Libya bombing

The path which America and Britain and France have chosen to follow in Libya is not going to be an easy one. There will be what the military call 'collateral damage'. The regime in Tripoli knows the West's weak spots. Stand by for many more harrowing television pictures of innocent civilians killed and wounded by an air assault whose stated aim is to protect them. And the net result of that air assault -- which will by the way add vast sums to our countries' debts -- could simply be a protracted civil war. Which means of course more civilian suffering. Inevitably, international support for the action, in particular in the Arab world, will fade as those difficulties mount. But there is one thing which will carry our governments through those difficulties -- that, on this issue at least, they believe they are doing the right thing. Gaddafi is a dictator who has clung to power for more than forty years because he is prepared to use force -- that's the only language he understands. And so the only way he was ever going to be stopped was by the use of force. Had he regained control of Benghazi, the revenge he would have taken on those who opposed him would have been terrible. And our governments were determined to stop him for another reason. Dictators everywhere will now have to recognise that the world will no longer allow them to slaughter their own people or to invade another country. Remember in the past, when bad people got hold of a country we tipped them out again. Whether it was Margaret Thatcher liberating the Falkland Islands from Argentine occupation in 1982, or the first President Bush and our Prime Minister John Major clearing Kuwait of Iraqi troops in 1991, the underlying principle was the same -- they had to be stopped. The lesson of all that blood spilt in the South Atlantic and the Persian Gulf was that the bad guys could not and would not get away with it. What our governments are attempting in Libya may be difficult and could turn unpopular. It is unlikely to end in total success and may even end in failure. But many people in both our countries think it is the right thing to do. This is Peter Allen for CBS News in London.