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COMMENTARY
October 22, 2011
The horror
One marvels, in retrospect, at the order the U.S. military brought to Iraq, wherein Saddam Hussein was brought to his trial alive and intact. For, while one may not care very much whether murderous tyrants receive all the gracious attentions of correct legal procedure, it is nevertheless impressive when the task is attempted, and even more when it succeeds.I think the first thing to notice about the end of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, is that America has changed. Vice-President Joe Biden was quickly boasting that Gadhafi had been brought to a conclusion for just $2 billion (an unlikely estimate), and without the loss of a single American life. By extension, he mocked the Bush administration for the trouble and expense of bringing down Saddam. The affair in Libya, we are told by liberal experts, offers a new model for "regime change," and in his Rose Garden remarks, President Barack Obama was quick to warn (without naming) Syria's Bashar al-Assad that he could be next. The media have been generally gloating with him, at what they interpret as a foreign-policy success. But what is the message of Gadhafi's demise to other monstrous tyrants? If we think for a moment, we will realize that it is unambiguous: "Do not go gentle into that good night." The important thing, for them, is now not to relinquish power; and the faster and more decisively they apply brutal measures against their own domestic opponents, the better their chances of avoiding Gadhafi's fate. Of course their opponents, in turn, must be the more encouraged to persist in opposition, in the hope that NATO will arrive; so the lesson is a wash. We have a formula for more violence from all sides. In Libya itself, we will see what we will see. The reports I read suggest we may soon be nostalgic for the days when Gadhafi was alive, to unite the various opposing factions. Different militias, that despise one another, are in possession of different parts of Tripoli; old regime loyalists are still not entirely extinguished even in that city; and the rest of the country is far from peace. Contempt is also being expressed for the transitional government, by its various fickle allies. We have been following wild action along the coast. The city of Sirte itself, Gadhafi's birthplace and final resort, was the last coastal city to fall; but Libya also has an interior. In addition to Arabs, the country has Berbers and Africans; its ethnicities were sewn together into one bag through the heritage of Ottoman, Italian, and British imperialism. As we've seen from spot reports, the fate of black Africans, loyal to Gadhafi's regime because it offered them protection, is an unhappy one: Dismembered corpses are turning up everywhere. Between Berbers and Arabs was no more love than between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq; or between Sunni and Shia Arabs; or Muslims and Assyrian Christians. The difference is that, in Iraq, a very substantial U.S. and allied military presence was disposed to keep the peace, and restore, or rather create, some kind of order. There were plenty of breaches, including savage terrorist acts by the vanguards of one group against another; the Bush administration was held responsible for each lapse of security. No one is responsible in Libya, now, and such international assistance as the transitional government may require, to create security and make life less cheap, will come after the fact of chaos. Against this background, the ghouls are celebrating. We do not yet know, with assurance, the precise circumstances of Gadhafi's end, though we have the gist. He tried to escape from a falling Sirte by armed convoy, presumably with members of his inner circle, and the convoy was hit by NATO jets. The charred remains of who knows which onceprominent members of his "court" remain to be identified, now as patches of DNA smeared on twisted metal. Thanks to the air strike, which NATO officials insist was called in ignorance of Gadhafi's presence in the convoy (for they have a "policy" against targeting individuals), the militias caught up with him. One moment he is shown still alive, if badly injured; another, looking vacant, with a bullet in his head. We may safely doubt there was an intervening moment of due process. But then, there was no due process for the passengers on Pan Am Flight 103. But while I am moralizing, let us pray for all those other corpses in Gadhafi's entourage. Each had the Nuremberg argument of "only following orders," and while the materials for an indictment of every one might eventually be found, each was also another human story. Many chose to serve this unspeakable dictator; but in a real sense, many were also herded. The cause for which they died was ignominious. But the manner of their death tells us much about the new Libya that survives them. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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