One of the problems with a major foreign policy blunder, is that it continues to impact long after the event and over a much wider field. The interventionist agenda of Blair and Bush, with its futile, unwinnable and destructive foreign wars, is now playing into the hands of the Gaddafi family, who have been able to galvanise their supporters with the fear that Britain and America will attack them. Nothing would suit Gaddafi better, nor aid him more, than a military assault of some kind led by an Anglo-American coalition of the willing.
Fortunately the realism which now drives Pentagon thinking has ruled this out, not only privately, but in public and in dismissive terms, amounting to a diplomatic slap down for Downing Street’s enthusiasm for a no fly zone. An American rescued by a Royal Navy warship from Benghazi, declared himself astonished that he would ever be so pleased to see the Uninon Jack. This blog feels the same way about Robert Gates. We never thought we would have to look to him to restrain the hotheads in our own government.