It is worth reminding ourselves that the stated aim of SCR 1973 is negotiations, not the wiping out of one side in Libya. Killing children by bombing a residential house in a residential suburb is not remotely defensible; for Cameron to claim that killing children is “protecting civilians” is awful – those children were civilians, whoever may have been their grandfather.
I could accept that SCR 1973 could be stretched to include knocking out air defences as pre-emptive action against a challenge to the no-fly zone. That it stretches to widespread attacks on the “command and control” facilities of one side of a civil war, is plainly nonsense. The resolution calls for negotiations between the two sides; it cannot therefore be construed to mean that the only way to protect civilians is the utter destruction of one side. Then the “command and control” excuse was used to attack civilian telephone networks, then TV networks, then civilian electricity supplies. Now it is used to justify the murder of children in a family home.
I am frankly astonished that more concern is not coming from the Liberal Democrat side of the coalition about this mission gallop.