Misrata may just be Gaddafi’s undoing. Up till now he has played his hand with considerable skill. Calm in Tripoli, from which mostly unhindered media correspondents report 24/7. Fighting up and down the road to Benghazi and for the apparently deserted towns in between. The attack on Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace, repulsed. Weathering vastly superior NATO firepower heroically. NATO split. America supporting but not fighting. Cameron and Sarkozy rebuffed by their allies. Russia, supported by China and Germany, beginning to voice the anxieties of what may now be the majority of the Security Council.
Then come TV pictures of children crying in an overcrowded Misrata hospital, riddled with shrapnel, followed by evidence of the use of cluster munitions. People recoil at injured children, their bodies shattered by indiscriminate shooting. This Blog is no exception. Just as Hitler saw a strategic prize in Stalingrad, where more than any other single battle Germany’s fate was sealed, so the Gaddafi family see the re-capture of Misrata, gateway to Tripoli, critical to their survival in power, even if in a divided Libya. With the rebels holding and not yielding, with control of the port through which supplies pour ( maybe troops and armour later), the future looks less certain.
So the crack troops, the snipers, the mercenaries and the forbidden weapons are all thrown in, no holds barred, no mercy, no compassion. This may galvanise hesitant NATO members to release more planes. In itself this will make a difference, but not enough. More important, it re-energises the beleaguered Cameron and Sarkozy. But most important of all, it gives the hawks in the Pentagon the excuse to promote the only military move which will end the bloodshed. Multiple drone strikes on Gaddafi, his family and his cronies. The Security Council may not approve, NATO may wring its hands. If the drones hit their targets, none of that will matter.