Just last month, David Cameron declared that you “can’t drop democracy from 40,000 feet.” He’s right. It’s more like 400 feet: this is the cruising altitude of the 112 Tomahawk missiles fired from British and American submarines earlier this evening, low enough to dodge Gaddafi’s radars and take out some 20 targets. Given that Obama and Cameron have both ruled out ground forces this will be, as Kosovo was, a bombing-only campaign. And launched on the eighth anniversary of the Iraq war.
The US Navy, which was always itching to proceed with the no-fly zone, is now leading the operation; hence its briefing, on CNN, above. There is one British submarine and 11 other US warships in the region. There are Arab countries involved, but they’ve asked the Americans not to name them – they want to confirm this themselves.
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