Paul Holmes: We can bomb Gaddafi... What about other tyrants?

Paul Holmes in Yemen for Intrepid Journeys. Photo / Supplied

Hillary Clinton will be pleased this weekend. She got the deal she wanted. Nato will take over command and control of the action against Gaddafi. What she didn't say was when, exactly. But in going public she has surely made it happen. The last thing Barack Obama needed and was ever going to tolerate was becoming ensconced in another Middle East basket case country with treachery at every turn.

As Hillary Clinton said yesterday, the American-led action has averted a massacre in Benghazi. Gaddafi had made it clear there was going to be one. They're getting humanitarian relief into Benghazi itself. About 18 doctors under an American scheme are assisting at the hospital there. Government forces remain a threat but have been pushed back.

Trouble is, history tells us that air strikes alone can never defeat an army. An army is needed to defeat an army. That is the trouble. And once you put an army in, it is very hard to get it out. Obama knows this. Everyone knows this.

But what was the United States to do? The people of Benghazi, people all over Libya, who hate the barking tyrant Gaddafi, were crying out to the world, meaning the United States, to help, to do something, to save them from slaughter. You've only got to look at Gaddafi and you know he's mad. So the Americans answer the call, they bombard Gaddafi's air defences, they cripple his airforce, they strike his tanks, they save Benghazi and within a few days the world is sniping about another disastrous American international engagement. Thank you Uncle Sam, damn you Uncle Sam.

But the fact is, this time round the Security Council approved the action, the Russians didn't veto and the Americans had the support of the Arab League. They have pilots from Qatar involved and the UAE is sending aircraft. Nice and tidy.

Mind you, if they're bombing Tripoli, shouldn't they also be bombing the despots in Amman - Queen Noor or no Queen Noor - Damascus with its weak-faced Baby Bashir Assad and Sana'a in Yemen and that bloke there who's taken that beautiful country nowhere for over 30 years.

I went to Yemen once, on an Intrepid Journey. Intrepid it certainly was. What I remember most about the country is the scourge of the plastic bags. They buy their daily qat, their mild narcotic, in little plastic bags and throw the bags where they stand. There are plastic bags on the streets, along the highways, stuck in fences and in the bushes and in the trees, everywhere.

We had to be very careful. The Intrepid Journey crew and I were all on tourist visas. We told the censorship people when they saw the cameras that we were just going to take pretty pictures of Yemen. Fair enough, said the security people. Show us your footage when you leave. So all round Yemen, we made what we called the 'B' roll in which I stood in front of mosques and old buildings, extolling the wonders of their construction and history.

That's what Melanie Rakena, our producer, showed the bloke at the end. Melanie's got a lot of nerve. He was quite happy.

The moment the aircraft lifted off from Sana'a, waves of relief washed over us. Seriously. The thought of doing 10 years in a Yemeni jail didn't do it for me, somehow. One would most certainly have been been violated, one assumed. Lovely people, though, we found. And now they're fed up with the regime and all power to them.

At the farm, our kunekune pig, Barney Button, is proving a lot of fun.

Barney is very clean, except when he rolls in mud. Out the front of the house is a plastic rowboat, which is his bath. Several times a day he plonks himself in his bath.

When we got him a few months ago, he was quite small. He used to come into my library as I worked and with a snorting, squeaky sigh lie on the floor and doze off. Now he can't come in because turning him round is like turning the Queen Mary 2.

Anyway, Barney lives to eat. Barney eats anything.

He eats the fruit that falls off the trees near his pen.

Barney has his own Facebook page. He has 39 friends, some of them pigs, some of them people.

He is in a relationship, apparently, with Molly, a Greenhithe pig. If Barney gets any bigger, Molly may cease to be interested.

I should talk about weight. Someone who saw me on Q+A last weekend told me that I looked very much like a man who's given up smoking. Meaning, of course, the buttons on my suit looked as if they were going to burst.