There is a revealing photograph of Barack Obama shaking hands with the Lybian butcher in 2009 - Muammar Gaddafi. If President Obama were forced to testify at an impartial, international war crimes tribunal, no doubt he would be asked: "What did you know, and when did you know it?
Of all the conventions in humanitarian law, none is more relevant to contemporary affairs than the Nuremberg principle: "Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity, is a crime under international law."
It was not Gaddafi’s many years of iron-fisted dictatorship, his support of the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, his crimes against the people of Sierra Leone, his many crimes against peace, that turned Obama and U.S. officials against Libya. It was the heavy handed slaughter in recent days against Libyan rebels, which threatened Western oil, that transformed Gaddafi from an insignificant pest into "the butcher of Benghazi." Prior to the invasion of Benghazi just days ago, few Americans ever paid any attention to Gaddafi’s many crimes against humanity. In a typical white-wash of Gaddafi's crimes much of the American media noted "a degree of moderation," in Libya since he surprised the world by abandoning his WMD’s shortly after Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was ousted from power. Many editors described Libya as "an independent militaristic regional power...the de facto protector of the regional status quo."
And it is certainly reasonable to believe that, had Gaddaffi refrained from invading Benghazi, the alliance between Libya and the U.S. would still be in place today. No doubt the photo of Obama shaking hands with Gaddafi would still be buried in media archives.
Oh wait! Disregard everything you just read. This is what was said about Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush from a 1983 photo, not Barack Obama and Muammar Gaddafi from a photo from 2009.
Move along, nothing to see.
Just more left-wing double standard, that's all.
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