The long
nightmare in Libya may have begun it’s final round Sunday night. Ragtag Rebels in mismatched uniforms, racing
across the desert in pickup trucks mounted with rocket launchers and
anti-aircraft guns, stormed Tripoli, taking over Green Square (their
revolutionary Ground Zero) and re-naming it Martyr’s Square. Gadhafi’s son Saif has been arrested and may be
on his way to the Hague to face an international war crimes court – an
unconfirmed report says both sons have been captured. And, tinhorn, two-bit dictators the world
over will sleep less well tonight, if they sleep at all.
The Astonishing
Arab Spring has claimed another brutal, resource-plundering, dictatorship . . .
if Libya can fall, can Syria be far behind?
Is Iran as solid as it may appear?
There are time
periods in history when the world itself seems to be in upheaval – the late
1960’s is one that many still alive can relate to; another is just shy of the
mid-century mark of the 19thC when the barricades were manned in cities all across
Europe. The WWI and post WWI era was
another, as was the post WWII time period, when the Marshall Plan saved Europe
from starvation, and/or communism, and McArthur and his military government
re-made the former empire of Japan into the constitutional democracy and US ally
that it is today. But, the Arab Spring
this year came out of absolutely nowhere, like the desert Sirocco, the
Mediterranean wind blowing with the force of a hurricane that comes out of the
Sahara. And the Arab world and Middle
East will never be the same again.
For over 40
years, Gadhafi has ruled Libya with a Madman’s fury,
flanked with his troupes of female bodyguards, nattily attired in his colored
jumpsuits, fanciful headgear, with his non-stop tantrum-like speechifying,
defiance personified in a man as bull-goose loony as Charlie Manson, and as
dangerous as they come. Lest we forget,
due to this man’s order, Pan Am Flight 103, not long out of Heathrow and bound
for JFK in New York, was blow out of the skies and into smithereens over
Lockerbie, Scotland, snuffing out 243 souls in the passenger section, another
16 of the crew, and 11 more on the ground, as huge sections of the shattered stretch
747-121 fell down on the town, destroying houses and lives without mercy or
reason. But, if there ever was a Teflon
Strongman, it was this one.
The end seems to
be coming swiftly and Gadhafi -loyalist forces in Tripoli appear to be
melting away as CNN’s rolling coverage, manned by Sunday night third-stringers,
preempting regular programming, coming out of the hotel housing the journalists
who had been closely guarded by their government ‘minders,’ and then, suddenly,
the ‘minders’ seemed to leave the hotel with the journalists huddled in the
center portion of the hotel in the halls seeking safety in numbers. Dinnertime in Los Angeles Sunday night is 2am
Tripoli time. Where are the 65,000
troops that Gadhafi has repeatedly threatened to bring down on the rebels? Only a few hours earlier, Gadhafi made one of his animated TV speeches, beseeching his loyalists to
come down to Green/Martyr Square and fight.
It is chaotic, but journalists are not reporting any kind of organized
resistance in Tripoli at this time, other than scattered loyalists driving
around taking occasional potshots. Not
tens of thousands, more like hundreds.
Sunrise will
come in a few hours. Peace and an
enduring, democratically elected government in Libya will take a lot
longer. The Gadhafi regime
claimed over a thousand casualties in the Battle for Tripoli. Muammar Muhammad al- Gadhafi,
born June 7, 1942, first came to power at age 27 in a military coup on
September 1, 1969, ending King Idris’ 18-year rule of this North African nation
consisting of a few cities along the coast and a massive desert over most of
it’s territory. Nixon was in his first
term here; Gadhafi has been in power in Libya ever since. After the US dubbed him the ‘Godfather of
Terrorism,’ at the end of the 90’s Gadhafi tried a make-over into the Statesman
of Africa, renouncing nukes, and even paying billions in compensation to
Lockerbee victims. But, that was all
then, and this is now.
If
this truly is the end of Gadhafi, we must now hold our breaths to see exactly
who the rebels turn out to be composed of – after 42 years of Gadhafi’s rule,
there is not a core of people who even know how to run the country, let alone
who have enough in common with each other, or loyalties to anybody except Gadhafi. Less than 10 million people live along the
coastline, but they represent different tribes and have no political parties as
yet. The nagging thought that many
suicide bombers during the Iraq War came from the Eastern portion of Libya,
reminds us that we really do not know who the rebels who may be winning this
civil war really are – not a settled situation by any means, as Wolf Blitzer
appears in his dark suit, and the first string at CNN takes over for what may
be a long night indeed.