Nato's 'victory'

On October 20, the overthrown Libyan President was finally removed from the face of the earth. Three cheers for Nato, especially the French Mirages, that bombed the convoy Qadhafi was travelling in. The rest ie beating, kicking and finally killing Qadhafi was left to the Libyan "rebels" in Sirte.
While on October 22, the UN ordered an inquiry into the killing of Qadhafi, the level concern for avoiding such a possibility was expressed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who told the media in Tripoli on October 18 that "We hope he can be captured or killed soon so that you don't have to fear him anymore." Within minutes of Qadhafi's killing, Western media went into action. Wolf Blitzer hosted a special programme on the CNN wherein he asked the Washington-based ambassador of Libya's National Transition Council (NTC) about when will the NTC pay the US the $2 billion spent on the campaign to liberate Libya.
His next guest was General Welsley Clark (r) (of the Iraq invasion fame), who agreed with Blitzer that since the campaign in Libya succeeded without landing any Nato troops on the ground (really?), Nato should seek UN permission to launch a similar campaign in Syria and get rid of Bashar Al-Assad.
BBC TV compares focused on the post-Nato invasion re-building of Libya's shattered physical infrastructure and the enormous prospects it held out for British construction contracting companies that had virtually frozen, given the downhill journey of the British and global economies.
Responding to the BBC, the British Defence Secretary agreed that now there was plenty of re-building work in Libya that the British contracting firms could grab. What he didn't mention though, I guess for diplomatic reasons, was that such prospects were becoming brighter by the day in several other Arab countries.
The fact that, until a couple of months ago, the rebels that toppled Qadhafi numbered less than a thousand, and admitted that without the air war waged on Libya by Nato they would either be wiped out or be on the run, should leave none in doubt about Nato's role in toppling Qadhafi.
But now there is no talk of "democratising" Libya, which was touted as "the" reason for supporting the "rebels" in Libya. What Libya now has are heavily armed militias, manned by young men with no obvious allegiance to anything other than their own idea of freedom; this lot dominates Tripoli and other cities.
As with Osama bin Laden, the first choice would be to ensure that no trace of Qadhafi is left for anyone to even repent on the way he was killed. Not surprisingly, the NTC information minister said on October 21 that no decision has been taken on when or where Qadhafi will be buried.
When this piece went to the press, in total defiance of the Islamic injunctions, Qadhafi's body was lying in a vegetable freezer in Sirte for people see his body. A Military Council spokesman in Misrata said "There will be no post-mortem today, nor any day," defying the requirements of even the UN-ordered inquiry.
It is amazing that Nato allies, especially Britain, France and Italy - key beneficiaries of Qadhafi's exit - didn't realise how useful it would have been for their longer-term interests to keep Qadhafi alive and put him on trial to make him say what they want. But it would have been risky to let Qaddafi stand in an open court.
After the Lockerbie affair, he abandoned his revolutionary zeal, and since 2003, must have done a lot that encouraged Tony Blair to seek forgiveness for him. There are unconfirmed reports that Libyan prisons became a part of CIA's torture Empire. Qadhafi could reveal this in his trial.
The golden principle that says, "Dead men tell no tales. They cannot stand trial. They cannot name the people who helped them stay in power. All secrets die with them," was therefore applied to Qadhafi. But that wasn't odd; America always did its proxies in after using them; the Arab leaders know that pretty well.
Nato members were relieved by the fact that, the third mess (Libya) they created after invading Afghanistan and Iraq, ended in ten months without causing any casualties to Nato forces. That satisfaction got the better of their senses as portrayed in the statements of President Obama, Prime Minister David Cameron and President Nicholas Sarkozy.
It will take time for these leaders to regain their senses; once that happens, they will discover that, in spite of having much smaller population compared to Iraq or Afghanistan, the chaos the Libya would be no less. The fact that Qadhafi was killed in spite of the NTC being there is an indicator thereof.
Libya is more tribal in nature than Iraq; it is like Afghanistan, with clear ethnic divides as between the Persian and the Pashtu-speaking lots. What makes things similar to the Afghan mess is the fact that, as in Afghanistan arms were distributed freely to the so-called Libyan rebels.
Already we are getting reports of violent score-settling, revenge killings, human rights abuses and mistreatment of detainees. Some analysts foresee a mini-Afghanistan in the making, a bloody civil war, fragmentation of the Libyan nation, and sectarian conflicts - hardly the setting for European contractors to make billions.
It is interesting that the Muslim states already invaded or the future target of the West - Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran - have one thing in common: suspected weapons of mass destruction. The fact that Libya is (prematurely) being cited as the model for future invasions should ring the bells in Pakistan.
The demand by Ms Clinton on her last visit - you have to act, not in months but in days and weeks or else "we" [US] will - is a clear message that America is the new so-called object of worship. While announcing the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq by end-2011, President Obama said something even more shocking.
According to him, the American soldiers will return home with "their heads high". Will they do so because the US invasion killed more than 650,000 Iraqis or because the invasion was a complete fraud as no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, or because this invasion shattered America's image as well as its economy?
After listening to this lot that now rules the world, you begin wondering what exactly is being taught at the Western universities. Are these universities imparting "education" or sowing the seeds of slow but sure dementia in the brains of their students?