Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Reasons for optimism in Libya

The fall of Gaddafi — War in Context

Steve Negus says there are three main things that bode well for Libya's future (uncertain though that future is).

  • The West has leverage because the rebel alliance knows it could not have prevailed without NATO's airstrikes, but the rebels' honor is intact because they did the hard fighting and bleeding.

  • Qaddafi's ruling party was not much bigger than him. There are not large numbers of "dead enders" to oppose the transitional government as there were in Iraq when Saddam was deposed.

  • Libya is highly tribal but pretty homogenously Sunni and conservative. There really aren't any heretics, political or religious, that provides easy planting for Islamist radicalism. My comment: that one we will wait and see most of all. 


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