So we are going to take “all necessary measures” to
protect the civilians of Libya, are we? Pity we didn’t think of that
42 years ago. Or 41 years ago. Or… well, you know the rest. And
let’s not be fooled by what the UN resolution really means. Yet again,
it’s going to be regime change. And just as in Iraq – to use one of
Tom Friedman’s only memorable phrases of the time – when the latest
dictator goes, who knows what kind of bats will come flying out of the
box?
And after Tunisia, after Egypt, it’s got to be
Libya, hasn’t it? The Arabs of North Africa are demanding freedom,
democracy, liberation from oppression. Yes, that’s what they have in
common. But what these nations also have in common is that it was us,
the West, that nurtured their dictatorships decade after decade after
decade. The French cuddled up to Ben Ali, the Americans stroked
Mubarak while the Italians groomed Gaddafi until our own glorious
leader went to resurrect him from the political dead.
Could this be, I wonder, why we have not heard from
Lord Blair of Isfahan recently? Surely he should be up there, clapping
his hands with glee at another humanitarian intervention. Perhaps he
is just resting between parts. Or maybe, like the dragons in Spenser’s
Faerie Queene, he is quietly vomiting forth Catholic tracts
with all the enthusiasm of a Gaddafi in full flow.
So let’s twitch the curtain just a bit and look at
the darkness behind it. Yes, Gaddafi is completely bonkers, flaky, a
crackpot on the level of Ahmadinejad of Iran and Lieberman of Israel –
who once, by the way, drivelled on about how Mubarak could “go to
hell” yet quaked with fear when Mubarak was indeed hurtled in that
direction. And there is a racist element in all this.
The Middle East seems to produce these ravers – as
opposed to Europe, which in the past 100 years has only produced
Berlusconi, Mussolini, Stalin and the little chap who used to be a
corporal in the 16th List Bavarian reserve infantry but who went
really crackers when he got elected in 1933 – but now we are cleaning
up the Middle East again and can forget our own colonial past in this
sandpit. And why not, when Gaddafi tells the people of Benghazi that
“we will come, ‘zenga, zenga (alley by alley)’, house by house,
room by room”. Surely this is a humanitarian intervention that really,
really, really is a good idea. After all, there will be no “boots on
the ground”.
Of course, if this revolution was being violently
suppressed in, say, Mauritania, I don’t think we would be demanding
no-fly zones. Nor in Ivory Coast, come to think of it. Nor anywhere
else in Africa that didn’t have oil, gas or mineral deposits or wasn’t
of importance in our protection of Israel, the latter being the real
reason we care so much about Egypt.
So here are a few things that could go wrong, a
sidelong glance at those bats still nestling in the glistening, dank
interior of their box. Suppose Gaddafi clings on in Tripoli and the
British and French and Americans shoot down all his aircraft, blow up
all his airfields, assault his armour and missile batteries and he
simply doesn’t fade away. I noticed on March 17 how, just before the
UN vote, the Pentagon started briefing journalists on the dangers of
the whole affair; that it could take “days” just to set up a no-fly
zone.
Then there is the trickery and knavery of Gaddafi
himself. We saw it on March 18 when his foreign minister announced a
ceasefire and an end to “military operations”, knowing full well, of
course, that a NATO force committed to regime change would not accept
it thus allowing Gaddafi to present himself as a peace-loving Arab
leader who is the victim of western aggression: Omar Mukhtar Lives
Again.
And what if we are simply not in time, if Gaddafi’s
tanks keep on rolling? Do we then send in our mercenaries to help the
“rebels”? Do we set up temporary shop in Benghazi, with advisers and
NGOs and the usual diplomatic flummery? Note how, at this most
critical moment, we are no longer talking about the tribes of Libya,
those hardy warrior people whom we invoked with such enthusiasm a
couple of weeks ago. We talk now about the need to protect “the Libyan
people”, no longer registering the Senoussi, the most powerful group
of tribal families in Benghazi, whose men have been doing much of the
fighting. King Idris, overthrown by Gaddafi in 1969, was a Senoussi.
The red, black and green “rebel” flag – the old flag of
pre-revolutionary Libya – is in fact the Idris flag, a Senoussi flag.
Now let’s suppose they get to Tripoli (the point of the whole
exercise, is it not?), are they going to be welcomed there? Yes, there
were protests in the capital. But many of those brave demonstrators
themselves originally came from Benghazi. What will Gaddafi’s
supporters do? “Melt away”? Suddenly find that they hated Gaddafi
after all and join the revolution? Or continue the civil war?
And what if the “rebels” enter Tripoli and decide
Gaddafi and his crazed son Saif al-Islam should meet their just
rewards, along with their henchmen? Are we going to close our eyes to
revenge killings, public hangings, the kind of treatment Gaddafi’s
criminals have meted out for many a long year? I wonder. Libya is not
Egypt. Again, Gaddafi is a fruitcake and, given his weird performance
with his Green Book on the balcony of his bombed-out house, he
probably does occasionally chew carpets as well.
Then there’s the danger of things “going wrong” on
our side, the bombs that hit civilians, the NATO aircraft which might
be shot down or crash in Gaddafi territory, the sudden suspicion among
the “rebels”/ “Libyan people”/ democracy protesters that the West,
after all, has ulterior purposes in its aid. And there’s one boring,
universal rule about all this: the second you employ your weapons
against another government, however righteously, the thing begins to
unspool. After all, the same “rebels” who were expressing their fury
at French indifference on the morning of March 17 were waving French
flags in Benghazi that night. Long live America. Until…
I know the old arguments, of course. However bad
our behaviour in the past, what should we do now? It’s a bit late to
be asking that. We loved Gaddafi when he took over in 1969 and then,
after he showed he was a chicken-head, we hated him and then we loved
him again – I am referring to Lord Blair’s laying on of hands – and
now we hate him again. Didn’t Arafat have a back-to-front but similar
track record for the Israelis and Americans? First he was a
super-terrorist longing to destroy Israel, then he was a
super-statesman shaking hands with Yitzhak Rabin, then he became a
super-terrorist again when he realised he’d been tricked over the
future of “Palestine”.
One thing we can do is spot the future Gaddafis and
Saddams whom we are breeding right now, the future crackpot,
torture-chamber sadists who are cultivating their young bats with our
economic help. In Uzbekistan, for example. And in Turkmenistan. And in
Tajikistan and Chechnya and other “stans”. But no. These are men we
have to deal with, men who will sell us oil, buy our arms and keep
Muslim “terrorists” at bay.
It is all wearingly familiar. And now we are back
at it again, banging our desks in spiritual unity. We don’t have many
options, do we, unless we want to see another Srebrenica? But hold on.
Didn’t that happen long after we had imposed our “no-fly” zone over
Bosnia?