Patterico's Pontifications

2/16/2011

And Now Libya?

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 1:36 pm



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

The other day I suggested that Gaddafi was fomenting revolution in Palestine because he was afraid of it at home.  Well, we have early signs that this might not be working:

Egypt-inspired unrest spread against Libya’s longtime ruler Moammar Qaddafi on Wednesday, with riot police clashing with protesters in the second-largest city of Benghazi and marchers setting fire to security headquarters and a police station in the city of Zentan, witnesses said.

Qaddafi’s government sought to allay further unrest by proposing the doubling of government employees’ salaries and releasing 110 suspected Islamic militants who oppose him — tactics similar to those used by other Arab regimes in the recent wave of protests.

Activists using Facebook and Twitter have called for nationwide demonstrations on Thursday to demand the ouster of Qaddafi, establishment of a constitution and comprehensive political and economic reforms. Qaddafi came to power in 1969 through a military coup and has ruled the country without an elected parliament or constitution.

Read the whole thing.  Of course taking down Libya would be nice, but what I really want to see is a free Iran.  This really has the potential to become an “end of the Cold War” kind of moment where the dominoes really start to fall.

And speaking of Egypt, Legal Insurrection notes that Obama was warned that Egypt could become unstable more than two years ago, which makes the fact he was caught so flat-footed all the more inexcusable.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

22 Responses to “And Now Libya?”

  1. Qaddafi’s government sought to allay further unrest by proposing the doubling of government employees’ salaries. . .

    Which was, of course, the response to unrest in Egypt last week, and to unrest in Italy and Greece in the last half century. Is it something about the waters of the Mediterranean that imparts economic ignorance on the leaders there?

    JVW (1a2602)

  2. Of course you’re correct about Iran being the lynchpin in the democracy movement going on currently. The Persians hold the key, because a truly democratic Iran tilts the ME prohibitively against the other countries going Theocratic/Islamic. Iran has the most educated populace, and also one of the youngest (along with Egypt) – not to mention their strategic placement next to the Gulf.

    Dmac (c50897)

  3. Iran could be a great friend of America again, if it were democratic.

    Practically everyone would be better off, aside from some mullahs (no offense to Dallas’s city government intended).

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  4. Is Iran now China from 1989? In 1989, China was first see freedom protesters, yet they were brutally crushed in the Tienanmen Square massacre. And the communist regime survived while all the others were crashing – the Soviets and Eastern Bloc. Iran’s protesters were crushed (hopefully they can rise up again and overthrow the government there), but we’ve seen it now spreading to Egypt, Syria, Jordan and now Libya. What will remain to be seen if these countries follow the footsteps of those former Soviet states into mostly peaceful nations.

    Darin H (c6577c)

  5. Darin

    well, on valentine’s day there were protests, in iran. not sure what is happening now, though.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  6. Gee, maybe Obama heard that warning and dismissively said, “All right. You’ve covered your ass now.”

    That line, that tactic, was in the presidential manual left behind by his predecessor. It had worked like a charm in August 2001 when a CIA briefer flew to Bush’s ranch in Texas to brief him on the memo titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.”
    Bush mulled it a fraction of a nanosecond and told the agent what for.

    Decision makers have hard jobs, you know. Can’t be triflin’. But you can make up for things you missed. Like go start a couple of unwinnable wars and pour blood and treasure down a long, deep hole.

    Larry Reilly (0e1b2d)

  7. This really has the potential to become an “end of the Cold War” kind of moment where the dominoes really start to fall.

    here’s hoping.

    aphrael (e0cdc9)

  8. That line, that tactic, was in the presidential manual left behind by his predecessor. It had worked like a charm in August 2001 when a CIA briefer flew to Bush’s ranch in Texas to brief him on the memo titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.”
    Bush mulled it a fraction of a nanosecond and told the agent what for.

    You are deliberately skewing what that PDB said, Larry. It contained information from interviews OBL gave in 1997 and 1998. It also said that the FBI was conducting about 70 investigations that were related to OBL, so it’s not like Bush did nothing, as you imply.

    Some chump (4c6c0c)

  9. Mawy woke up from its stupor, puked out a bunch of leftist canards, and immediately passed out again.

    JD (6e25b4)

  10. Dominoes? All that has really happened is the Egyptian military agreed to get rid of the guy they propped up for the past 30 years, they’re still running Egypt as they’ve been doing, and likely will be running Egypt for the foreseeable future with some other acceptable (for them) figurehead ‘running’ the government. Not as much of a change as it’s being portrayed to be.

    As for other countries, yeah, it’s cute to see protesters waving their flags and organizing via Facebook, but without the backing of their respective military – which they don’t have anywhere – their protests aren’t going to amount to much of anything. And let’s not forget that the Egyptian military is the most westernized out there, and thus much less likely to turn their weapons on the protesters… which isn’t the case in Libya, Iran, Yemen, etc., etc.

    steve (254463)

  11. “Mawy woke up from its stupor, puked out a bunch of leftist canards, and immediately passed out again.”

    Ain’t it the truth.

    You can always tell when a leftard, like Mary, is lying. You can see their fingers moving across the keyboard.

    Dave Surls (7daf63)

  12. I couldn’t tell you what our little country’s policy is on freedom or democracy in Libya. I’m sure someone’s on top of this, no?

    happyfeet (ab5779)

  13. That PDB was actually less informative than the 1998 one, which mentioned the now late Mohammed Atef,

    Libya’s much nastier a character, our interlocutor
    there, Musa Kusa, the foreign minister, was the intelligence chief, that most likely gave the order
    not only for Lockerbie, but the Labelle nightclub, and some hits in Vienna and Rome, back in the day.
    In addition, he proved Ibn Sheikh al Libi, who was
    an even bigger goose egg than ‘Curveball’

    narciso (e694f9)

  14. Qaddafi’s government sought to allay further unrest by proposing the doubling of government employees’ salaries

    What cluelessness. These goons are not going to allay social strife by increasing the dysfunction that’s causing it in the first place. You’ve got a population of university educated, but poor individuals and you’re going to fix the situation by upping the stakes even further for getting into the managerial class that you’ve placed above all others?

    BTW, the same thing has the potential to happen here with the college tuition bubble.

    Another Chris (129d96)

  15. We could always promise Colonel Gaddafi that we’ll help him if he’ll just give us Abdelbaset al-Megrahi back. Since Mr al-Megrahi apparently has only a few days left to live, it shouldn’t be a big deal.

    The always helpful Dana (132cf8)

  16. Dana

    btw, how is it after all these years that Gaddafi only achieved the rank of colonel?

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  17. PJ O’Rourke. had a line about that, “in Holidays in hell” one of his early collections of foreign reporting, he thought the rise of the likes of Lt. Doe, and Sgt. Rawlings, meant weeblo scouts wouldbe taking over small countries

    narciso (e694f9)

  18. One recalls when cruise missiles were destroying Saddam’s Baghdad palaces and the Colonel was crapping his pants and decided to be nice for a time. Pity Reagan’s raid in Libya didn’t wipe out the whole Gaddafi line. I was watching the Baghdad inferno at a friend’s house and his British wife was mortified and insisted W needed to be hanged for war crimes. I doubt the good Colonel has anything at all to fear from Obama.

    Calypso Louie Farrakhan (798aba)

  19. Gird yer loins if the whole middle east goes islamist

    we won’t have enough bombs to stop what comes after that

    BDJ (72b0ed)

  20. The passengers blown up over Lockerbie could not be reached for comment.

    Dmac (c50897)

  21. Larry

    the bin laden memo is a lame talking point.

    Everyone knew bin laden wanted to attack us. it wasn’t news. how do we know it wasn’t news? because when the attacks happened everyone put bin laden at the top of the list of suspects, not just the government but every reporter, too. Everyone knew about the supposed dire warning that memo provided. no one has ever alleged it told bush anything he couldn’t have learned watching cnn.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  22. It is the equivalent of “water is wet”‘ AW. Yet that meme persists amongst the likes of William the midget racist hilljack Yelverton and Mawy.

    JD (1b2cd4)


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