Instead of Bombing Dictators, Stop Selling Them Bombs!

When all you have is bombs, everything starts to look like a target. After years of providing Libya's dictator with weapons, we need to consider an alternate approach: If the bitter lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan has taught us anything, it's that "wars of liberation" exact a deadly toll on those they purportedly liberate, and that "democracy" doesn't come on the back of a Tomahawk missile. Obama announced his latest peace through bombs initiative last week, joining ongoing US conflicts and proxy wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan,Yemen and Somalia, by declaring that he could not "stand idly by when a tyrant tells his people that there will be no mercy, and where innocent men and women face brutality and death at the hands of their own government." Within 24 hours of his announcement, more than 110 US Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired into Libya, including the capital Tripoli, reportedly killing dozens of innocent civilians, as even "smart" missiles tend to do. According to the New York Times, allied war planes with "brutal efficiency" bombed "tanks, missile launchers, and civilian cars, leaving a smoldering trail of wreckage that stretched for miles,"