Written by John Turner   

I’ve held off commenting about the situation in Libya because I didn’t know enough to say anything intelligible. I’ve learned a few things recently, and, I also began to realize I probably know about as much as anyone else, which remains very little.

I should confess, from the start, that my natural inclination is to be against the dropping of bombs by big, rich nations on the heads of poor people. It strikes me, generally, as a disgusting and cowardly thing to do. I realize that’s a terribly un-American comment since the United States spends a significant portion of its national treasure doing just that. But I suspect I have long since forfeited the right to be called a “real” American by patriots in any case.

A friend of mine, a former big bomber, told me once that he felt no responsibility for the people his bombs killed because he had nothing to do with deciding where they were dropped. “I just put them where I was told to put them,” he said. He was speaking of napalm bombs in this instance. I thought it was a curious moral stance even though I’m fairly sure it would be supported by a majority of my fellow citizens. As a national entity we have got so used to dropping bombs on people that to cast any suspicion on the people who actually do it would be considered fantastic.

It’s true that the character of the people the bombs are supposed to hit -- and thereby to disperse as various sized pieces of meat -- has something to do with the propriety of dropping the bombs in the first place. It may be the case that on rare occasions the bombees (a made-up word) are engaged in such nasty work that blowing them up could be seen as justified by marginally rational people. We need to remember, though, that bombs are completely indiscriminate. They’re just as ready to kill a mother scurrying out to get some food for her hungry children as they are a guy with an AK-47 about to murder people who don’t deserve it. This is a truth the U.S Air Force wishes to suppress. That agency’s propaganda speaks regularly of smart bombs. But intelligence is not a characteristic that can be applied accurately to explosives released from airplanes.

When we turn to conditions in Libya, the most persuasive piece I’ve read lately comes from Leslie Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations (Mr. Gelb, by the way, is not a person with whom I always agree). He says that most of the statements being made to justify the bombing in Libya are highly hypocritical. None of the nations dropping bombs there have any national interest in how the struggle between the current ruler and the people who don’t like him turns out. Furthermore, the notion that the bombs are being dropped for humanitarian purposes is seriously suspect. If stopping the killing of innocent people is the goal of the bombers, there are a number of places around the world where military force could be more effectively used. He admits that Mr. Gaddafi is not a likable public official. But it’s hard to know whether the people who seek to replace him would be any more concerned with the well-being of the Libyan people than Gaddafi is. In short, Gelb thinks the bombing is a bad idea.

Another feature of the business is that bombs -- at least of the sort that rich nations drop from airplanes -- are extremely expensive. The newspapers are full of headlines saying that a billion dollars worth of U.S. bombs will be required. The savings to be had by eviscerating National Public Radio or Planned Parenthood are so small compared to the cost of this latest act of national bravado, you would think the former would never make it into the newspapers.

People are giving the president credit for acting in concert with other nations, and I admit that’s better than simply doing it without talking to anybody else. Still, if the primary bombing is done by American warplanes, and the primary cost of the bombs is to be paid for by money the U.S. government borrows, we can’t very easily dump the responsibility off on other countries. The world will see the bombing campaign as an American effort and the world will, pretty much, be right.

Though it’s pleasant to think that some lives may have been saved by blowing up a number of Gaddafi’s tanks, and it’s also pleasing to see the number of tanks under his command reduced, those two satisfactions probably don’t constitute an adequate justification for the campaign. I find myself being forced to think, more and more, that it was an ill-considered action. It wasn’t the worst idea we’ve adopted over the past decade, but its being less bad than others can’t really transform it into being good.

What’s important at the moment, however, is not to castigate ourselves, or our government, for having done what we’ve done up till now, but rather to draw back, think seriously about the wisdom of our actions, and not let ourselves be led by our initial bombing into bombing that goes on indefinitely. The damage, so far, is bad but fairly modest compared to the nonsense we’ve committed over the past decade. I say we should try to keep it at that.