From The Shores of Tripoli

From The Shores of Tripoli
©2011 Ross Williams

Our third concurrent war is winding down now that Libya’s rebels have reached the capitol city. Khadafy’s son, ceremonial leader of Libya’s military, has apparently been captured – “arrested”, the news calls it; since when is war a law enforcement operation? This is the same affliction suffered by the ACLU and our brainless liberals which demand that the gentlemen caught shooting at our soldiers in a war zone need to be Mirandized and charged with disorderly conduct.

There’s no word yet, though, on the whereabouts of Khadafy himself. He should have taken Hugo Chavez up on the offer of asylum. He’d need to be smuggled out of Libya in a roll of Berber carpet at this point.

In the last few weeks of this one-week war, now in its fourth month, Khadafy had been getting rather desperate, even at one point making overtures to one of more groups of the pan-islamist yahoory that Libya was among the first state sponsors of before Reagan bombed his house and Dubya invaded Iraq. These are among the “freedom fighter” rebel groups currently shooting up Tripoli to depose him; they couldn’t be swayed to switch sides.

The impulse to look upon this turn of events as a great thing for humanity, let alone Mideast peace and stability, is great, to be sure. It’s also premature at the least, and likely misplaced altogether. It depends entirely who comes out on top in the power struggle to come. There is not one single, unified group of rebels named Libyan Rebels overthrowing Khadafy’s 40+ year reign. There’s multiple groups, possibly a dozen or more, of which it can reasonably be said that the only thing they agree on is that Khadafy has to go.

Several of these groups are going to be those whom we, in the insular and pious West, would call “terrorists”. But that doesn’t seem to matter much to that group of superficial foreign policy expert which has one class of PoliSci to their credit; Khadafy was a dictator and so he needed to go. Never mind that for the past decade he was benign to the interests of the West and the US. Never mind that for the decade prior to that he was effectively emasculated in his outrage toward the West. The superficial foreign policy wonk needs to believe that the true purpose of US foreign policy is to create a better life for the citizens of the world.

Sadly, Barama and most of his administration buys this sloppy line of thought, particularly when the dictator is either on our side or is impotent. Barama couldn’t wait to take it to Mubarak when Egyptians revolted and toppled him. As in Libya, several groups of those topplers are what we, in the insular and pious West, would call “terrorists”. But because Mubarak was a friend to the US while being a pseudo-elected dictator, it is far better in the mind of our president that he be replaced by a terrorist-enabling government than be left in place to continue being a dictator friendly with the United States.

Contrast that with our official response to the months’ long revolt in Syria. Assad junior is a dictator, but he is among the few notorious state sponsors of “terrorism”. We spent – by which I mean Barama spent – months ignoring the revolution in Syria.

In Syria, the only direction for the nation to go would be in a friendlier to the US direction, less strident about Israel, and stop financing “terrorists” and puppet-mastering Lebanon. While a benign, let alone friendly, Syria would be a longshot, it would be in our best interest to end the Assad government. So when the Syrian people revolt, Barry Hussein – naturally – remains silent.

In Libya we have a dictator whose best tyranny is behind him, and he’s been downright pleasant and cordial – all things considered, and by comparison – for over twenty years. If Khadafy’s government ends it’s even-odds that it would be replaced by a government that would revert Libya to being another state sponsor of “terrorism”. So when the Libyan people revolt, we – also naturally – join in and help the rebels with terrorist ties.

In Egypt we’ve had a government that has been friendly with the US and Israel since Carter’s days ... and it was even Jimmuh’s doing. Yes, Carter. Yes, that Carter. Carter! I know: go figure. The only direction a new Egyptian government could go is against us. But because Egypt only has a democratic veneer and was friendly with the US, the fact that its president was a dictator means that the United States – alas, also naturally – should go out of its way to assist Muslim Brotherhood in its overthrow by egging on the Egyptian people. Muslim Brotherhood, let’s remember, is not, not, not affiliated with “terrorists”; just ignore the RPGs behind the curtain.

It would be hard to imagine a Mideast policy more contrary to US interests than the one being implemented by our National Savior. Friends are hung out to dry, irrelevant nobodies are attacked, anti-American rabble-rousers are ignored ...

Conversely, it would be far too easy to wonder aloud which side Barama is on, here. But that question would be presumptuous and rude; it should go without saying that Barama is on our side and doing what he believes best for the US and its interests.

But that leaves the far scarier question: what side does he think the United States is on?