Progress Column
I'm backing the calls for intervention in Libya in the form of a no-fly zone:
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/columns/column.asp?c=614
posted by Luke Akehurst at 5:12 pm
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/columns/column.asp?c=614
About Me
- Name: Luke Akehurst
- Location: North Durham, County Durham, United Kingdom
Labour MP for North Durham since 2024. Labour Party activist since 1988 - firmly on the moderate wing of the party. Member of Labour’s NEC 2010-2012 and since 2020. National Secretary of Labour Students 1995-6. Parliamentary candidate for Aldershot (2001) and Castle Point (2005). Hackney Councillor (Chatham Ward) 2002-2014, Labour Group Chief Whip 2002-09, Chair of Health Scrutiny 2010-2014. Dad. Unite and GMB union member. All views expressed in a personal capacity. The rest will become evident from reading the blog.
9 Comments:
Surely someone can dig up a student dissertation from the internet headed Libya,no need to worry about the contents.
We can then get an invasion going.
9:08 pm, February 23, 2011
Saudi Arabia - which has no political parties, trade unions or dissident press, and has exported Wahabbism to countries such as Afghanistan - looks 'angelic' compared to its neighbours?
Really?
I would argue it ranks among the worst regimes on earth.
3:39 am, February 24, 2011
Perhaps Luke will also support a no fly zone over Afghanistan and Pakistan so that U S drones can stop dropping bombs on wedding parties and the like. At least such a move would show some consistency.
10:33 am, February 24, 2011
Luke calls his Progress article
"Time for another Kosovo".
However, before Luke or anybody else starts calling for similar action, it is important to understand the real nature of that war.
Lord Gilbert, Defence minister at the time of the bombing, later spoke quite candidly about the true nature of the bombing (which he strongly supported):
I think certain people were spoiling for a fight in NATO at that time..... If you ask my personal view, I think the terms put to Milosevic at Rambouillet were absolutely intolerable; how could he possibly accept them; it was quite deliberate. That does not excuse an awful lot of other things, but we were at a point when some people felt that something had to be done, so you just provoked a fight....The use of the word 'genocide', which came up very often, I thought was quite misplaced because I do not think Mr Milosevic, whatever else he was doing, was engaged in genocide...."
(Evidence To House of Commons Select Committee On Defence, 20 June 2000).
Anybody, who argues for 'another Kososvo' is actually arguing, as Lord Gilbert makes clear, to provoke a fight with another country that does not threaten us.
They are also calling for the deliberate bombing of a country's civilian infrastructure. This is what really happened in Kosovo.
12:46 pm, February 24, 2011
Well said the last Anonymous commentator but then, Labour has something of a track record when it comes to seeing war as a solution to problems. They seem to forget that in most modern wars, it is the civilian population who suffer the most.
7:27 pm, February 24, 2011
What is it with New Labour and the Gadaffi family?
Blair does an oil deal in exchange for a convicted mass murderer responsible for the deaths of 270 people.
Brown says he had nothing to do with the release of the mass murderer but his ministers were advising Gadaffi on how to do it.
And Mandelson is partying with Saif Gadaffi.
10:36 pm, February 24, 2011
Quite right, Luke. Despite what the isolationist "anti-imperialist" commenters here have said. It is a stark indication of the fascination of parts of the left with the supposed moral shortcomings of our own western states that they still think the real issue is how dreadful the US/Britain/Israel/Nato is rather than the yearning of millions of people to be free of the yoke of oppression and tyranny. Mnay of them are crying out for our help. What is "socialist" about retreating from their entreaties? Pretty disgusting viewpoint, really.
2:23 pm, February 25, 2011
Since when were socialism and imperialism bedfellows? Hard to believe that a so called Labour supporter could sanction the use of the might of the US/Nato alliance to bring about regime change.
Did we learn no lessons from Iraq where tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of innocents had to die or be maimed in order to bring in 'democracy' of sorts.
7:47 pm, February 25, 2011
No.
12:36 pm, February 26, 2011
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