Ten Agreeing, Five Abstaining

Credit is due Britain and France for their unwavering determination to halt Moammar Gadhafi's determination to brutally crush the opposition to his continued rule in Libya. Where other Arab and Muslim regimes have recognized the merit in their populations' clamour for liberty and human rights, and have begun to make accommodation to meet some of those demands as just, Libya's bloody-minded dictator is determined to wipe out his opposition.

And where, just a week earlier, that scenario was not really on the international radar with the determined rebels' advances into former Gadhafi strongholds, government forces with their vastly superior military war machines have turned the tide of rebellion. And Gadhafi boasts that another 48 hours will see the rebellion fully stifled, with those among the rebels who insist on holding their own to pay fully for their folly in opposing him.

While the world waited with bated breath for the new American administration to step firmly into the breach and commit to aiding the rebels not with brave words but with active commitment, nothing of the kind occurred. But Britain and France doggedly lobbied the United Nations, NATO and the European Union for consensus on a unified front to dislodge one of the world's most infamous tyrants from imposing any further carnage on his own people.

The Arab League finally succumbed and agreed, along with the Gulf States, that Gadhafi must be halted in his advance to obliterate any vestige of home-grown opposition. A no-fly zone would suit them just fine, they said, cautioning that they would never support a foreign army marching into Libya. A no-fly zone would, of necessity, require bombing raids against Libyan airfields and warplanes. And now, the Security Council, having finally debated the issue as Libyan government troops are marching toward Bengazhi, the die is cast.

Ten votes for a no-fly zone to be imposed over rebel-held areas of the country, with five abstentions. Paradoxically, Lebanon, with its place on the temporary Council, helped Britain and France circulate the resolution. Lebanon, high-jacked by its very own Islamist-jihad militia serving Iran and Syria as their proxies within that country, whose political wing has trumped despite having murdered a former prime minister of the country, has paradoxically committed to freeing Libya in essence, from a brutal tyrant.

Ibrahim Dabbashi, Libya's former deputy ambassador to the UN, now a passionately vocal voice in the effort to unseat Moammar Gadhafi, who commented that the "international community has to act in the next ten hours", must feel some measure of relief and satisfaction that finally his appeals have been answered.

All to the good, if words can be matched with action in good enough time to halt the troops advancing toward Benghazi before a slaughter ensues.