I've always been bewildered on where exactly this stylish obsession of The Soviet Union on the Internet comes from. I do not see the same thing being done for, say, Nazi Germany.
He's right that it is an act of war, but it's not as if Libya is a bastion of peace and love at the moment. Objectively, neutrality is a policy that implicitly supports the party with the bigger arsenal, in this case that would be the Libyan government. But then again this wouldn't be the first time that the world has been caught twiddling its thumbs while an oppressive government is in the process of brutalizing its own people. -Sun_Tzu-
I wouldn't be surprised, even in spite of all the hard talk world governments are giving at the moment, that they will go back to supporting Gaddafi if he prevails, after a few years of isolation where nothing is accomplished and no justice of any sort is done.
Not that easy. Sometimes assassination works, but most of the time it does not. Even if you try to take down leaders one by one instead of ousting the entire regime and inner circle in question, you would most likely have successors within that same circle and regime, and thus no effective regime change. That is to say even if you manage to take out the main strongmen.
Plus, it's hard enough to infiltrate foreign, opaque organizations with moles and/ or sleeper agents, let alone get close enough to such leaders in order to kill them. Not to mention the political contention you would get from such a doctrine. For instance, the U.S. doesn't even seem to want to or is able to effectively go after top Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders hiding in no man's land Pakistan because of this. Airstikes are no substitute for ground assault. Ever.
In the low intensity conflicts or insurrections that we are witnessing today, bombs (both conventional and improvised) have generally killed more than gunfire. This is especially true given the new prevalence of suicide attacks (both on foot and in vehicles). There are few ways that are better in attacking well guarded and fortified targets as well as large crowds with often horrific effectiveness than with these methods. Especially if the attacking parties have both numerical and technological inferiority. In Iraq and Afghanistan for instance, insurgents using roadside bombs and suicide attacks have inflicted the greatest amount of casualties on both foreign and domestic troops (around 40% of all non-insurgent combantant casualties in Iraq and 60% in Afghanistan have been from roadside bombs and other IEDs).
However, small arms fire has generally killed the most amount of soldiers and civilians in past conflicts. It appears that most of the current major wars in the world are unique in the sense that the ones involving state and non-state actors has morphed into something that more closely represents a combination of warfare, terrorism, and criminal activities. In contrast, wars in the past were less asymmetrical and more conventional in the way they were fought. There's also the difficulty of separating violent crime and murders that occur independently in regards to war, and deaths resulting directly from armed conflict.
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