I love it when American presidents try to put a moralistic spin on a naked oil war, and that’s what this Libyan deal is. The reason NATO is involved and taking over the lead is because Europe gets a very large percentage of its oil from Libya. Of course they’d like a more stable leader overseeing the continent’s oil supply. Gadhafi is insane, but so is murdering leader Laurent Gbagbo.
On the other side of the Sahara Desert is the Ivory Coast, where, for all intents and purposes, a civil war is raging with close to 500 dead and 450,000 to a million residents living in refugee camps. The UN is involved in a very limited peacekeeping role, which so far has not kept any peace.
Problem is, Cote d’Ivoire has no oil. Just cocoa. If the countries of the globe ran their cars, industries, military and homes on chocolate, we’d be in the jungle up to our mosquito-bitten armpits. As it stands now, the conflict is just your basic humanitarian crisis, not nearly important enough to send in the world.
