Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year dictatorship is hanging by a thread, most of his family is either under arrest or in exile, and rebels are celebrating their impending victory in virtually every village, town and Tripoli neighborhood. It's like Iraq in March 2003. But things in Iraq changed quickly.
We know from that experience that now isn't the time for celebration. It's a time to worry about Libya's future. If the Libyan people don't learn from the mistakes the U.S. made in Iraq, they could repeat the violence that has wracked that country for the past eight years. Even now, more than eight years after the U.S. invaded Iraq to "liberate" the Iraqi people, the place is a scene of death and destruction on a daily basis.
In Libya, the rebels' Transitional National Council (TNC) is largely unknown both to us and to the Libyan people. So who is going to lead Libya after Gaddafi goes? It isn't up to the U.S. to choose a leader like we did in Iraq. It's not our country. And what were the criteria that the Bush Administration used? Somebody who spoke good English, like Iyad Alawi, or someone who reported to a little group inside the Pentagon, like Ahmad Chalabi? Maybe somebody who had been on the CIA's payroll?
The result was factionalism, sectarianism, and death. We can't allow the same mistake to be made in Libya. We can't just rely on former Libyan intelligence officers who have defected to the UK, on technocrats who have never run anything beyond corrupt ministries in the 1970s, or on professors who have spent the last 30 years sitting in comfort in Europe.
Now is the time for the international community -- the United Nations, NATO, the Arab League, and the African Union -- to engage with the TNC and with Libyan exiles, but most importantly with pro-Gaddafi tribal leaders to help the Libyans work out a coalition government of their own choosing and to pave the way for the country's first-ever transition to democracy. It can't be a fake democracy that keeps out the people we don't like. It has to be a real democracy that respects every point of view. And the decisions have to be made by the Libyans, not by us.
One of the major mistakes we made in Iraq was dictating who could and couldn't participate in the democratic process. It was wrong then and it would be wrong now. Banning Iraq's Baath Party and elements of the military only made large swaths of the populace hate us even more than the invasion already had. We prohibited some of the country's best and brightest from helping to rebuilt their shattered country. It made us look imperial, hypocritical, and anti-democratic.
We've participated in a relentless bombing of Tripoli in the past six months that has included civilian casualties. There likely will be some raw feelings even after Gaddafi goes. Now is not the time to dictate who will lead the Libyan people. Soon, probably in the next couple of weeks, it will be up to the Libyans to decide who will play and who won't. We should respect that. And we should promise the Libyan people that there will be no more Ahmed Chalabis.
Stephen Schwartz: The Sufi Foundation of Libya's Revolution
Rabah Ghezali: Building A Post-Gaddafi Libya
That is NOTHING like the situation in Libya, where the war is 90% LOCAL.
Isn't that what we have done for years for the dictators and autocrats of many Middle Eastern and African countries? Until, that is, the people rose up in protest and then we backed the people.
Attack!
The good people of Viet-Libya obviously need our "help," and the Empire will come running to its aid. There are at least another couple billion dollars a month to be made in another un-declared endless war. And there is, let us say, "$4 million a day in 'freedom of speech' ... entirely legal now, you know, since the US Supreme Court invalidated the US Constitution" ... for anyone and everyone who finds it within himself or herself not to seriously object. Another $4 million a day, just for you, not that you have anywhere to put the millions you're already getting. Entirely legal, you know. Article 2 Section 4 Word 25 is just a moldy old pen-line on a not-so moldy old document ...
"One of the major mistakes we made in Iraq was dictating who could and couldn't participate in the democratic process." Democracy is when ALL of the people get to have an equal say in the affairs of their country. It still amazes me that people think the US is a Democracy. It is not.
"We can't allow the same mistake to be made in Libya." One minute you say that it is not our country and we should not interfere and now you are saying we need to control what the Libyans do. Sounds like BS to me... say one thing, but do another.
My suggestion is that we let Libya govern its own affairs for better or worse. It's time to stop meddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations. The CIA has a long standing history of making poor choices.
Why? Because it's a hell of a lot easier than addressing our own problems here at home.
This is madness.
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We do not learn from our own mistakes, if we did we would not have gone to war under false pretenses and would not try to bring our"democracy" to the rest of the world, we have our own problems with that concept right here on home ground. Libya will go to the next dictator or tribe , whatever, it's their problem, and our participation in whatever transition , if any, takes place, they do not want, or deserve, for their better off on their own as time has proven in Iraq and afghanistan. We are not welcome, or should we be..
Would you have liked it better if Qaddafi's troops killed half the people of Bengazi and then started on everyone else?
Libya is a prime example. We might provide aid, direct or indirect, to freedom fighters battling an oppressive regime, but we do not need to invade, occupy and attempt to rebuild physical and political infrastrucutre. This was Bush's largest mistake with Iraq and Afghanistan.
If presidential candidates were asked to pledge a vow, it would be no more foreign wars for political ideology or corporate reasonings. Close most of the 150 bases world wide (or stop building trillion dollar aircraft carriers) and reduce military spending so we only protect our national borders, and we coudl quickly balance the budget and not become unecessarily involved in how other nationals build or rebuild their nation-state.