I’m probably going to be pretty lonely in my stance, but I’m against the military intervention currently ongoing in Libya. Here are a few reasons why:

• Innocent people will be killed. The usual mantra about weapons with pin-point accuracy is once again being repeated but experience tells us that catastrophic mistakes are made.
• In the days leading to the passing of the UN resolution all talk was of a no-fly zone. In practice this has morphed into an all-out assault on Libyan military positions. This may not equate to the miss-selling of the Iraq war to us but is only lower down the same scale.
• The Arab League – so in favour of action in the first instance – have now noticed the gap between the rhetoric of a no-fly zone and actual air strikes. The consensus built up is now in danger of collapsing.
• The people of west Libya – i.e. the Gaddaffi controlled areas – will possibly equate allied bombing with the freedom fighters of east Libya thus damaging any hopes of building a united country post-conflict.
• Any sense of this being a principled stand disappears when you consider how many arms the UK and other western countries have been selling Libya in the past. Since the arms embargo was lifted in 2004 a total of €834 million worth of arms have been sold to Libya by EU countries. In one 12 month period (2009-2010) the UK sold worth €34 million which included items such as crowd control equipment and tear gas. (In the same period we also sold €3 million to Bahrain, €4 million to Egypt and €64.3 million to Saudi Arabia.) If we were as concerned about people’s freedom as we say we are now we’re bombing, would we really have sold these regimes the amount of arms we have?