by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n If Muammar Qaddafi has really been killed \u2014 a big if, since so many of the Libyan rebels\u2019 military communiques have proven premature \u2014 it raises a lot of questions, besides being very welcome news in the sense that Qaddafi has the blood of tens of thousands on his hands. He won\u2019t be missed by the Libyan people, or the Arab world at large, although he will perhaps be lamented in Venezuela.<\/p>\n Was he killed as a combatant on the battlefield, or through a targeted assassination? On the ground or from the air, and by whom? What happened to his various sons? And what now do the rebels do with surviving hundreds, if not thousands, of Qaddafi\u2019s black African, non-Islamic mercenaries?<\/p>\n In an ideal world \u2014 never possible on the battlefield \u2014 it would have been preferable to capture and try him in the manner of Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic. And as we saw with the removal of Milosevic, the Taliban, Saddam, and Mubarak, few know exactly what happens next, although in Qaddafi\u2019s case it is hard to envision anyone expressing regret over his passing. I wish we could say that with Qaddafi\u2019s end, we are at the end of things, but something suggests that now begins an entirely unpredictable chapter.<\/p>\n In any case, there was always something not quite right about the Libyan war. There was, on the one hand, relief that Americans were not involved on the ground against such an odious thug, delight that such a terrorist killer was finally getting his just deserts, and the initial admiration for Libyan \u201cmoderates\u201d who joined the resistance and promised a better day for a long-suffering people.<\/p>\n But on the other hand, there were just as many nagging doubts: growing realization that the rebels were often mob-like with plenty of Islamists; the weird metamorphosis of Qaddafi in just weeks from a Western rehab darling, whose money and offspring had launched a successful make-over from London to New York, replete with art shows and fellowships for American academics; the strange use and abuse of the UN mandate, the West bragging that it got one and then almost immediately exceeding humanitarian help and no-fly zones by bombing military targets and going after the Qaddafi elite from the air; arch Bush-Cheney critic Harold Koh now writing briefs explaining why the Obama administration did not need congressional authorization to go to war against a country that was no longer a strategic threat to the US; the strange urgency from Britain and France to intervene in this nearby oil-rich, people-short huge Texas-style country, odder still given French lectures about Iraq and the recent British-French outreach to Qaddafi. \u201cLeading from behind\u201d seemed strange as well; how \u201cbehind\u201d was it really? And how did a small surrounded clique hold off NATO\u2019s big three for eight months?<\/p>\n In any case, unlike the Clinton administration in the Balkans or the Bush administration in Iraq, the Obama administration apparently has little desire to capture and try its thugs, on the theory that dead terrorists cause far fewer problems than live ones \u2014 as we see with the ongoing decision to prefer Predator assassinations to capture and detention at Guantanamo.<\/p>\n Final thoughts: The Middle East is a very different place than it was on 9\/11: Saddam dead, Osama bin Laden dead, Qaddafi dead, Mubarak near dead, and Assad reeling. Much of this transition is due to the decision after 9\/11 to push for radical change in the Middle East, started by George Bush and more or less continued uninterrupted by Barack Obama. After the capture of Saddam, Qaddafi saw a glimpse of his own fate; one wonders how many Middle East despots are doing the same as they view the ghoulish pictures of a seemingly dead Qaddafi that are now all over the Internet.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner If Muammar Qaddafi has really been killed \u2014 a big if, since so many of the Libyan rebels\u2019 military communiques have proven premature \u2014 it raises a lot of questions, besides being very welcome news in the sense that Qaddafi has the blood of tens of thousands on his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[159],"tags":[1051,540,1017,1048,160,1016],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-vh","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":963,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-libyan-non-model\/","url_meta":{"origin":1939,"position":0},"title":"The Libyan Non-Model","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It is a good thing that Moammar Qaddafi is gone, even if by barbaric means. So what did we learn from the 2011 misadventure, given that some are advocating much the same sort of action against Syria and Iran? Answer: Not much. 1.\u00a0Small\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3422,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/should-we-intervene-in-libya\/","url_meta":{"origin":1939,"position":1},"title":"Should We Intervene in Libya?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online There are plenty of good arguments for imposing a no-fly zone in Libya. Without Libyan-government air strikes, the rebels might have a better chance of carving out permanent zones of resistance. Qaddafi has a long record of supporting anti-American terrorism, whether in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3424,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/libya-what-to-do\/","url_meta":{"origin":1939,"position":2},"title":"Libya, What To Do?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim National Review Online As with Egypt, American sympathies instinctively side with Libya's oppositional forces as they seek to overthrow the tyrant Qaddafi \u2014 and rightfully so. But where US foreign policy is concerned, prudence is in order. This is especially the case considering that the Obama administration\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3339,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/libya-is-not-iraq\/","url_meta":{"origin":1939,"position":3},"title":"Libya Is Not Iraq","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The Left is terribly embarrassed about the US intervention in Libya. We have preemptively attacked an Arab Muslim nation that posed little threat to the national-security interests of the United States. President Obama did not have majority support among the American people. Nor\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3367,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/president-obamas-most-amazing-libyan-achievments\/","url_meta":{"origin":1939,"position":4},"title":"President Obama’s Most Amazing Libyan Achievments","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services By bombing Libya, President Obama has accomplished some things once thought absolutely impossible in America: (a)\u00a0War-mongering liberals: Liberals are now chest-thumping about military \u201cprogress\u201d in Libya. Even liberal television and radio commentators cite ingenious reasons why an optional, preemptive American intervention in an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3414,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/americas-sorta-rescue\/","url_meta":{"origin":1939,"position":5},"title":"America’s Sorta Rescue?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner What a No-Fly Zone Means Now that we are committed to a no-fly zone (an unwise idea, I think, given the absence of consistent aims or defined objectives), we must support it and ensure its success. We must prepare for a number of paradoxes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1939"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1941,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions\/1941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}