How Libya is different from Egypt and Tunisia

[eridani]

http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/133-133/5381-the-wests-responsibility-to-libya

Distasteful as it is to have to admit it, when Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the Libyan dictator’s son, went on TV the other day to say, in the middle of a stream mostly of gibberish, that “Libya is not Tunisia, it is not Egypt,” he had a point.

Tunisia and Egypt are real countries with histories going back respectively to Carthage and the Pharaohs (if with long gaps) and with important institutions, such as Al-Azhar University, Cairo’s great centre of Islamic learning. It came naturally to the protesters in Tahrir Square to proclaim, “We are all Egyptians.”

But not Libya. It is less a country than an assembly of tribes fused together by two accidents — the discovery of oil in 1959, and that its leader for now more than four decades, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi, should be not merely be crazy, as is well-known, but also fox-like.

Gadhafi has always understood that ruthlessness, while essential to the preservation of dictatorial power, is not enough in itself.

Either consciously or intuitively, he has from his beginning in 1969 atomized his own society. The consequence is that Libya lacks even trace elements of a civic society, as if there was no one else in it but Gadhafi himself.

There are no clubs; the mosques are kept under tight surveillance; even the stars of the national soccer team are never mentioned in state broadcasts. Schoolchildren spend hours studying Gadhafi’s incomprehensible Green Book exposition of what he calls “Arab Socialism.” He even kept his army deliberately small so it would not develop any sense of itself as an institution that existed to serve the country rather than only himself.

[tabatha]

1. sums it up

But one good reason exists why the West has a responsibility to attempt to secure that approval. Libya’s misery is overwhelmingly Gadhafi’s doing. But without the West’s connivance with him — for the sake of his oil and our exports — he would not now have the means to slaughter his people.

[daa]

2. So which tribe are you for again?? Makes sense to me. nt

[eridani]

4. This is exactly the problem. Libya could easily split along tribal lines

The article points out that each faction has enough military stores and oil to keep up a conflict indefinitely.

[bobbolink]

3. Good points. But in terms of difference, you left out one:

Tunisia and Egypt, whhile they have organized popular resistance movements to their governments, did NOT and have not repeatedly petitioned the UN for a no fly zone.

And, of course, the reason why the Libyans did is traceable right back to Ghaddoufus.

But it is an important distinction, and one that should be in the awareness of ALL Americans now.

Thank you for an informative post.