If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
Though the revolution united most Libyans, the inspiration driving revolutionary groups to fight against the Gaddafi regime was not the same.
In our conversation, the National Transitional Council leader warned that Qatar's "interference" could tip the political balance in Libya as the country has no culture of political dialogue, due to Gaddafi's absolute dictatorship.
The massacre in Syria has gone on for too long. It has to stop, and the US and its allies should do a lot more to achieve that, even if they refuse to intervene militarily.
The Muslim Brotherhood members of the interim government, who currently dominate the Governing Council, have declared their intention to impose fatwas, ban theater, prevent women from driving, and eliminate art that takes a human form.
My thoughts immediately went back to a concert I performed as part of a celebration thrown by someone described as an "oil sheik" in Italy in 2007. That night, I met a "son of Gadhafi" who had helped pay for the celebration. I didn't know much about Libya then.
Libya is now awash with arms and history has shown us that countries where dictatorships are overthrown by armed insurrection are more likely to be unstable or vulnerable to another dictatorship.
It is not just the Arabs who are having their spring. Here in the United States, Americans are calling their government to account like never before.
Four decades after its birth in the Bronx, rap music has become the soundtrack to the social unrest sweeping the globe from Tunisia to Libya and London.
With the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi, Libya has a whole new political spectrum that covers a formal transitional government to remnants of the monarchy. Each will play some telling role over the next few months.
Jean-Pierre Filiu's book "The Arab Revolution" is timely to say the least, offering a short but concise series of historical perspectives and modern analyses to form 10 lessons from what he terms the "democratic uprising."
The year 2011 represents the first time since the birth of the modern Middle East that Western powers are collectively standing with the bulk of Arab public opinion.
With what seems to be the end of the era of Gaddafi's reign, we should take a moment and remember the good times, rather than focus on all the bad, l...
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. 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. In short, it's a time to worry about Libya's future.
Barack Obama's gamble in providing limited support for a conflict in Libya, in which other countries played lead roles, now seems like a winning move.
The rebels are on the move in Libya. Unfortunately, getting answers to the question "where exactly are they moving?" from the American media is not that easy.
