A walk through a section of Misrata captured by rebels from Khadaffy’s forces is in video after the “more”. Things to note: armored vehicles hidden in warehouses to keep them hidden from aerial surveillance. Walls pockmarked with shrapnel. Empty crates of ammunition. Wrecked vehicles. Desolate streets in every direction. The odd corpse, once men, once Khadaffy soldiers, now still and silent heaps on a North African sidewalk. Note too the ubiquitous greeting: Allahu Akbar.
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This is R2P on the ground. William Tecumseh Sherman had a better name for it. He said, “its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.” And elsewhere, “it’s a disagreeable thing to be whipped.” Better make sure you’re not.
The reason that wars should end in peace, and not in some inconclusive limbo of refugee camps and broken lives lasting generations, is that without that prize, the sacrifice would never be worth it.
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