Hearing Muammar Gaddafi and Admiral Michael Mullen comment on CNN on March 20, 2011, suddenly came to mind the image of British redcoats during the American Revolution. Do you remember those masters of old-fashioned military etiquette, he thought it was right to have their men march shoulder to shoulder battle has bright red coats, while the officers rode on horseback behind, relying on the habit of saying that the war never intentionally target enemy agents, because if the officers were killed there would be chaos on the battlefield.
This morning Colonel Gaddafi said: "We're not worried. We have no fear."
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN's Candy Crowley, Gaddafi is "increasingly isolated internationally than he ever was. ... In the long term we hope to see more and more pressure put on him. "
Gaddafi Why so sure? It seems that this value is obsolete because we're not going to attack the leader of an enemy state. Please understand I am not suggesting that the U.S. adopt a policy of assassinations of enemies in general.
Consider the genocide in Rwanda to see the consequences of the assassination of a leader. The Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira president of Burundi were killed on April 6, 1994, when the Rwandan president's plane was shot down as it was trying to land at Kigali airport. In the next 100 days, approximately 800,000 innocent civilians, Hutus who supported the President, mostly Tutsis slaughtered.
Even a symbolic murder of a national leader, as the "regime change" held in Iraq, may lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people because of old grudges are allowed to surface. Sunni and Shia Muslims killed many more of their Muslim brothers in Iraq that the Western powers ever did.
There is a trade-off of the horrors in change of international order by force rather than through the normal processes of peace. While it is true that some systems will inevitably change by violence, Americans must have the courage, as stated by President Barack Obama to "change ... they can and can not be imposed by the United States or any foreign power. Ultimately, it will be driven by the people .... It is your right and responsibility to determine their own destiny. "
But that does not mean that the international community or if you and sit and allow crimes against humanity only prosecute and punish those responsible in the legal proceedings and tapestries buttoned down long after the events. International communications have changed so that we can not ignore the mass murder as is the case.
It seems clear that the international community is expected to move more quickly in future situations. When it does, call "military action" that is. War! That should be the end of the time kill leaders can say, "We're not worried." Once the international community goes to war against the killing of a leader, as he has done against Muammar Gaddafi, wait to swallow a Tomahawk cruise missile soon. Why the international community that the killing of hundreds or thousands of innocent people when it is clear that cutting the head of the snake can save? Do not let a bank robber to keep shooting the hostages after the police arrived we?
I think that this policy is give governments pause murder in terms of how violently repress their people. Maybe we can not stop the repression in the world. Local people must find their own ways of doing so. However, when repression becomes so egregious that the international community must declare war on the perpetrators, as it did in Libya, the Marquis of Queensbury rules should be set aside, and the Tomahawks must leave and go to the leaders of murder. In the name of Pan Am 103 victims, Muammar Qaddafi deserves to be the lesson for everyone else, he would pursue such behavior against their own people.