you. jennifer made a point there about the qataris getting involved and how important it is to have arab nations involved here. where do you think we go? this is very important, but it s difficult because we ve already seen the arab league apparently be nervous that there might have been civilian casualties from the necessary steps to create a no-fly zone which suggests, frankly, that some people weren t paying careful enough attention to the military realities of this sort of mission. that s going to complicate our dealings with some of our friends in the broader middle east, the fact that we just have one small anything else contributing any air power so far is another reason for reluctance. i m generally of the view like secretary clinton said. once the arab league gave political approval to this, it changed everything. i support the mission because of that. even more than because of the u.n. security council resolution, but we need to bear in mind. we ve got already these warning
willing to strike his army in the battlefield. that will be particularly troubling for him right now because it is a raid around all those citizen towns in the east of the country that we just heard secretary of state hillary clinton saying that he needed to withdraw from. but literally as we were hearing that news, the french warplanes had made a hit on a military vehicle. we could hear the gunfire that sort of been fairly persistent through this city through the late afternoon here. we could hear that sort of ratchet up. bigger guns playing in. what we re seeing play out here on state television and the sounds of the horns we re hearing around the city and the gunfire, it s all to show support and loyalty to gadhafi, showing small gathers of people, protecters they re calling them at the international airport at gadhafi s pal lisacepalace, air of country, and trying to show people will come out and protect these sites for the libyan
highly complex place. there are a great deal of anti-western sentiments. my fear is that gadhafi, who is a very thug and a nasty man, has already positioned himself and his forces to say that he is fighting western imperialism and american imperialism. and if civilian casualties occur in libya, you re going infof to great deal of public opinion shifting in that part of the world. and my fear also the opposition in libya might be tainted if western intervention lead to a great number of libyan casualties. if you look at all public opinion coming out of the middle east right now, and i ve read a great deal of it, a lot of it is in support of what france is doing in terms of taking the lead in libya right now. so if you have civilian casualties, if that s expected, do you think that it will shift the mood and the opinion? because that s not a guaranteed shift, necessarily, going forward. i have no doubts in my mind,
it s always tough to read him. this could be the cagey gadhafi as our guests and reporters have spoken about. it is very hard to read how he s going to play this. wait it out, hope that there can be some buffer zone established, see if he is the target of aggression personally and then plead his case to the world. one final note, there is a major u.n. vote on something called the responsibility to protect. gadhafi may say there s no legitimacy for this action, but all of the nations did sign on to this in the wake of rwanda and other atrocities that the world can come to the aid of civilians who are being attacked by their own government. yes, it s very inconsistent and not always lived up to. so, richard, you mention south africa, but i wonder about other african nations. where are they on the support or lack thereof, of libya. the african union never really went along with the ruling by the arab league calling for a no-fly zone, worried about military intervention. but the securi
most of his forces now in the territories, you know how air power function. there are no surgical strikes, as we well know. once casualties take place in libya, you can imagine how the gadhafi regime would exploit this particular situation. you asked me a question about the arab states. look at the position of the arab league. the arab league has made it very clear, the support in no-fly zone over libya, yet at the same time, the arab league has made it very clear they are against western intervention, military intervention in libya. what this tells you is that the leaders, arab leaders, are fully aware of sensitivities in their own countries, that is arab public opinion could easily change and shift. and i think here president obama, president obama was extremely, extremely sensitive and he resisted the temptation to intervene militarily. i fear, i fear, even though the united states is not leading the