BRUTALITY IN LIBYA – AT 10:41 A.M. ET:  Libya has fallen off the front page of American newspapers, and is less and less a story in the broadcast media.  It is a weird situation, as the president of the United States was one of the Western leaders who initiated the NATO military campaign against the Libyan government.  That campaign has stalled, and people here are losing interest.  But the desperation in Libya is growing.  From London's Telegraph, which continues to do a good job of covering the conflict:

Reports from the city on Friday said the Libyans had used mortar fired shells to disperse multiple bombs in residential areas.

The Geneva Convention 1949 protocol obliges armies to take all care to ensure civilians are not harmed in attacks on the enemy.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, condemned Col Gaddafis brutality toward civilians.

She said: "That is worrying information. And it is one of the reasons the fight in Misurata is so difficult, because it's at close quarters, it's in amongst urban areas and it poses a lot of challenges to both Nato and to the opposition."

Witnesses saw the cluster bombs explode in the overnight offensive. On Friday fragments of the Spanish made MAT-120 cargo mortar, which holds 21 smaller sub-munitions, were found. When scattered over a wide area, the bombs kill indiscriminately. Markings on the fragments show the mortars were made in Spain in 2007, which banned the weapon in 2008.

COMMENT:  Notice, please, the silence of the international left.  Where are the huge demonstrations in Europe that we see whenever the United States engaged in a military action?  Where are the well-known "human rights activists" of Code Pink and other fellow travelers?  (In fairness, Human Rights Watch, which has declined badly over the years, has been pretty good on Libya.) 

Throughout the Arab world its citizens have been in revolt, and often brutally suppressed.  But we await those big demonstrations.  Oh, we also await the teach-ins and rallies on American college campuses.

April 16, 2011