Here is a question: If Mr. Gaddafi is such an awful ruler, how come Libya, a primitive place when he seized power, now leads all of Africa in its Human Development Index. It is ahead of Saudi Arabia and far in advance of Egypt. Unlike Saudi Arabia, women participate freely in society. Yes, he has a feared security establishment but so did our friend Mubarak (on whom was lavished billions of dollars over several decades, and who served as the torturer of last resort for the hapless renditioned victims of our paranoia); so did the late Shah of Iran who we installed after overturning a democratically elected government; and so do many of the royals in the region who find democracy anathema.
Before the then Afghan Government and its overthrown head asked the Soviet Union to intervene, Afghanistan was undergoing a societal revolution: social progress in health, economy and education included women — women were being educated, many discarding traditional attire for the convenience of Western clothes. The cultural changes fueled discontent among the conservative south urged on by village religious leaders. The U.S. sided with these fundamentalists groups, and Afghanistan eventually ended up with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Now we are fighting the same conservative south to establish a more amenable regime, and we tout women's rights among other goals like preventing al-Qaeda securing a base — hardly needed as it appears to have become a virtual organization. Back to square one, as they say.
In Libya, government forces are battling an insurgency led by the conservative eastern tribes. Ask the foot soldiers why they are out there, and they respond because Gaddafi is a bad Muslim." The ranks of al-Qaeda's upper echelons are over-represented by Libyans from these Eastern tribes; the Libyan fighters in Iraq's insurgency came from Eastern Libya and so on. Are we really sure what we are getting into? One more thing: about a million people have been killed in the Congolese civil wars, yet it seems not to have occurred to our interventionists to enter that fray. But some hundreds dead in a Libyan civil war (to which we are now contributing) and it becomes the humanitarian's Armageddon. If past is prologue — Iraq coming to mind — one wonders where Libya is going to be on the Human Development Index when we leave.
A final question: How does dropping depleted uranium munitions — forty-five 2000-pound bombs and over a hundred tomahawk missiles in the first twenty-four hours alone — with known cancer risk help Libyan civilians?
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