This cartoon by Schrank from The Independent on Sunday relates to the ongoing conflict in Libya. On the left we can see a defiant Colonel Gadaffi, who is described as 'pitiless'. In the middle, a man and his young son cower from gunfire behind a wall. They are 'helpless'. Finally, on the right, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama scratch their heads or stroke their chins, wondering what they can do to stop the slaughter of innocent civilians. They are 'clueless'.
COMMENT
Could that US drone be heading for Gadaffi? Is the cartoonist trying to tell us something?
VOCABULARY
1. Someone or something that is pitiless shows no pity or kindness. • The Arab League, nettled by Muammar Gaddafi's pitiless rampage against his own people, has endorsed the flight exclusion zone.
2. If you are helpless, you do not have the strength or power to do anything useful or to control or protect yourself. • The United States originally declared it was intervening in Libya to prevent a likely imminent massacre in Benghazi, a city of 700,000 seemingly helpless against assault by the forces of Moammar Gadhafi.
3. If you describe someone as clueless, you are showing your disapproval of the fact that they do not know anything about a particular subject or that they are incapable of doing a particular thing properly. • There is a whiff of panic about Cameron and Hague's strategy on Libya. To say it has been clueless is almost to be too kind.
GRAMMAR
The suffix -less is added to nouns in order to form adjectives that indicate that someone or something does not have the thing that the noun refers to. Examples include topless, brainless, and jobless.
