How do we fight you? Let me count the days
Maurice O'Brien • Published 5 Aug 2011 09:30
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IT SEEMS like only yesterday, but by my reckoning it's actually 161 yesterdays, since Le Petit Sarko announced that Gaddafi must go.
Not to be outdone by his neo-Napoleonic chum, 159 days ago Dave followed suit with all the elan of a man blissfully unacquainted with the words Blair, Bush, Iraq or weapons of mass destruction.
First it was a no-fly zone, but Dave still owned a pair of socks back then so there were no cold feet when the bombing started 139 days ago.
While claiming no talent for international diplomacy, military strategy or indeed clairvoyance, I'd modestly point out that here on April 7 (119 days ago) I pondered what would happen were Gaddafi simply to sit tight, keep his head down, and wait until either the bombs ran out or Britain was plunged into a state of Grecian penury.
Last week (nine days ago) we found out.
Wee Willy Hague said Gaddafi could stay. Then he really got tough and (seven days ago) expelled a motley bunch of Libyan diplomats who may yet come trotting back once they've found the inevitable helpful one-liner in the Human Rights Act.
But if any Libyans are feeling discomforted then it's certainly the rebels whose 139-day-old optimism must be wilting fast; particularly after the death of their military commander Abdul Fatah Younis (seven days ago) and particularly when Wee Willy fancifully pledged on Monday (four days ago) that those responsible would face "proper judicial process".
When, during the same interview, Willie's only consolation for victims of Syrian government brutality was to say it was "appalling", it suggested someone in the Foreign Office must be frantically scouring an atlas in search of Cloud Cuckoo Land.
What levity during Monday's strike-hit Today programme on Radio 4 when they marked the 150th anniversary of the first official weather forecast, produced for The Times by pioneering meteorologist Vice Admiral Robert Fitzroy. How they sniggered when told the maiden prediction by a man acknowledged to have made accurate forecasting a reality, read simply: "General weather probable in the next few days."
But the scoffing was surely misplaced when one of Fitzroy's successors, aided apparently by a computer which performs several million calculations every hour and can still only claim success on six days out of seven, was asked last Thursday to confirm that rain was likely.
Met Man burbled happily: "It varies from model to model, but that's my best guess."
If that's progress then my money's on Fitzroy.
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