The Libyan Civil War is starting to resemble the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) in a number of significant ways. Both started with a popular uprising which seemed to promise a people's victory. Both saw untrained militias going bravely into action against a better armed and militarily experienced enemy. We all know what happened to the Spanish Republicans and it looks as if the Libyan rebels are starting to face a similar fate. The superior weaponry and tactics of Gaddafi's forces are beginning to tell.
If The Mad Colonel ( as "Private Eye" calls him) is victorious in this conflict, he will doubtless come to resemble Franco in the treatment of his defeated enemies. I don't often agree with John Major, the ex-PM, but Major is right when he says that Gaddafi will exact a savage revenge on every former enemy that he can capture alive.
If Gaddafi wins, there will also be a lot of fence-mending (ie. grovelling) by western politicians who have supported the uprising and condemned The Mad Colonel. A fly on the wall at a (hopefully unthinkable!) meeting between Gaddafi and William Hague might hear this:
Hague:" Er, well, Colonel, I must apologise for my somewhat intemperate comments during the recent difficulties...."
Gaddafi: "Let bygones be bygones. The training you gave our military and the weapons you sold us were a great help".
Hague: "Speaking of which, Your Excellency, I do have a catalogue of our most up to date riot control vehicles..."
Gaddafi: "Thankyou. Business as usual, then?"
Even a fly on a wall would be sickened at this!
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Intervene and end up embroiled in another Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Don't and the monster Gaddafi may well win with dire consequences for his opponents. The usual reply of the interventionists is, "We've got to do something!"
ReplyDeleteWe build these monsters up, arm them to the teeth, train their armed forces and trade with them, and years later we have to knock them down when, like Saddam Hussein, they begin doing things we don't want them to. The interventionists usually then say, "We can't change that now. We are where we are and must act now." And because our past errors (or worse) are then conveniently swept under the carpet, we repeat them. Which monsters will we have to try to topple in 10 or 20 years' time because of what we doing now?
And while we use these countries as dependent client states (well, the ones that have oil, anyway), we ignore their brutal represssion of their opponents, or even their friends who have fallen out of favour. Neo-colonialism.