The Impending Assault on Sirte

Rebels bringing their freedom towards Sirte

Let's rewind the clock a week. The Libyan rebels were consolidating their gains in Tripoli and fighting in several fronts in the East and Northwest of the country. The middle of the country - the spine stretching from Sirte south to Sehba was calm - as it had been throughout this war. The people there did not ask for trouble, they just wanted to be left alone.

But NATO and the rebels could not let that be evidently. Almost immediately after slowing down operations in Tripoli, NATO switched to bombing targets in the Sirte area. Then the rebels took off to begin the land attack. There is no other word for what is about the happen. NATO and the rebels are in the process of assaulting the center of Libya in order to violently bring them under their grip.

Now you would think that at least someone with a job at a newspaper might feel compelled to wonder why NATO thinks it is ok to attack a region that was not attacking anyone - particularly considering they are meant to be protecting Libyans from attack, per the UN Resolution 1973.

Instead when you type "Sirte" into Google News right now, the first story you see is titled "Human shields stall Libyan rebels' advance on Gadhafi's hometown." For the sake of fun, lets look into this allegation a bit.

Wikipedia defines Human shields as "a military and political term describing the deliberate placement of civilians in or around combat targets to deter an enemy from attacking those targets. It may also refer to the use of civilians to literally shield combatants during attacks, by forcing the civilians to march in front of the soldiers."

What exactly does the article accuse pro-Gaddafi's troops of doing? As far as I can tell, they are accused of moving defensive forces into position in a village on the road to from Brega to Sirte, in order to defend the area from the impending rebel attack.

The rebels call the residents "hostages" and this is repeated by the Western press, who apparently keeps forgetting how many times they've been lied to. This is an allegation we've heard before, without proof. Rebels fighting in the Nafusa mountains said the same thing about towns out of their control. We know their claims were false, however, because when rebels forces moved in they found that most of the people had left apparently of their free will, but decided to take vengeance on those who had stayed with the Gaddafi forces there (proving they did not view them as hostages).

The rebels and NATO seem to know they are not well liked in the middle of the country. A report quotes NATO and the rebels as saying "Sirte is a for haven for Qaddafi loyalists," which is another way of saying people there tend to like the current system.

The rebels talk about giving the town leaders a few more days to submit or they will take the City by force - with help from the most advanced air force in the world, of course. They will be rooted on by all good liberal interventionists. I'll just say that people don't like when they are disempowered violently.