US-Libya missile battle

I didn't exactly promise last week but I did leave a strong hint that maybe, maybe I'd return to what I called Mr P. J. Corkery's corking piece in the Los Angeles Times about the high-pressure lobbying that some movie stars, their husbands and agents, practice on the press and the other media in their ravenous desire to win an Oscar.

It's one of the more sordid exercises of money and power in Hollywood, especially in the weeks that precede the big Oscar jamboree. Alas, not only am I 3,000 miles away from Mr Corkery, but I'm sure that even to millions of Americans who watched this year's award ceremony, the Oscars now seem as dead and gone as a fancy dress ball that happened a few days before the outbreak of the First World War.

In the week since some of us waited and wondered if the splendid Japanese film 'Ran' would walk away with the honours, which it didn't, or whether, on the contrary, 'Out of Africa' would walk away with everything, which it did, the country has switched its attention to much more formidable lobbying for power and influence in Central America and off the coast of Libya.

Let us say only about the Oscars that we had the satisfaction of seeing a lady who has done no lobbying, who has been nominated seven times and won nothing, who's one of the great American actresses, who started acting 45 years ago, who is now 62 – surely the oldest actress ever to get her first prime award – that at long last, Geraldine Page won the award as best actress for a heartbreaking performance in 'The Trip to Bountiful'.

Meanwhile, back to the bout of the century – well, the decade, perhaps – between Colonel Gaddafi and Ronald Reagan. To put the actual battle as simply as possible at the start, let us just repeat the first agency news bulletins, that on Monday 24 March, an American armada of 30 ships was conducting manoeuvres in the Mediterranean off Libya and, since some ships had entered the Gulf of Sidra, which most nations accept as international waters – but which Colonel Gaddafi considers as his home waters, to enter which would be equivalent to crossing what he calls 'the line of death' – wherefore, Libyan ground batteries fired six missiles at American planes.

Colonel Gaddafi says he shot down three. The White House said, in effect, 'Nonsense! No reports of American losses of either ships or men'. But the Secretary of Defense Mr Weinberger said that navy warplanes had retaliated with air-to-surface missiles against the Libyan missile site, had severely damaged one Libyan vessel and seen another on fire and dead in the water.

Next day, the Americans hit the missile base again and sank two more Libyan vessels, though the American bulletin said the Libyans had done no more actual firing. They had displayed something called 'hostile intentions', otherwise undefined. By Thursday, Colonel Gaddafi had apparently held his fire and the United States was saying that the demonstration had been so successful that instead of concluding the manoeuvres next Tuesday, they might just end them then and there, but if the battle is all over, the debate over it, in this country, has hardly begun.

The American navy manoeuvres were announced about a month ago. Only about ten days ago was it given out that the armada was going to test its right of safe transit through international waters and, thereby, defy Colonel Gaddafi's rumbling threats about the fate of anyone who crossed the line of death. So it happened.

The immediate response in Washington must have gladdened the president's heart. Not only was there a Republican hallelujah chorus of approval, but all the Democrats, except a single congressman, applauded too, including the president's absolutely dependable political enemy, Speaker Tip O'Neill. Next morning, an overnight poll found 67 per cent of all Americans backing the president.

But the same day, Wednesday, came a question. Why should the United States decide to make this test of international law or international agreement just now? And why muster such a force?

The administration was not slow to guess the question was coming and to answer it not in a formal declaration, but in leaks to the press. Colonel Gaddafi has been, so the word was given, the principal fermenter of international terrorism and was almost certainly responsible for the recent murder rampage at the Rome and Vienna airports. The president swore at the time, and has gone on swearing, that he was not going to sit back and wince at further terrorism, he was going to meet force with force.

So the baiting of Colonel Gaddafi in his own Gulf of Sidra was deliberate and was meant to humiliate him and teach him a lesson. What sort of lesson has still not been explained. Certainly it became obvious within 24 hours that Colonel Gaddafi had improved his posture or pose as a national hero with his own people. Moreover, he could say – and did – that it was the Americans who had learned a lesson. They had fired and then withdrawn, turned and ran. With a controlled press, it was easy for Gaddafi to make himself out more conspicuously than ever as the one brave leader in the Arab world willing to defy and fight the American imperial terrorists.

An American television crew went around the streets of Tripoli on Thursday getting spontaneous and plainly sincere replies to such questions as, 'Who fired first?' 'Who are the terrorists?' The answers were always the same and Gaddafi has the satisfaction of knowing that his people are all the more surely behind him in wanting to fight what he calls his holy war.

That was to be expected. What, however, the administration apparently also expected was a new, widespread and severe outbreak of terrorist attacks sponsored by Colonel Gaddafi against Americans, especially American officials anywhere and everywhere. For the first time ever, an American Secretary of State flying between one capital and another – in this case, Mr Shultz on his way from Ankara to Athens – was escorted by a fighter squadron.

An identical memorandum went out from the State Department to every American embassy in the world and many consulates to limit access of visitors and to toughen security procedures. American diplomats were told to end the ancient custom of driving in cars carrying diplomatic licence plates. A steel protective grid went round the United States' consulate in Paris. An alert called an 'extra' alert order went out to the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee which enriches uranium. The Federal Aviation Administration announced that all American airports which receive international flights will institute more careful scrutiny of luggage and packages.

Warnings to use more caution in everyday activities have been sent out to over 240 Peace Corps volunteers in Yemen, Morocco and Tunisia. A Republican congressman has a bill pending in the House to have $8 million allotted to build gates and stone posts that would prevent terrorists from any longer driving cars up to the steps of the Capitol.

In all this unprecedented security campaign, one lone voice of protest has been heard. A congressman from the west, from the state of Washington, has looked over his colleagues bill and says he's concerned that we should not turn the United States into a garrison state because of threats of someone of Gaddafi's character.

Another congressman objected to the Mediterranean adventure on the ground that it violated the War Powers Act. This was an act passed by both Houses of Congress in 1973, in the wake of Vietnam, which requires the president to notify Congress 48 hours before he orders American troops into a hostile area, in the absence of a declaration of war – a power given by the constitution solely to the Congress.

I'm trying to think when was the last time Congress exercised this exclusive power. I think it was the declaration of war against Italy during the Second World War. But after Vietnam, Congress started an unholy row about the habit of succeeding presidents – Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon and on through Vietnam – in seizing Congress's war-making power. The fact is that the president has considerable power to recognise and/or proclaim a national emergency and act on his own, provided he gives notice to the Congress according to the 1973 act. This the president has not done, though before the hostilities in the Gulf of Sidra, he did inform the Soviet Union, a courtesy not provided for in the constitution.

Meanwhile, most of the Arab nations denounced the American incursion into the Gulf of Sidra. Syria offered actual help to Gaddafi. Both Italy and West Germany denounced him for claiming the Gulf as his own but hoped that the United States had proved its point and would not drive it home with more retaliation. Britain, alone, seems to have given unreserved approval to Mr Reagan on the legal point that the United States has every right to conduct naval operations in the Gulf.

Meanwhile, the White House, the State Department and the Defence Department are watching and waiting. Congress is, at the moment, as quiet as Tripoli is said to be. But there are rumbles. Defence and strategic study groups are pointing out that the acts of terrorism that can be positively attributed to Gaddafi are many less than the administration asserts. It was, for instance, Syria and Iran that gave sanctuary to the terrorists who massacred the Israeli team in the 1972 Olympics.

I'm aware that his is a bare report but until appalling things begin to happen, nobody seems to be asking the question, what was the real motive behind the Mediterranean manoeuvres? Why did the United States take such a gamble if the consequence it expected was a wave of worldwide terrorism?

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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