Gadhafi and His Enablers

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Finally, something is being done which may rid the world of the madman who has held Libyans hostage for some four decades. As western air power was finally unleashed against Moammar Gadhafi’s mercenaries, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there was every reason to think that Gadhafi would commit “unspeakable atrocities” if left unchecked.

Though the Arab and western states seemed to take forever to get their act together, there is one positive aspect to this: by the time they were ready, they had effectively isolated the “bad guy.”

This has been true in earlier campaigns against those who posed a danger to the international community. In the Gulf wars of 1991 and 2003 against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; the assault on Serbia in 1999; the campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan after 2001; and now the action against Moammar Gadhafi, the rogue regime under attack was faced with overwhelming power arrayed against it, and had no military allies (at least not officially) on its side.

Of course this is scant comfort to the thousands of Libyans who have had their friends and relatives murdered and their homes destroyed. This comes at least two weeks too late, a result of Barack Obama’s obsessions with multilateralism.

But the anti-Gadhafi forces may still have the means to defeat this tyrant. Without his overwhelming advantage in weapons, Gadhafi will not only be checked by the opposition in Benghazi but may soon enough face an uprising in Tripoli itself.

But it will not be enough to let Gadhafi slink away to some country, such as Venezuela, willing to allow him to live in exile. He, and all those who enabled him to run his ruthless regime, must be brought to justice at the International Criminal Court.

This includes his sons; his top generals; his foreign minister and former head of the Libyan intelligence agency, Moussa Koussa, responsible for the murder of many Gadhafi opponents; and even Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the operative who was jailed in Britain in 2001 for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, the atrocity which claimed 270 lives in 1988.

Megrahi was – disgracefully – freed from a Scottish prison in 2009 “on compassionate grounds.” Supposedly terminally ill with prostate cancer, and given a very short time to live, he seems to have miraculously recovered after receiving a hero’s welcome back in Tripoli.

Megrahi was accompanied home by Saif al-Islam al-Gadhafi, son of the Libyan leader, who had pledged in 2008 to bring about his release, and so raised his arm in victorious salute to the crowd at the airport.

Though Saif stated that Megrahi’s release was not tied to any oil deals but was an entirely separate matter, four United States senators made public their concerns over the release, stating they believed that the oil company BP had pushed for his release to secure a deal with Libya.

BP confirmed that it did press for a “Prisoner Transfer Agreement” as it was aware that a delay might have “negative consequences” for British commercial interests.

British Prime Minister David Cameron recently remarked that the release had been “profoundly wrong.”

There are many academics, politicians and business people in Britain, Canada, France, Italy, the United States, and elsewhere, who looked the other way, pretending not to notice that Libya had become one big gulag, while they were getting fat on the money to be made in the country.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair used his final foreign trip to sign a confidential deal with Gadhafi in May 2007 to train Libyan special forces. Remarked one observer last month: “I wonder if the former Prime Minister now feels that this accord with Gadhafi really was such a triumph.”

In December 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy welcomed Gadhafi to Paris and insisted that “Gaddafi is not perceived as a dictator in the Arab world.” The visit resulted in Libya’s decision to buy £200 million of anti-tank missiles and radio systems from a largely French owned company.

Libya is a key supplier of oil to Italy and the $65 billion Libyan sovereign wealth fund has provided welcome support for Italian companies. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in August 2008 signed a friendship treaty with Libya that included a $5 billion reparations deal for colonial misdeeds.

Just last March, at an Arab League summit held in Libya, Berlusconi literally kissed the dictator’s hand.

Gadhafi not only brutalized his own nation, but corrupted many greedy people outside of Libya who turned a blind eye to his crimes. They will probably never be charged with any specific offenses but will have to live with the knowledge that in their desire for easy money, they enabled this evil man to stay in power for as long as he has.