Hey Portugal, Stop Wussing Out About Libya

If only Canada had that UN Security Council seat, Gadhafi would be eating sauerkraut in a Hague prison right now.

The current crisis in Libya vindicates the Conservatives’ plan to purchase a fleet of F-35 fighter jets, writes the National Post’s Keith Beardsley, because they would be perfect for enforcing a proposed no-fly zone over the country. That may be, but Beardsley does nothing to address whether Canada’s current fleet of planes could best Gadhafi’s air force (made up largely of Soviet-era jets), the Liberals’ main grievance that the F-35’s are to be purchased with an untendered contract, or whether it is at all in Canada’s national interest to militarily intervene in Libya.

The Ottawa Citizen’s William Watson handily skewers the Liberals’ contention that if Stephen Harper had not lost a seat on the UN Security Council to Portugal, Canada could be making a real difference in Libya right now. “Do you suppose that Moammar Gadhafi, as he fulminates in his bunker, finds great relief in the knowledge that, for all the troubles closing in on him, at least he doesn't have the Canadians to deal with?” Watson asks. “The pusillanimous Portuguese are pushovers, he must be thinking, but if I were up against Canada, then I'd really be done for.” To wit, give it give it a rest Iggy.

The Post’s Tasha Kheiriddin rails against the Liberals for pushing the Tories to do things like implement sanctions against Libya and take strong measures to evacuate Canadians stranded there, actions she feels are not credible or unrealistic, seemingly unaware that the Conservatives have announced they are doing some of those very things.

And writing in the Toronto Star, Ramesh Thakur sounds much more like a hawkish Toronto Sun columnist as he calls on Canada to live up to its UN-mandated “responsibility to protect” by imposing a no-fly zone and ousting Moammar Gadhafi by force. “[I]f Libyan pilots fly, they die” should be the policy and the international community should grant Gadhafi’s wish to “fight to the last drop of his blood,” Thakur believes. No doubt his intentions are good, but we wonder what he makes of reports that the last thing Libyan opposition groups want is foreign troops on their soil.