Few would weep for Colonel Gaddafi, but targeting him is wrong

This article was published in The Guardian 1 May 2011

In war, international law is all we have. If we cast it aside, there'll be nothing left but might-is-right, arms, oil and profits.

It's the famous fog of war: we cannot yet be sure whether –Gaddafi's youngest son and his three grandsons were really killed on Saturday by a Nato bomb. The Libyan government says Saif al-Arab and the children were killed in an attack on a building where Muammar Gaddafi himself was staying, and called it "a direct operation to assassinate the leader of this country". We don't know, either, whether British jets were responsible.

Nato denies an assassination attempt, as it has to, because that would break international law. But even through the fog, a couple of things are clear enough. First, if it's allowed to attack Libya's "command and control" system and if that command and control system is the Gaddafi family, then the line between bombing logistics and bombing them is barely visible. Second, many people will approve of trying to kill the colonel and whoever happens to be around him.