LIBYAN LESSON
`US WAR Jets Hit Libya' (Daily Tele- graph). 'US jet attack on Libyan missile base' (Times). 'US attacks Libyan patrol boat and missile base' (Financial Times). The headline is the message. As with the previous day's front-page story, about an American nuclear missile test, the United States looks like the peace-breaker (`Gor- bachev insulted by US test', Guardian). And as with the previous day's story, if you read the small print the matter appears in a rather different light. After all, it was actually the Libyans who attacked first, firing their Soviet Sam missiles at Amer- ican ships sailing in the international waters of the Gulf of Sidra. We sympathise deeply with the Reagan administration's desire to 'teach Gaddafi a lesson' for his sponsorship of international terrorism; and its frustration at not knowing how. We went through much the same experience when a British policewoman was shot in St James's Square. Yet this particular 'lesson' was woefully ill-conceived. Combatting in- ternational terrorism is a good cause. Preserving the freedom of the seas is a good cause. But they are not the same cause. An action of this kind was bound to recall old-fashioned imperial 'gunboat di- plomacy'. And so, inevitably, the head- lines in even the most sympathetic news- papers presented it as such.
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