Hello everyone I am Air Chief Marshall Blythe Snetterington and I have been asked to scribble something down for this esteemed website as our country reached the milestone of the one hundredth day of war in the skies above Libya.
At lot of things have been written about this conflict and how we have been seemingly dragged into a war between two sides who show no sign of being able to gain the upper hand and deliver a decisive blow but not much has been written from the viewpoint of the armed forces, well not unless you count the pieces written by the head of the Royal Navy and by the second in command of the RAF and indeed every other article and news story on the television that contained interviews with Britain’s fighting men and women.
Anyway, we have reached the one hundredth day of battle and, yes, I admit I am shocked that it has lasted this long. When we first went into combat I expected us to bomb Libya back into the Stone Age and it all be over in a matter of days. Then America decided to take a back seat over it and I think I can speak for everyone involved in the planning of operations that the reaction to America’s decision was one of “oh shit.” We now had to rely solely upon our European partners in NATO to help carry this mission to a successful conclusion and, although Italy have helpfully supplied us with pizza and our Scandinavian friends have given us a few ships from their whaling fleet, they hardly make up for the lack of Stealth Bombers.
The next problem we encountered was that Libya has hardly got an army to speak of. Their anti-aircraft guns consist of a man called Mohammed aiming a starting pistol at the sky and that makes it incredibly difficult for our planes to carry out the necessary bombing missions when all he has to do to avoid being spotted is to duck behind a bush when he sees a Typhoon come into view. So, as you can no doubt tell, the difficulty in selecting targets has prolonged this campaign.
This campaign has also faced criticism because we have decided to take action in Libya but not other countries where revolutions have been ruthlessly put down by the ruling regimes like in Bahrain and Syria but there are some remarkable differences between them. Firstly the Libyan revolution has taken place in Libya whereas the other two are in Bahrain and Syria, completely different countries. The other difference is that Libya has a comic book style bad guy in charge in Colonel Gadaffi. All wars need to have a comic book style bad guy in charge of the other side. In the 1980’s our enemy was Iran and they had Ayatollah Khomeini, in the 1990’s the enemy was Iraq and they had Saddam Hussein and in the 21st century it was Al-Qaida and they had Bin Laden. Libya has Gadaffi and he fits the bad guy persona so well, what with his curly hair and mad rants.
So we have had 100 days of war with no end in sight but I hope I have enlightened you as to why we are at war and that I have explained to you all that it has nothing whatsoever to do with Libya’s oil or any underhand weapons selling to them. Nothing at all.
