bombing raids on Libya was identified as consisting of Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt. This weekend saw
In August, the "mysterious" Libyan bombers were identified...
And now another "mysterious" bombing, as AP reports...That party, or rather, parties has been revealed as Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which as the NYT reports, "have secretly teamed up to launch airstrikes against Islamist-allied militias battling for control of Tripoli, Libya, four senior American officials said, in a major escalation between the supporters and opponents of political Islam."
But what is surprising is not the intervention: after all, hardly a day passes now when there isn't some small to medium political invasion taking place somewhere, in a world in which newsflow no longer affects anything. It is that both countries decided to roundly ignore advising the one country which previously had made it quite clear it has explicit national interests in Libya: the United States.
The United States, the officials said, was caught by surprise: Egypt and the Emirates, both close allies and military partners, acted without informing Washington or seeking its consent, leaving the Obama administration on the sidelines.
It gets worse: Egyptian officials explicitly denied the operation to American diplomats, the officials said. It is almost as if the theme of ignoring and/or mocking US superpower status exhibited most recently by both China and Russia, is gradually spreading to even the more "banana" republics around the world.
An unidentified warplane has bombed a Greek-owned tanker ship at the eastern Libyan port of Darna, killing two crew members and injuring two more, Greek authorities said Monday.