On Saturday, NATO Secretary General Fogh Rassmussen made a preliminary announcement that operations in Libya were going to end October 31. Confirmation of the departure date was supposed to occur at a meeting of the alliance today. However, that meeting has been delayed until Friday because Mustafa Abdel Jalil, leader of Libya’s transitional government, has asked NATO forces to stay until the end of the year. The reason? To help keep pro-Qaddafi forces from causing trouble for the fledgling government.
And why not, right? The original UN mission has already been hijacked once. NATO was approved to provide a no-fly zone in order to protect civilians, an authorization which itself was founded on rather thin evidence that Qaddafi intended to massacre the inhabitants of Benghazi. The mission which NATO wound up pursuing, including offensive strikes on pro-Qaddafi forces, can pretty much be summed up as regime change. And now, if it does stay in Libya until the end of the year, NATO’s mission will be distorted for a second time to protecting the transitional government.
Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that Congress never authorized US participation in the first place. But that sort of thing doesn’t matter much, does it?
Meanwhile, there is evidence that anti-Qaddafi militia conducted a reprisal massacre in Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. Civilians may be among the dead. The NATO mission was supposed to protect them; but now, I guess, it will be protecting their murderers.