Beyond bizarre: in Libya, a rebel plays guitar as his comrades fight

I can't make stuff like this up.

Anderson Cooper on the death of a photographer

Qaddafi uses internationally-banned cluster bombs on his own people. He should be tried for war crimes

Military forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi have reportedly been firing into residential neighborhoods with heavy weapons, including cluster bombs that have been banned by much of the world and ground-to-ground rockets.

Who are the Libyan rebels? A few friends & brothers...

The most prevalent form of unit organization is ad hoc: a few brothers or friends sharing gas money, a few rifles, a rebel flag, and a pickup truck. Occasionally, whole villages or subsections of tribes have joined the rebels as a semi-coherent unit. Yet even then, village headmen or tribal sheiks do not appear to be leading or orchestrating the fighting. In fact, military leadership at the front, inasmuch as it exists, is entirely spontaneous. In late March, for example, the top military brass in Benghazi strongly advised the fighters not to push past Ajdabiya when it was retaken due to coalition airstrikes. The fighters did not obey orders and were quickly routed by Qaddafi's counterattacks.

--Jason Pack, foreignpolicy.com

Roger Cohen on removing Qadaffi: "Be ruthless" & then let the messy process of building a democracy begin

...Who are the Libyan rebels? Who are the angry of Latakia? The Arab transitions will be long and bumpy — like those that brought representative government to Latin America and Central Europe and wide swathes of Asia — but now that fear has been overcome, they are irreversible.

Here’s who the protesters are: people like Asmaa Mahfouz, 26, the Egyptian woman who on Jan. 18 made a video urging citizens to go to Tahrir Square on Jan. 25 — the demonstration that would start the revolution. She said then: “We’ll go down and demand our rights, our fundamental human rights. I won’t even talk about any political rights. We just want our human rights and nothing else.” And she said people “don’t have to come to Tahrir Square, just go down anywhere and say it, that we are free human beings.” And: “This is enough!”

People are being born throughout the Middle East. They are discovering their capacity to change things, their inner “Basta!” That’s how the Arab spring began on Dec. 17 in the little town of Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia — with a fruit peddler’s “enough” to humiliation. In my end is my beginning.

Three months later the genie is not only out of the bottle, it’s shattered the bottle. I said of Libya in an earlier column: Be ruthless or stay out. So now the West is in, be ruthless. Arm the resurgent rebels. Incapacitate Qaddafi. Do everything short of putting troops on the ground. Qaddafi, as President Obama has said, “must leave.” So that Libya can be an Arab country that is imperfect but open.

--Roger Cohen in today's NYTimes

The International Community is helping the people of Libya get rid of their cold-blooded killer & dictator

I am reading that some political observers are worried that Obama will invade Syria if the people there revolt against the government. I doubt it strongly: Obama is averse to wars and invasions, and the last thing he wants to do is get bogged down in an internecine conflict in Syria, which has many religious sects, political rivalries, and ethnic tensions. One Afghanistan is enough...or more accurately, too many.

Mo Nabbous, the courageous and patriotic man who created the uncensored Libya al Hurra ("freedom") Livestream news channel, is killed by a sniper's bullet

Read about the tragic death of this pioneering Libyan citizen journalist, a true fighter for freedom and democracy.

When military action is justified...

I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.

--President Barack Obama in his acceptance speech, at the Nobel Ceremony

My thoughts about the French & British-led enforcement of a no-fly zone in Libya, with American support

I respect those who think we should not be fighting a third war, invading another Arab country, or can't afford this involvement. These people have strong and cogent arguments.

But this is why I think we had to get involved: a country that after 40 years of dictatorship and ruthless suppression, rises up of its own accord, is being murdered by mercenary African soldiers, by indiscriminate bombardment, by jets and over 300 heavy tanks. In contrast, the Libyan freedom fighters have small arms, little warfare training, and no formal organization. Qaddafi has promised to kill anyone who has supported the rebels in any way -- that's well over half the country.

Libya would become the next Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Spain in the 1930s and other countries where the free world has let a tyrant go on a murderous rampage only to wake up to the carnage, with regret and apologies later. No, I am not one of those progressives who oppose all foreign intervention only years later to attend independent movies on the subject, see the dramatization of the atrocities and shake my head grave, amnesia-like judgment. The reality is that there is a mad-man loose in Libya, with billions of barrels of petro-dollars, who is killing his rebelling people with heavy weapons and mercenaries. (Libya is unlike the situation in Iraq which played a key counter-balancing role with Iran.) In this situation, we can and must even the playing field and let the Libyan freedom fighters have a chance to determine the fate of their country. Libyans are begging us. The Arab street wants it. Justice demands it.