Apparently, something is going on there. You’d never know it from watching MSNBC’s uninterrupted Lockup programming. Some are reporting that Gaddafi is dead. The Associated Press is tweeting that one of Gaddafi’s sons has been arrested. A Gaddafi spokesman just had a press conference and complained that everything was nice and peaceful in Tripoli until NATO ruined things, and now the city is littered with bodies. I’ve seen a bunch of rumors but it does seem like we’ve reached the endgame of Gaddafi’s rule. If so, we’re entering the most dangerous time, as we saw with the fall of Saddam.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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CNN headline news is discussing the Kardashian wedding.
I just looked and their main headline is some isolated crime in a small town. This despite the news just coming in of the arrest of Gadafi’s sone and the surrender of Gadafi’s security forces, which is put off to the left, in a smaller panel.
Bizarre.
Why are they so big? That’s one of the great mysteries of the day.
How you fuckers like Rupert Murdoch now, huh, huh? Sky News: the only english speaking organization there to cover the fall of Tripoli. You couldn’t make that up.
You’re being far too dour, Booman. The NTC, for all its flaws, is a hell of a lot better option than Ahmed Chalabi. The Libyan people have overcome Western slights and proclamations of certain doom at every turn, and I have more faith in them than I do any other Arab nation right now. They’ll be alright.
To be fair, Mordoch only owns 30% of Sky (he was pushing to own 100%) and one of his complaints at the hacking tribunal was that the people at Sky never listened to anything he said. 🙂
WHAT?
Al Jazeera English and CNN AND NBC are all there right now. Just MSNBC is thinking “Lockup” and “Caught on Camera” might get better ratings, or they can’t find an anchor to come into the studio to run the coverage. Big mistake MSNBC!
And BBC America could switch to BBC World, as they MUST have people there. But American News networks go to sleep for the weekends, it seems. Pathetic.
I wish I could watch Sky News’ coverage as well. But I won’t switch to Fox News (with their added right-wing commentary) in order to watch it. I just won’t.
I’m watching British Sky, and frankly their commentary is excellent. Very thoughtful, talking about the pitfalls that lie ahead for the regime. Very surprising.
I should get a UK IP address for PPTP so I can watch British Sky, all of the BBC channels and of course Channel 4. So much better stuff sometimes than we get in the U.S. We just get Corporate propaganda most of the time (millionaires telling me how it affects them instead of me.) Gimme some socialism on my TV. (by comparison)
Once again, Al Jazeera is all over it.
They’ve been substantially behind skynews all day. And twitter.
Why is it important for us to know who the employer of the first white guy to say something about this?
Lockup is one of the biggest travesties imaginable. Sorry for the hyperbole, but it is just a huge waste of time. I understand if news is slow, but they should be prepared when there is a big news story to cover.
FWIW –
“We saw discarded soldiers uniforms all along the road; they don’t want to fight anymore” – Alex Crawford #Tripoli #libya
1 hour ago via Twitter for Android
Feb 17 voices
@feb17voices Feb 17 voices
AJA breaking: leader of the Katiba in charge of protecting #Tripoli instructed his soliders to lay down arms and open Tripoli gates. #Libya.
49 minutes ago via web
@AJELive AJELive
Al Jazeera has learnt that Gaddafi’s eldest son Mohammed has surrendered – aje.me/jMZYMN #Libya #Tripoli #Gaddafi
9 minutes ago via web
Gaddafi now speaking. Shades of Baghdad Bob.
Will you EVER admit to being wrong about Obama’s decision to give Libyans a chance at making a better country for themselves?
Well said, sheriff.
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Cross-posted from my diary – Gaddafi – The End, Tripoli Fallen to Rebels
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I think what was wrong was how he did the end-around on Congress. I don’t have a problem with helping Libyans get rid of a dictator. But we criticized the Imperial Presidency when Bush was President and shouldn’t give Obama a pass.
Yeah, I thought his legal justification was pretty much ‘full of shit’ at the time as well
I hope you were angry when Clinton went into Kosovo. If so, congrats. Consistency is good.
Heh. Good point. I was against the Kosovo thing but for different reasons, so yeah your snark strikes home 🙂
Against Clinton, Bush, and Obama. Bipartisanship is good.
I was, actually. I don’t like it when Democrats buy into the American Empire or Imperial Presidency narratives any more than I like it when Republicans do.
That said, let’s not forget that this NATO action was primarily led by Europe, not Obama or the US. And they have taken a lot of shit the past few months for being ineffective. Some of it was well-deserved, but without them no way this day is happening.
But if this turned into a disaster then Obama would get the full blame. At least in this country. He still might if it does.
Not all use of USA military is “American Empire”
Did I say it was? Must have missed that.
Obama in Libya without Congressional approval was a clear example of the latter, as has been most every overseas use of US military force since at least Vietnam. As for the former, depends how you define “Empire.” By one measure, any US use of military force in the Eastern Hemisphere would not be possible were the US not maintaining a global empire. And every use of the US military these days reinforces both American militarism and the enormous financial scam that is the “defense” industry.
If you’re going by whether the military is being used to defend or expand its empire, Kosovo and Libya generally don’t qualify, but Clinton’s intervention in Haiti clearly did. And all that begs the question of whether military force on behalf of empire, in any given case, is a good or bad thing.
apologize if I misread. Obama is transitioning usa foreign policy to a nonhegemonic but central role in global foreign affairs and he’s doing good. it’s the only way forward for everyone. as far as congressional authorization goes, problematic, but did I mention the Get-Obama-Party? isolationism is just not an option. For example, both Pakistan and India have the bomb, and both entertain the idea of using it on each other – as the potential for such an outcome is everyone’s business and can’t be boiled down to empire vs. minding out own business
I am glad that they asked us to get involved. He has LONG deserved this ass-kicking. I just can’t believe we let this prick stay in power this long after what he did to us. But, again, Reagan was a coward.
All Obama = Bush people can just fuck off.
I’m not getting into the muck with you. I don’t think Obama is like Bush. I think he could have handled the Libya situation much better.
And yet there are some people who want him to be as “strong” as Bush. Whatevs…
Sure. I will do that just as soon as I see an orderly Libya that is producing oil at pre-war levels and has no foreign troops (including UN troops) enforcing the peace.
My concern all along was that we’d turn the country into a war-scarred hellhole that can’t maintain order or function as a nation-state.
Now we get to find out if my fear will come to fruition.
I think that’s a fair benchmark. The old stability is gone, gone, gone.
However, the neighborhood is much friendlier to a peaceful transition and there are plenty of leaders of the Colonel’s tribe (heroes of the regime’s founding) that have defected and can surely help steer his most loyal (and enough of loyal military) into the new regime’s fold.
The idea that this society will dissolve is possible, but judging by the reactions of his own tribesmen (defections, street celebrations) and the lack of an outside occupying force, there is little to rally many people against the rebels. At hour one. We’ll see. Waaaay too early to ask for anyone to admit they were wrong and this quickly devolving into a shitfest.
Really? You’re expecting alot, I think.
No one can say what will happen next but it is a good idea to toss someone like gadaffi (or however you want to spell his name) out of power, regardless of what comes next. Personally, I think it would have been more appropriate to do it the day after we learned of his culpability in Pan Am 103. But Reagan was a fucking coward.
This is LONG overdue.
“We”?! It’s not our freedom to withhold no matter how messy or disorderly.
.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Gawd bless you idiot “progressives”.
Against saving 1000s of Libyans from certain massacre in the first place. And now that the dictator is gone, you start imposing your own pony-conditions on what outcomes MUST take place, in order for Obama to have been successful.
Bullshit.
Obama provided the Libyans an OPPORTUNITY. That’s all, and it has now officially been delivered. Final outcome of that OPPORTUNITY is up to the Libyan people.
And providing the OPPORTUNITY was the right thing to do, as Libyans are now thanking Obama for.
RIGHT ON, brother! My point exactly.
That’s all we can do is give these countries an “opportunity” to make it on their own. If they fuck it up, so be it. We don’t need to guarantee any outcomes.
And BTW, I am a LIBERAL, not a “Progressive” who is afraid of their own shadow.
Well it looks like NATO took Booman’s advice anyway, considering they clearly overstepped what they were legally allowed to do:
HELL NO! That would be too much like right! I’ll put aside the racial aspect of this (the hubris of white liberal bloggers, pundits and opinion writers to believe their judgement and intellect is superior to the President’s) and simply ask when did liberals stop believing in the cause of freedom? It seems that since the Iraq War liberals have adopted a blind anti-interventionist position in order to avoid the charge of hypocrisy. It was only two decades ago after the shame of Rawandaa that military intervention to impede genocide was firmly established liberal orthodoxy. Two decades later liberals are willing to turn a blind eye to the thirst for freedom in the middle east just to avoid being called hypocrites on Fox News.
I opposed our intervening in the Balkans and the Kosovo War. I opposed the first Gulf War. I opposed the invasion of Panama. I opposed the stupid little war in Grenada. I’ve opposed suggestions that we militarily intervene in Sudan. Remember when we used our forces to invade and liberate Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary Romania, etc.? Yeah, me neither.
I’m not even a pacifist. I do support a somewhat ‘exceptional’ role for the United States in putting some teeth into the United Nations. But we also have to think about our own people. You can see the result of our overextending ourselves militarily. When you exceed your ability to pay for an imperial foreign policy the first thing that gets cut is aid to the poor and assistance to the middle class. But eventually, the whole edifice collapses, including the bellicosity.
Opposing all intervention is not an admirable thing – it’s simple way to decide complex issues.
The reality is in many of these dictatorships, there is no “out” even with overwhelming support for revolution, unless an outside party handles the air support.
The world is an ugly, complicated place, and progressives need to be able to handle that complexity. There is no magic foreign policy that works in every single situation. Every country, every history is different.
And I particularly object to this comparison to the Eastern Bloc – once again, a completely different situation, a withdrawal of a superpower, domination primarily by Russian culture rather than interior forces, etc, etc. Implying that the Libyans would some how accomplish that with Gadafi’s air and land forces intact is ludicrous, and a bit disturbing – are you saying that Arabs, as opposed to Europeans, are somehow too lazy to overthrow things as efficiently as you like?
I”m not trying to be nasty here, I am just frustrated with this very un-pragmatic version of the world I see in progressive circles. The world is complex. The difference between conservatives and liberals should be that we can handle that.
Here’s where my opposition comes from (digby’s quote):
And I don’t want to speak for Booman here, but he was not comparing this to the Eastern Bloc, he was merely stating that he was opposed to those interventions as well.
Although one place I’ll disagree with him is him saying that we “can’t care for our own people” — as if American lives are worth more than any other country’s. The “we need to look out for our own people” crock is one area where I’ll disagree with progressives on these fronts.
It’s not that our lives are worth more than other people’s lives. It’s that our political leaders are primarily responsible for the lives of their constituents. When we’re slashing the hell out of social programs and can’t convince the rich to pay the bills they’ve rung up acting all humanitarian, then maybe we can’t afford to screw our own people to pay for the liberation of half the known world?
Well, it’s like Neil deGrasse Tyson said on Bill Maher. It’s not that we’re bankrupt or out of money, it’s that the money and priorities are completely out of whack.
All I’m saying is that I get pissed with the left on certain elements of hypocrisy — wanting to be more globalized and interconnected through groups like the UN, and simultaneously saying we can’t afford to pony up help and the need to erect protectionist measures on our economy.
When you are trillions of dollars in debt, the only way you’re not bankrupt is if other people are willing to loan you money. I’m tired of progressives saying that we can just mint some platinum coins and call it even. You know that we getting to he breaking point when one party won’t pay our bills and the other won’t destroy every edifice of government to make our government affordable.
And that’s the truth of the matter. This whole idea that we don’t have a debt crisis ignores how we’re actually behaving. We cannot have our empire and our entitlements and run deficits this big and finance our debt. In theory, we could do that for a little while longer, but in practice this situation is breaking our political culture.
Yes, the biggest problem is that the GOP refuses to raise revenues. But the GOP isn’t going anywhere.
If other people stopped loaning us money, the Federal Reserve could step in to do it. So long as the rest of the world is in shambles, our bonds are looking spiffy. Besides, what other country could finance China’s means of rapid economic growth through extremely high trade surpluses? None that I can think of — Japan maybe…but they wouldn’t do that for all sorts of reasons.
I agree with you in general, but I simply refuse to believe that the GOP will survive long enough in its current form to bring us to the point of no return. I don’t want us to have our Empire, but to say we can’t afford to help other countries because we’re in deep shit ourselves isn’t something I’m willing to accept. It’s grossly nationalistic. Now if you’re willing to help them in ways outside of military means, then I apologize, but that’s not how many progressives frame the issue; they use language that makes it seem that we can’t help in any way. One big way we could help would be to end our damn agricultural protectionism. Reduce the deficit and help the world (although our food prices would rise). But there it is again: trading helping the world for less protectionism.
Your attitude is quite idealistic.
Suppose I could devise a program that would create two jobs in Bangladesh for every job lost in the United States.
Would you advocate for that program?
Should we pursue it until there is no one still employed anywhere in America?
I mean, why not? It would reduce global unemployment by a massive amount.
We’re a nation. We have national interests. Get used to it.
Depends on the specifics. Does it make the world richer? Does it make America richer (it could, even if our unemployment increased)? I can’t answer a question with that much vagueness attached.
Of course I’m idealistic. In the long run, I don’t want there to be nation-states at all.
Wrong answer.
The right answer is that you would fight like hell to save those American jobs.
Our Star Trek future is a long way off and irrelevant. We need people working here. That’s what we have every right to demand from our leaders.
I don’t even know what you’re trying to say.
We played a very big role in the liberation of Eastern Europe, but we didn’t get bogged down in their internal affairs or drop bombs on them. We were patient.
We could have been patient with Iraq, too. When the time was right, we pulled the plug on Mubarak.
I don’t object to the use of force under the right conditions. But I do object the overall rate at which we resort to force.
About the only places that we don’t have troops bogged down are southwestern Africa and South America. And we’re $14 trillion in debt and no longer in the mood to pays our bills.
On our list of problems, human rights in Libya is not high. Or, it wasn’t, until we decided that it should be. We don’t have the luxury to be adding things to our to-do list right now.
If Gaddafi is gone from power tomorrow, that’s great. But don’t start celebrating. The difficult part comes next.
I agree with a bunch of these, but you wanted Saddam to keep Kuwait?
No. I didn’t want that, but then I didn’t really give a shit either.
We told him he could adjust the borders. It’s like when you give a guy a bite of your sandwich and then he eats the whole thing. Do you start a war over it? Maybe five bucks will cover it.
I mean, I’m being glib, but it’s true.
The real concern with Kuwait was the message it would send about the UN’s commitment to its own members’ security. So, it was a tough call.
What we really should have done was to be much, much clearer that their little Arab-Arab border dispute did concern us….very much. This didn’t cut it:
When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near,
How can I keep from singing?
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My diary – Gaddafi – The End, Tripoli Fallen to Rebels [Update]
Rebel advance into Tripoli meeting little resistance especially after news: Libyan rebels seize major Tripoli military base of Khamis Brigade.
I’ve been following news story all day from satellite channels France24, BBC and Al Jazeera. Amazing developments, similar to the fall of Baghdad. Streets are littered with military uniforms as Gaddafi forces flee. Many soldiers captured by rebels are African mercenaries from Chad, Tunesia, etc.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Professor Juan Cole at Informed Consent has had details and interesting analysis of the situation in Libya. Today:
http://www.juancole.com/2011/08/the-great-tripoli-uprising.html
Well, no boots on the ground, and no dead american soldiers. Obama/NATO took out Gaddafi in under 6 months and on the cheap.
You should be watching Al Jazeera English (online – press play when you get there) if you want the best coverage. Otherwise, CNN has switched to CNN Intentional for coverage and is also pretty good.
SHAME SHAME SHAME on MSNBC. They even have Richard Engle there right now, who could be doing some awesome reporting.
I don’t know what Fox News is doing because they’re, you know, Fox News.
BTW-
MSNBC (JUST NOW) went to live coverage with a not-regular on-camera producer running coverage and having “experts” on the phone.
VERY late to the party, MSNBC. Shameful!
Now they dragged Andrea Mitchell into the studio.
Never, never, never win a war on Sunday Night.
Andrea Mitchell’s a Jew. Saturday is past.
Definitely off topic but worth a small laugh…
This morning I watched the Sunday shows and Savannah Guthrie hosted MTP instead of David Gregory. What a refreshing change.
Best line of the morning:
Too awesome for a Sunday show.
AQ’s worst nightmare. Arab Spring, now Summer where the people follow the incentive of the Egptians and use smartphones grassroots ingenuity to destroy their oppressors.
AQ’s been in business 20 years and has yet to turn a government, but Arab spring is managing in less than a year to bring the despots to their knees
UBL gone, Arab spring; hopefully Obama won’t make the Cheney/Bush mistake of hanging on to yesterday’s enemy.
There’s an opportunity here to make alliances as the little doctor just lost his voice.
So, Obama helped maneuver Mubarak out of Egypt.
He had a bullet put in Bin Laden’s eye.
And now thanks DIRECTLY to Obama, Gaddafi is gone.
Oh yeah, all the combat troops are out of Iraq, with the rest on the way, and we’ve started a drawdown of troops in Afghanistan.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. This Obama doesn’t know what the hell he is doing. Can someone please primary this guy?
I was watching the Sunday shows this morning and one of them had a guy from NYT on (Jeff Zeleny, maybe? I can’t remember his name or its spelling.) But anyway, he said when he was in Iowa, there was a guy workin’ hard on the setup of flags for the event and he talked with him.
The guy said that he had voted for Obama in ’08 and probably will again depending… But he remarked that Obama has the absolute WORST PR Team he’s ever seen in his lifetime. Why? Because Obama has done so many amazing things since taking office and no one seems to know about them or care. All they care about is the Republican narrative that Obama is a failure and that he needs to be replaced because he has failed us so miserably on the economy and jobs. And the stimulus didn’t work, etc…
He’s right. Obama has done many terrific things since taking office but controlling the PR narrative is certainly not one of them. All of his PR folks should be replaced. Remember that the Bush/Rove machine controlled every ten-minute segment of the cable news cycle because they did PR like nobody else. Obama needs some help.
Maybe he should hire some Republicans to do the PR. They’re all whores so they’ll be loyal to anyone who’s paying. But they study PR as a matter of course before even thinking of becoming involved in politics.
I’ve been immersed in Twitter feeds and AJE coverage for the past couple of days.
Here is what I gather about what happened to the “stalemate”.
Remember Misrata? Misrata (pop 250,000) held out under siege from Gaddafi troops for three months while the TNC in Benghazi tried to figure out what to do.
Remember Zintan? Zintan was completely cut off and incommunicado even with Benghazi for a month or more.
What happened is the people in these towns held on until there was sufficient communications (generally from doctors at the hospital) to get some assistance.
In the case of Misrata, that assistance came with a boatload of medical supplies and food from Benghazi and the evacuation of those from Misrata who wanted to leave. In the process, enough information came about the origin of the shelling to provide NATO with targets outside of the downtown. Within the town the rebels fought Gaddafi troops from street to street, supplied after a while from Benghazi until the Gaddafi troops were pushed out to where they were open to NATO attack.
In Zintan, a similar thing happened. The first thing was a lightning strike raid that took out Gaddafi control of a border crossing to Tunisia. After securing this both aid and Al Jazeera English journalists arrived in Zintan. And then town-by-town, the rebels liberated the highlands of the Nafusa mountains, with each liberated town adding to their troop strength. Which brought Gaddafi troops out and exposed his heavy equipment to NATO air strikes.
Then slowly town by town the Nafusa rebels started taking and liberating towns in the valley towards Tripoli and toward the Tunisian border, bypassing for the moment towns that did not want to be liberated. A couple of weeks ago, they succeeded in cutting off a major inland supply route to Tripoli. Then they moved southeast capturing a major Gaddafi supply depot and its weapons and supplies. With this, over a week, they pushed towards the garrison town of Gheryan, and began to get weapons from Qatar.
Benghazi meanwhile stablized their moving front at Ajdabiyah and held it for weeks, finally beginning movement toward Ras Lanuf, which was finally taken after a long struggle. And then they stabilized the new front. As troops from Misrata began assaulting Zlitan in the west and the source of Grad rocket attacks from the east (toward Sirte). Throughout all of this, NATO’s role was to continue to degrade Gaddafi’s heavy weapons when they were in a position that they could be accurately targeted.
And NATO systematically took out the elements of regime power in Baghdad. Command and control facilities, weapons and ammunition storage, intelligence facilities.
A week ago, with Gheryan liberated, the Aintan rebels began their march on Zawiyah, a city of 200,000 that is 30 km west of Tripoli. The Misrata rebels continued their siege of Zliten. And the Benghazi rebels began a siege on the oil port of Brega. On Thursday, all three of these were mostly taken. The rebels held all of the major oil terminals and had cut off the Coastal highway, the northernmost supply route from Tunisia. Gaddafi could not longer be supplied from outside the country regardless of how much money he offered suppliers.
On Friday night, the neighborhoods of Tripoli all began protests, which brought out the heavy weapons. Then the people went back inside as NATO helicopters took out Gaddafi’s security checkpoints and heavy weapons in the streets. On Saturday, Tripoli rebels began a city wide insurgency taking and hold neighborhoods, sometimes by parking their cars in the streets to prevent Gaddafi’s patrols from getting into the neighborhoods easily. By Saturday evening, 70% or so of the neighborhoods were in Tripoli rebel hands. And major neighborhood armories had been looted to supply the rebels with weapons.
On Sunday morning 1000 Misrata rebels made an amphibious assault to the east of a neighborhood that had been liberated Saturday but was under rocket and mortar siege by Gaddafi forces. They assisted this neighborhood and then helped take the military air base to its west. That battle took all day. At the same time maybe 5000 troops from the Nafusa mountains and liberarted Zawiya began marching towards Tripoli. At 27 km out, there is the major military installation in all of Libya, home of Khamis Gaddafi’s brigade. After several hours the general in charge of that installation surrendered. The rebel not only captured the major remaining store of weapons near Tripoli but also rosters of mercenaries and list of Zawiya protesters who had been identified to be arrested and taken to prison.
Within two hours the rebels had covered the distance from this military facility to the square at the heart of Tripoli with almost no resistance. And crowds from neighborhoods cheering them. Tonight throughout Tripoli there were neighborhoods celebrations in 90% of the city.
The main force of the Transitional National Council troops has not arrived yet from the Nafusa Mountains, Gheryan, or Zliten. Estimates are that a force of 50,000 troops from Zintan, Zawiya, Benghazi, Misrata, Zliten, and Tripoli and lots of intervening towns will be responsible for security in Tripoli in the early part of the week.
The TNC has announced a policy of parole for most of Gaddafi’s remaining Libyan troops (war criminals excepted) and deportation of mercenaries to their home countries. There are ships on the way to evacuate foreign workers to their home countries. No doubt there will be a number of mercenaries who slip out with non-combatant foreign workers (the TNC now knows how to make that distinction). This is totally different from the situation in Baghdad. (1) US troops had little to no help taking over the city from residents; it was purely an occupation. Tripoli is a liberation. There really is a difference that the US needs to learn. (2) The leadership knows Libyan politics and culture in a way no outsider would; they will understand sensitivities that the “Baby Elephants” who populated the ministries of Baghdad during the viceregency were blind to. (3) The policy of parole is different from the wholesale dismissal of the Ba’ath Party members from any participation in government in Iraq.
There are lots of difficult times ahead for Libyans to rebuild and establish their new governmental institutions. But the infrastructure is in much better shape due to the fact that the war has moved relatively quickly and with little general destruction of buildings on the side of the rebels and the destruction by Gaddafi forces concentrated in rebel strongholds like Benghazi, Misrata, and Zintan. The electric and telephone systems are intact and there are few bridges and roads that cannot be repaired quickly. After law and order are restored, the borders can be reopened for trade. Tripoli will end its de facto state of siege for six months. The Libyans, not the US will be responsible for what happens with the assets seized from the regime and certain of its leaders. Wisdom on this issue will put more of that money into the Libyan economy to help the Libyan people.
Knee-jerk anti-imperialism can sometimes blind folks to when an actual feet-in-the-street revolution is occurring. And Gaddafi played the anti-imperialism card from the get-go and up until the end, which was picked up by some African dictators and by Hugo Chavez and circulated through a few of the socialist networks of writers.
I said in an earlier post that we would know whether it was a civil war by what Tripoli chose. Tripoli has chosen a unified Libya with toleration of diversity. That is likely the way the country goes. This is very good news for the stability of Tunisia and Egypt. And will put pressure on Algeria to move toward real reforms and on Morocco to accelerate the rate of reform. It also puts Assad on notice that outside intervention is not necessary for the people to prevail. Sometimes perseverance and strategy can topple a leader even in the face of force. Syria will unwind, but it is going to take months and months. And the opposition in Syria has made it clear: diplomatic sanction but no intervention. I think that the US and Europe will increasingly take their cues from the people inside the country who are seeking a voice. That is not likely to satisfy John McCain.
There’s a very unfortunate typo in this where you say Baghdad instead of Tripoli.
I agree that there signs of hope, but you’re being very premature in predicting how the victors will get along with each other, as well as in predicting passivity in the defeated.
Top Ten Myths about the Libya War
After Jabril’s speech today, I am less worried about what will happen in Libya by Libyans and now more worried that neo-cons in the US will try to stampede the US into “helping” Libya.
Already Richard Haas of the Council of Foreign Relations has advocated a typical US bigfoot response.
So far all the TNC wants is NATO suppression of Gaddafi’s heavy weapons trying to prevent towns from deciding what they will do. Until law and order are established in all of Libya.
And for immediate release of the money impounded by the international community into Libyan hands.
That should be the limits on US involvement unless asked by the new Libyan government for other assistance. The US should not be pushing aid on Libya like we did on Iraq to prolong our presence there.