The Other Captive Nations

Libyan leader Gaddafi ©AFP/Mahmud Turkia

We are living in an Orwell novel, so it is not expected that anyone would remember President Ronald Reagan’s war on Libya in 1986. Both Reagan and his vice president Bush were on television daily to decry Libya as a terror state ruled by a wicked dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The US bombing campaign was supposedly in retaliation for the alleged Libyan involvement in an attack on a German disco the previous year.

Gaddafi was certainly the Hitler of the day. In the attack, Gaddafi’s 15-month-old adopted daughter, Hannah, was killed, and his two sons were wounded. Who cared? Hardly anyone because the demonization was intense and unrelenting. Tee shirts all over the country read: “F@#$ Gaddafi” and we heard all about his personal insanity and the wicked despotism he exercised over his own people.

Then, in time, and as always, the campaign died down, and eventually everyone forgot about the new Hitler and his country, just as Americans forget about any country with which they are not at war.

Decades went by. The next time we heard about Gaddafi was in 2003. President Bush joined Tony Blair to praise Libya for agreeing to dismantle a weapons program. It seemed that Gaddafi had moved from Hitler to being a gallant friend in the war on terror. And so it has remained. The Colonel was comfortably in charge and enjoyed a warm relationship with his new friends in Washington and London.

So it is something of a shock to discover that in fact Libya is ruled by a lifetime dictator who, like Mubarak and all his fellow US-backed dictators from North Africa to the Gulf states, is willing to kill and slaughter hundreds and thousands in order to maintain his rule.

The violence against anti-government protesters has been ghastly. The Libyan military has killed hundreds of people, firing not only on peaceful demonstrators but also on people who attend funeral processions in honor of the dead. As many as 800 are wounded and the blood is still flowing. The Colonel then brought out the big guns, tearing down the modern world by blocking the Internet and all communications in and out of the country, kill switch-style. Protesters claim that there is no going back, that this man who has ruled the country since 1969 must go. And surely he must and will.

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