He's Dead, deal with it.

Gaddafi is confirmed dead, now the western "chattering class" is demanding an inquiry in how he died. Sheesh it was a civil war with people who have fought long and hard, there was 40 years of pent up anger at this nutbar.what exactly do you expect?
Libya faces to many challenges to count, a divided population, diverse political & religious groups. what little government they have is stepping down. I can't say I blame the NTC, better to be remembered as a hero of the revolution than the people who failed in making a proper transition to a stable government.

The west needs to offer aid (with a set timeline) and political advice. Telling the Libyans that the aid runs out at X time means they need to get their house in order quickly, so we don't have a long drawn out bickering session like Iraq that paralysed their government for months.

Some of the strength that the Libyans have is a high literacy rate,  a fairly intact oil system and civil infrastructure. what they need is to call back the bureaucrats to get things running and then weed out the hardcore and forgive the low ranking regime supporters who don't have blood on their hands.

The cons facing them are many well armed and experienced armed groups, some of them with fundamental Islamic religious views who will not be keen to allow a secular state to form. Also the various tribes will be jostling for positions. Not so much an issue in the cites, but they will play a big role in the rural areas.

What happens next set the stage for the next generation of Libyans, they have the opportunity to succeed or fail utterly like the Iranian revolution. the West has won a fair bit of goodwill on the street with our support of the rebels, while we want to support a secular government there, we have to avoid meddling to much with their internal politics. what comes next is not likely to be clean and pretty, the next 6 months bears watching. I really hope they can achieve a better place, but I have my fears.

Life imitates art

This picture of a rebel T-72 on the Libyan Rebels front(among others)has been making it's way around the military Internet and blogshpere (thank you John at ARRRRGH!). What makes people smile is that many years ago, the movie "Kelly's Heros" had created a similar scene where Clint Eastwoods Charactor is seen meeting "Oddball" a wonderful charactor played by Donald Sutherland (frankly I don't think anyone could have done that role anymore justice).


Here is Oddball introducing his crew

We told ya so….

“We” being the blogsphere and right of centre types for the most part who were asking: "Who in their right mind would want Libya on the UN’s Human Rights Council?" It’s like giving the keys to the henhouse to a hungry fox. Speaking of Fox, they asked back in May 2010 “WTF” is the UN smoking appointing this nutbar to the UNHRC.

Now that he is machine gunning, bombing and executing his own people with wild abandon, the UNHRC ask that Libya be suspended from it’s ranks, a little late as even Libya’s diplomats have resigned and told Ghadhafi he was a nutbar. (I reserve judgement on their flip-flop, it’s quite possible that the nutbar had their relatives held as “guests” to ensure compliance overseas.)

But all is not lost for the supporters of hypocrisy and the UN (but I repeat myself) Iran who was not chosen for a seat at the esteemed UNHCR, still got a seat on the UN’s Woman’s Commission. Seriously what could possible go wrong with that?