolution from the U.S. Congress, the administration finally swung into action. Five days later, on March 17, the United Nations Security Council, with the enthusiastic vote of the U.S., approved Resolution 1973, authorizing the use of force to protect Libyan civilians.

This murky resolution is a masterpiece of dangerous U.N. equivocation, and the Arab League’s fingerprints are all over it. What Libya actually needs is not a no-fly zone, but a no-Qaddafi zone. Resolution 1973 does not provide for that. Drafted with more concern for Arab League sensitivities than for the practicalities of dealing with Qaddafi and his ruinous reign over Libya, it rules out any foreign boots on the ground and limits the use of force to protecting civilians — a job likely to become increasingly risky, costly, and complex if Qaddafi endures and the conflict drags on....