Jubilation in Libya - DOL

As anyone with access to a radio or television now knows, Sirte has fallen and Qathafi is dead. Al Jazeera is showing the film of the cheering rebel forces around his lifeless body. Saif is likely still out there, but his father's death should take the wind out of the sails of any continued serious resistance by Qathafi holdouts. The many rebel groups that paid dearly for this victory will rightly want a say in forming the new Libya. This will be difficult work.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/10/20111020111520869621.html

TTG

 

 

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

So it looks like we can count on regime change in Libya and also Tunisia! Any arguments for regime change, not just leadership change, out of the ARAB SPRING elsewhere?

[jr786]

إِذَا جَاء نَصْرُ اللَّهِ وَالْفَتْحُ

They have victory, may G-d guide them to a just peace.

And thank you to this Administration and the people from this country who made sacrifices yet again for their help.

[fiorangela]

you see this as a victory, jr786?

for whom?

Qaddafi was silenced because he knew too much, he could point to too many dirty hands.

When the USofA celebrates killing the leader of a foreign country, I hang my head in shame that we have devolved to Lord of the Flies.
Whatever happened to rule of law?
For all its flaws, Nuremberg meted out justice after the war in Europe, or don't we believe in those inconveniences any more?

[Medicine Man]

When a leader squanders his legitimacy as cruelly as Ghaddafi did, I do not mourn his passing when he is removed by his own people.

[Thomas]

fiorangela,

"you see this as a victory, jr786?

for whom?"

The Libyan people who were going to be massacared if they didn't fight for their liberty. Sic Semper Tyrannis.

"Qaddafi was silenced because he knew too much, he could point to too many dirty hands."

No, Qathafi was killed because he was a vicious dictator.

Keep you chin up, you still have Marja Ali Khamenei and Bashir Assad to cheer for.

[James ben Goy]

It saddens me that our western civilization has degenerated to the level that obtained in crueler, more desperate times, when violence was the first tool taken out of the box to resolve disputes. While cruel & a tyrant, Ghaddafi was a secular ruler, not an religious nut & provided many services, water, for example, our allies in the region, aside from Israel, have yet to even contemplate. And, he was removed by NATO, not by his own people. Sans NATO, they'd still be surrounded in Benghazi. This regime change epitomizes the perversion and hypocrisy in western governments which have tolerated and encouraged the gulf state arab robber monarchs because they permit US military assets on their territory & participate in the attacks on their neighbors. In other words, they are the west's b*tches. The others are our targets. Look for more of the same.

[bth]

Pan Am and Frankfurt are two good reasons Americans should be glad he's gone. A third is that Libyans deserve better and they've earned the opportunity.

[Fiorangela]

Medicine Man, how much of your characterization of Ghaddafi comes from Bernard Henri-Levi (a fellow traveler of Rubin & Abrams, btw) and how much is evidence-based?

http://mideastreality.blogspot.com/2011/07/france-wants-gaddafi-out-of-libya-but.html offered an early, critical point of view, but Henri-Levi &cie overtook events.

And recently Bruce Bueno Mosquita and Alastair Smith, co-authors of The Dictator's Handbook, said that Qaddafi's mistake was that he was too good to his people. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/301590-1
(at 38 min)--

"Gearan: 38 minutes. We talked about Egyptians gradually becoming willing to take risks and undertake protests. . .How does that contrast with Libya?

Smith: Libya’s a case where Muamar Qaddafi violated one of the five rules that Bruce went through earlier; he made a classic mistake: he was too nice to the people. We live in the United States so we find that hard to believe; Obama has to keep a lot of us happy, Qaddafi did not have that problem; compared to his neighbors, Q was much nicer. Libyans got substantially more education than neighbors in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia. He didn’t need to educate the people, he made a significant error, because most of the oil is extracted by foreign workers; he could just send them home and get some more; he didn’t need to educate the people. Big mistake to make. In 2005 he had serious press restrictions; by 2010, he had fewer press restrictions than anyone else in the area, far freer than Saudi Arabia. He’d allowed people to talk. It was a big problem. Then we get a little spark, and people say, Well, the regime’s not as strong as we thought, maybe things are going wrong, so people took to the streets. He’d given people the opportunity to organize; he hadn’t been smashing enough heads, and people took this as a sign of weakness. It turned out I don’t think he was that weak but NATO military stopped him actually being able to employ the people who were willing to break heads. Look at him – there’s phenomenal loyalty, there are still people backing him even tho he’s stuck in remote towns now. But he still has a bunch of fanatic supporters who are staying loyal to the very end.”

Henri-Levi especially and France and NATO have blood on their hands.

[fiorangela]

Thomas & bth, please see my response to MedicineMan when it's posted. I went to the trouble of preparing a script of the linked conversation.

bth, 1. Qaddafi & Libya were punished for those crimes: Q's home was attacked with US missiles & Q's stepdaughter killed. And people were tried & imprisoned, and Libya paid reparations,for Lockerbie. How many more pounds of flesh do you require?

By your logic, Netanyahu should be assassinated for the killing of 34 US sailors, and Obama should be assassinated for killing 240-some Iranian civilians over the Persian Gulf.

That pesky civilization & Golden Rule thing keeps biting us in the arse.

[Fotoshop]

you should be thanking your lucky stars Khamenei is as restrained and principled as he is and that the Iranian people are capable of forebearing all the crap that US & US's Israeli puppetmasters are tossing at Iran.

Phil Weiss finds Stuart Levey almost as loathesome as I do; he compares Jewish funders of US politicians to the scandal that brought down Liam Fox; indicates that Levey's "shakedown of Iran" is part of the bipartisan payback that comes from those campaign donations, and suggests that, ala Liam Fox, cracks are opening in the whole corrupt system: http://mondoweiss.net/2011/10/pro-israel-donors-are-at-the-heart-of-defence-ministry-scandal-in-britain.html

[mo]

You gotta love how the MSM are totally ignoring the obvious which was that he was executed on the spot.

Now the question for Libya is how much backing the Salafists are going to get in the post-Gaddafi shake up from the Saudi Counter-revolutionary committee.

If they manage to turn Egypt, Libya and Syria into Wahabi statelets the fan isn't going to be able to handle the amount of defecatory solids that is going to hit it. Obama and the US will have to be real careful how loose they allow the Saudis to be and where they draw the line (if anywhere).

[Medicine Man]

fiorangela:

None of my appraisal of Ghaddafi is coming from the usual suspects. I was paying attention during the early stages of the Arab Spring and I could observe for myself that Ghaddafi's response to the protests in his country was, to that date (and possibly since), the most bloody and extreme of any in the Middle East. Artillery and aircraft on crowds of people? Yes, indeed, Ghaddafi was a victim of his own light touch.

I think that's a nice story you've settled on but I don't buy it. People don't rise up against their government as a form of light entertainment, especially not when shown those kinds of consequences for doing so. Ghaddafi also was not prevented from "letting loose his head-crackers" on the rebels either. Again, I could observe myself that NATO did not get involved for more than a month, during which time the rebels got driven eastwards across the country, besieged in Benghazi, and pummeled with rocket artillery. Clearly, Ghaddafi had a hand tied behind his back. Stories of the street fighting in Mistrata are just as hair-raising.

Even if your preferred narrative did fit the observable chain of events in Libya, which it doesn't, I would still not be sympathetic to Ghaddafi if the best defense you can muster for him is he wasn't quite a brutal enough dictator to prevent his people from trying to remove him.

[Jake]

Yes, MQ was no saint and no loss to the world. One day, the truth will rear its ugly head about this entire affair. In my opinion none of this was justified.

Now we have 100 advisers in Central Africa to take out the LRA. What's next? When will it end?

We are not the worlds peacekeeper....

[Fiorangela]

Medicine Man, what is your assessment of Bernard Henri-Levi's contribution to the overthrow of Ghaddafi?

Have you tracked the activities of "Libya's Chalabi," Soliman Bouchuiguir?

YOU say, "clearly . . ." Ghaddafi did this, that, the other thing. The legal system was designed to test those assertions. Why was the system short-circuited? Is ignoring the judicial system and marching straight to execution an emerging pattern that makes you feel both proud and safe?

This is not just about Ghaddafi, it is about a method, a process, a value system that was lynched.

[Roy G.]

While I have no love lost for Ghadaffi, and am happy that the Libyans are free from his rule, it's important to remember that many western corporations, and politicians, prominently Tony Blair and John McCain, were with him before they were against him. In fact, Blair's dealings with Ghadaffi remain under intense scrutiny in the UK:

In office, Mr Blair led British efforts to end Libya’s pariah status in diplomatic circles, visiting Tripoli in 2004 to congratulate Gaddafi for giving up attempts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. After leaving office in 2007, Mr Blair had at least six meetings with the dictator.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8839848/Col-Gaddafi-killed-Lost-secrets-of-Tony-Blairs-links.html

Remember, we have always been at war with Oceana!

[Fiorangela]

In a speech before the Commonwealth Club of California in July 2011, Ellen Tauscher, Obama's undersecretary of state for nuclear disarmament, boasted of the disarming of Libya.

http://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2011-07-28/ellen-tauscher-us-under-secretary-arms-control-and-international-security

Does anybody think Iran is not paying close attention to what happens to a state that does not have, at very least, "nuclear ambiguity?"

When is the last time a N Korean was assassinated, or when have Israel's sails been effectively trimmed?

[graywolf]

No, Khamenei and the rest of those 12th century lunatics should be thanking THEIR lucky stars that
only because of gutless politicians the USA hasn't turned their so-called "nation" into a nuclear parking lot.

[ThomasOfNY]

fiorangela

All the evidence that I personally need for Qaddafi being a cruel man are the citizens of his country who were cut in half by his army's auto-cannons and the protestors who were shot dead by his "soldiers."

Perhaps we shouldn't have helped to silence the main guns of his tanks heading to Benghazi?

Honestly a simple shooting was too good for the man considering the brutality that he had caused and the blood that he had shed, especially after it became painfully apparent that his cause was lost. Celebrating the passing of such a sociopathic individual is only natural, especially if it means that those who suffered under him have an opportunity to obtain some sort of representative government.

[bth]

Are you saying that the Libyan people do not have a right to determine their own government, to overthrow a dictator and seek a better way of life for themselves and that we cannot help them accomplish this?

[George Carty]

And the Brits will be glad he's gone because of Yvonne Fletcher and all the people killed by IRA bombs made with Libyan Semtex. Ditto the French, because of UTA Flight 772.

This wasn't just about democratic idealism, but also about good old fashioned vengeance...

[Anna-Marina]

Why don't you look on the event from different angles? The Americans (99% of the Americans to be precise) has suffered more than enough from the slogan-laced policies. Before Quadaffi there were Saddam and Taliban and the slogans to bring democracy to the ME. You would be surprised how many people with the REAL experience in Iraq will not agree with your sentiment that the US-UK’s allegedly noble (yet blatantly illegal) war in Iraq has brought peace and happiness to the Iraqis. Quadaffi was a dictator... but he is not the only one and there is such thing as the international law, the investigation and just punishment for criminals.
It is the disregard to the international law by the UK and US that upsets many. The US and UK government have been using the mob rule too much (btw, have you seen Abu Ghraib pictures? or have your heard that for the higher echelon of the US government the US constitution was “just a piece of paper?”) The situation in Libya is directly related to what kind of society we live in. The next immediate step would be to “pacify” local dissenters which do not agree with the official “party line.”

[Anna-Marina]

Libyan people do have this right, not the NATO:
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/World_News_3/article_7886.shtml

[turcopolier]

Anna-Marina

Are you addressing me with all that lecturing about the ME and Iraq? If you are I will throw you off this blog for stupidity. Yet another holier than thou european. pl

[turcopolier]

greywolf

You are revealed as a racist, murderous butcher. pl

[turcopolier]

bth

Once again, make it clear to whom you speak. pl