"We know it is our fight to win or lose, but there is also much at stake for the international community. If the Libyan revolution stalls or is defeated, a vindictive or resurgent Colonel Qaddafi and his regime will present the world with a greater danger than even Osama bin Laden. The faster the regime comes to an end, the better it will be for Libya and the safer it will be for the world." El Warfally
------------------------
Bonaparte insisted that "men are nothing, the man is everything." The current unrest has not had a voice. In this Libyan, the "Arab Spring" has found a voice. Let us heed that voice.
Gates carps that weapons expended, fuel, etc. have cost 750 million dollars so far? The rebels in Libya are fighting for a set of goals that are at least comprehensible from a Western point of view. What are getting for our 2 billion a WEEK in Afghanistan as well as the money we are pouring into Pakistan?
I will answer my own questions.
In Afghanistan we have bought entre into a proxy war between India and Pakistan. As our contribution to that conflict we are attempting to build a new and different Afghanistan.
In Pakistan we have made a down-payment in a process that if continued to a logical conclusion leads to ever bigger and bigger "investments" in "building" a new Pakistan as well, one that would be unfriendly to Muslim zealots. There will, of course, be no such Pakistan, but the COINistas and the neocon zealots who still have remarkable influence in the US government fervently believe that this would happen if we just persisted for another decade or so.
I have preached before that consistency is not a virtue in foreign plicy. A country's interests must set agendas and priorities. Having said that, I think the time has come to consider whether the behavior of the Arab autocrats and the Pakistani deceivers does not demand a re-examination of American interests in that part of the world.
In that light Al-Warfally's statement seems to summon us to a commitent to modernism and popular government in the Middle East and South Asia. We should think that through carefully. pl
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/opinion/13elwarfally.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
