Gaddafi is dead

Friday, Oct 21 2011

Gaddafi is dead. TV news broadcasters are still all overwhelmed by the news since last night. He truly kept his word of dying on the Libyan soil. The so-called “rebels” have finally found and killed him in his hometown of Sirte. We are rushed now by the reports that tell us how “power of the masses” could finally win over a righteous-to-murder dictator. The looser is depicted as the devil and the winner as the angel.

Hands of Gaddafi’s government were by no means “clean” from an outsider’s perspective; a one-man ruling system lasting for over four decades. Wasn’t anybody else out there? Sure it was. We are not in the medieval times anymore. Clearly there should be a problem. However, how come the Libyan nation crowned him with so much pride and lived under his rule for decades and now all of sudden feels thirsty to his blood. I don’t remember of any news about internal opposition or uprising in Libya. All about Gaddafi was related to his international affairs: aiding to the Palestinians, supporting international terrorism, the Lockerby bombing and the nuclear weapon programme. Yet to the best of my knowledge, he was clearing his records on all those cases. He seemed to be trying to be a good boy.

Who can say that the Libyan “revolution” was by any way “popular”? The uproarious Arab awakening mixed every thing up. What would be normally known as a modern foreign invasion is now called a popular revolution.

Having learned from Iraq and Afghanistan cases, NATO got the UN Security Council’s permit before invading Libya in the name of defending civilian lives and in a rather unprecedented modern way. No NATO forces were on the ground to raise opposition inside their own countries due to possible fatalities. This time they recruited the excited Libyan people as soldiers. A Persian proverb says: Hatred in heart makes fighting easy. Then they provided them with logistics, weaponry and ammunition on the ground for 7 months and interfered themselves just in air attacks. 9500 sorties are reported to be carried out over this period. This means some 45 sorties on average per day; to how many cities? There aren’t more than a handful of cities out there. Anybody who has witnessed an air attack could have a sense on this figure. They have actually bombarded Libya continuously. Certainly they will send the bills to the Libyans later on.

I could never believe that the western powers attacked Libya for the sake of Humanity. Everybody is abusing this concept nowadays. Fortunately the Arab awakenings have been seen in quite a number of nations to let us see the double standard policies of those western powers. Just compare the case of Yemen and Bahrain to the case of Libya. Their hypocrisy is infuriating. France was to send her army to help Ben Ali suppress the uprising just before his fall! Now when I see Sarkozy expressing his pride on the Libyan victory with so much emotion, it just shows his true dishonest nature.

I support all popular uprising by all means but foreign invasion of an independent country, whether it is judged by others as the worst government of the world, or not, could never be acceptable to me. Who can say that the hands of “others” are cleaner than someone like Gaddafi?

Unfortunately I think the Libyan nation has not won against Gaddafi by herself and I am not optimistic to their future. After the fall of Tripoli an interviewee was asked for what she expected now that they are “free” and she said: “We are happy now. Our streets would be clean”. They don’t clearly know why Gaddafi should be kicked out and what do they expect from the “revolution”.

The situation seems so similar to the Iranian revolution against the Shah back in 1979. Our nation blinded their eyes to the major positive aspects of the Shah’s yet dictatorial regime. They were stimulated by some opposition haranguers and did what we are regretting now every day after three decades. We fell into a much deeper and darker well. By the way, the Shah was wise enough not to resist against the waves of the people. He was in an inevitable situation: You have to leave when your people, right or wrong, don’t want you anymore. Unfortunately Gaddafi wasn’t wise enough to do so, at least to prevent his beloved country fall into chaos and be destroyed.