At least it wasn’t months, not years:
Rebels surged into the Libyan capital Sunday night, meeting only sporadic resistance from troops loyal to Col.Muammar el-Qaddafi and setting off raucous street celebrations by residents hailing the end of his 42 years in power.
The rebel leadership announced that insurgents had captured two of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons, including Seif al-Islam, his heir apparent, as rebel fighters entered the city’s central Green Square, where joyous Libyans tore down posters of Colonel Qaddafi and stomped on them. The leadership also announced that the elite presidential guard protecting the Libyan leader had surrendered and that they controlled many parts of the city, not including Colonel Qaddafi’s leadership compound.
The National Transitional Council, the rebel governing body, issued a mass text message saying, “We congratulate the Libyan people for the fall of Muammar Qaddafi and call on the Libyan people to go into the street to protect the public property. Long live free Libya.”
“Long live free Libya”.
From his lips to God’s ears. But keep the powder dry.
Right about now the leadership in Syria and Iran is trying to wire their bottom jaw closed.(As are many others) Their opposition is making plans. Prepare for some interesting times in the Middle East.
Free Libya! With 10 gallons of gas.
Sorry. Old joke. Couldn’t resist. Other observations from the story:
Lovely.
Also:
Ya think?
Qaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam seems to have discovered the saying “if you can’t beat them, join them,” while welcoming the new rebel overlords with his freshly-grown beard and prayer beads.
So. We have a (former) oil-producing country with no functioning government, nor any tradition of self-rule, sitting on tops of literally billions of dollars of arms, half a heartbeat away from chaos.
Why are we there, again?
Nothing good is going to come of this.
Not that I think there was anything good about Qaddafy, just that this situation is fraught with trouble for us.
He was the devil we knew, and had, at least internationally, been playing nice.
Now? Who will come out on top? What ties does he have to whom?
We aren’t done holding hands with this Tar Baby yet. We should be so lucky.
I wish you guys were wrong.
I wish you guys were wrong.
As long as he is alive there is a very high probability that there will be another Lockerbie like bombing and the target will maximize American casualties. You can safely assume that he is going to blame the US for his downfall, not NATO, not France or the UK, us.
[...] the Hobbits of Tripoli This entry was posted in Uncategorized by NavyOne. Bookmark the [...]
When I was a rookie cop in London in the early `70′s, the childrens ward of the Brompton Hospital (a tea stop for yours truly) was always full of Libyan kids sent over by The Gad for heart surgery. Sweet kids(once they’d been de-loused). Hope we can continue to extend the hand of humanity whilst keeping our guard up.
What if Gaddafi has “THE BOMB” and is willing to use it as a last stand weapon?
Well it strikes me as same old same old in Libya. When Qaddafi came to power circa 1968 or so, he started to take over the Libyan operations of foreign oil companies. SOP was for a band of gunmen to burst into an office brandishing weapons. They’d hold the manager and a couple of other honchos in the country and tell the other expatriates to leave Libya pronto. The idea was that if the oil companies objected to the takeover, well, we have your man in Tripoli etc.
Looks to me like gunmen have burst into Qaddafi’s “office”.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer SOB. But chaos will reign for a while.
Okay, I was supposed to write a paper on whether the TNC is capable of governing Libya, but I’m on leave for another two weeks so I’m guessing the requirement will be OBE when I get back.
Here’s what I will say, though. The rebels that took Tripoli got almost no help from the TNC, and they don’t like them. Most of the rebels in Benghazi don’t like the western rebels (being of entirely different tribes and ethnicity), either. The rebels in the middle, places such as Misratah, got a lot of lip service from the TNC but very little help. Rebels on the street in Benghazi said, “We threw out Qaddaffi by ourselves, why can’t the Misratans get their sh*t together and do it themselves?” Whenever military forces under the control of the TNC met Qaddafi forces, they got the snot kicked out of them. But the westerners, step by step, out-maneuvered a militarily superior force, and feel a well-deserved pride of place that ensures they will not allow themselves to be subsumed by Benghazi.
Weapons? Any armory that can be looted has been looted and those weapons are all over Africa at this point. Anything else said about it is just lip service.
Oil? Very little was damaged, nothing that can’t be repaired/replaced within months or even weeks. Of course, for the “good of the Libyan people” Western powers will see that full capacity is restored as soon as possible.
Gold? Yes, the sticking point. Libya entirely controlled its own currency and held 144 tons of gold, and in fact was requiring payment for its oil in gold. This is the real reason Europe got pissed at Libya–Libya is beholden to no outside bank, unlike the debt slaves of Europe, and could set its own terms for its gas and oil, and it did not have to accept phony currencies like the dollar or euro. Lost in all the poor press reporting (I think it was reported only in the German press, which was resolutely honest throughout) was how the Libyan banks in Benghazi (Cyrenaica, to be correct) were systematically looted of their gold holdings by the TNC. And it went where?
My prediction for the post-Qaddafi era? Very few nations will expend anything in time, wealth and manpower on Libya’s reconstruction, but the IMF will have its tentacles all over the place and soon Libya will be a proper debt slave, with its own seat at the trough in the new global economy.
Next stop: Venezuela. Don’t see much NATO interest there, though.
Hmmm, shouldn’t we land the MEU, to uh, “help keep order during the chaos of transition?” For old time’s sake, at least?
The MEUs’ dance cards are a bit full, of late.
So – Wheelus O-club open again?
The US citizenry should quickly get reacquainted with the term ‘death squad’, in the papers. All those tribal feuds are about to become active again.
Politico and it’s cadre of lefty writers are hailing this as bad news for Republicans. I fail to see what’s so great about chasing out Qaddaffi only to let in Islamists.
http://news.yahoo.com/fresh-fighting-erupts-between-libya-rebels-regime-103846531.html Well, it turns out that Saif is not nearly so captured as was reported, and Tripoli is still sufficiently in Qaddafi hands that he can ride around in it.
O’Bama’s “Mission Accomplished” moment?
The power of some of that 144 tonnes of gold, eh?
Off topic…. Looks like you’re going to get some bad wind and rain in 5 days…