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| Credit: Reuters/Yannis Behrakis |
Certainly it was quite unavoidable, but
Italy’s decision to send its warplanes on missions to bomb Libya “has not been easy,” as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi admitted during a
joint press conference in Rome with French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Not by chance, in fact, for weeks Italy has resisted joining the air missions over Libya. The official reason for this reluctance was that, as the former colonial ruler in Libya, the political cost of causing casualties was too high. But the truth is that, first of all, Italy is the North African country’s biggest trading partner, and second of all, both many conservative members of the government and opinion leaders across the Country are doubtful about this whole thing. There is no substantial likelihood, according to them, that the rebels are better than Gaddafi—which is not to say that Gaddafi is a good guy, on the contrary, the fear is that the rebels are even worse than him.
Are they too pessimistic? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, it depends on too many variables—what do we really know about these rebels? Well, that’s the problem, at least in my humble opinion—but I would like to be optimistic, that’s for sure…
Be it as it may, what is certain is that Berlusconi will now have to calm
tensions with his key Northern League coalition partner which has threatened to make the government collapse if Italy conducts lethal attacks on Libya.
