Mac-Coleman

20 October 2011 –

Mohamar Qadafi is dead. A better way to say it is in the active tense. Libyan rebels pulled Qadafi out of a concrete culvert near Misrate where he was hiding after a recent NATO air attack. They dragged him for a distance, and then shot him in the head and chest, killing the 69 year old dictator. A cell phone video graphically shows the blood, gore, and dead body. Ain’t modern communication grand? Almost as brutal as a video game.

There are several good circumstances in Libya right now:

1) A bad guy is gone. Justice is served, bloodily and definitively served. Many say that killing a bad guy like Qadafi doesn’t do much because there are plenty of bad guys ready to take his place. I say that killing this bad guy gives the newly formed interim government, the interim Prime Minister, Mahmoud Jabril, some authority with which to govern for the near future. How long the new government can maintain that authority depends on how well it prioritizes its efforts to accomplish its interim, medium, and long term objectives.

2) Libya’s small population, about 6.3 million people, is about 88% urban, well educated by Arab standards, and is fairly young, with 30% under the age of 14. A 2.7 fertility rate will sustain a modest rise in the population, and the life expectancy is over 74 years of age. Consistent with the reporting in many Arab Moslem countries, the official ratio of men to women is about 107 to 100. The ethnic make-up is somewhat diverse, mainly with Tuaregs in the west and south and Berbers elsewhere. But, these differences are not nearly the same implacable problems one finds in Iraq and Afghanistan. None of these numbers is a ticking time bomb that the new leaders will have to deal with along with creating a new governance structure. For all the problems Qadafi caused in his country, the demographics still could eventually support the emergence of a first world country.

3) Libya’s transportation, communications, and oil production infrastructure is well established, if not all that new. What is important is that the war did not destroy much of it. Oil flow can start again fairly quickly, to ready customers across the Mediterranean. Revenues for the government and employment for most of the population may not be a crisis situation for long. This will help immensely because, unlike places like Darfur, Somalia, and Haiti, Libya can avoid being corrupted by the West’s propensity for well-intentioned, massive influxes of charity missions, etc. The Arab Spring may have a chance here to blossom on its own.

4) The U.S./NATO did not kill Qadafi! That is a good thing, for the U.S., for Europe, and for the new Libyan rulers. The new Libyan government now more than ever before in the conflict bears responsibility for the future: They did the deed; they take the lead. Therefore, the criticism that will surely come in the war’s aftermath should be directed to the Libyan leaders and not to the U.S. This is critically important for pundits and do-gooders to remember when they want to double down on their temporary successes. Even though the Arab League completely abdicated its responsibility to direct any military campaigns in support of the rebels, the U.S./NATO’s stepping in did not give us legitimacy in the eyes of most of the Arab Moslem world. We protected our interests by helping get rid of Qadafi; let us not seduce ourselves into thinking that the Arab Moslem world—most Libyans included—will praise or embrace us for our efforts. It is time to declare victory, stop our military involvement, and wait for the oil to be pumped to our tankers.

5) This crisis gave the U.S. and other willing NATO countries a chance to conduct a great training exercise, to try out new command and control techniques, and to test new equipment and munitions. In the end, despite the criticism from hawkish pundits who wanted a more violent campaing on our part, these last few months of deliberate, measured air operations may have benefitted NATO far more than a shorter, more robust air campaign to kill Qadafi would have. Certainly, leading from behind didn’t improve the President’s reputation among his critics, or our soft power in the world, but it did improve NATO’s operational capability. It is just as good to be lucky as it is to be brilliant, I guess.