One Libyan militia has taken to mounting raids against hotels over unpaid bills. Another militia recently captured and held two British PressTV journalists because militia members mistakenly believed Welsh materials in the journalists’ possession were written in Hebrew, and that the Iranian-employed Brits were Israeli agents.
Meanwhile, official Libyan police have finally gotten around to rounding up the vandals responsible for the disgraceful desecration of Christian and Jewish tombstones in a WWII-era cemetery. The problem is they’re too scared to do anything about it:
Police in Libya captured three members of an armed mob that desecrated British war graves in Benghazi – but released them after a few hours because they were ‘too dangerous.’ The extremists, who admitted smashing the gravestones with sledgehammers, belong to an Islamist militia with links to al-Qaeda. During questioning, police were so nervous they made the men wear blindfolds so they would not be able to identify their interrogators.
After the liberation of Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein’s crime family, liberal critics endlessly intoned that the Bush administration had made inadequate preparations for “winning the peace.” Bracketing the somewhat obnoxious spectacle of 20 year old DC newcomers suddenly declared themselves to be sage military historians, the argument was not wholly undue.
Criticism regarding the current administration’s lack of post-Qaddafi preparation has not reached a similar pitch, circumspection that’s doubly perplexing given how in contrast to Iraq there really was a hasty rush to war on Libya. Had a Bush-era official underwhelmingly expressed himself “concerned” about tens of thousands of airline-busting missiles falling into the hands of terrorists – while UN officials were acknowledging that nobody had a sense for the magnitude of the problem because “nobody has had a chance to look… across the country” – the howls of derision would have lasted weeks.
Al-Qaeda-linked militias are functionally in control of key parts of Libya, and have been for many months. Senior Libyan officers admit they “have no control over these men, they are too dangerous, they have more weapons.” Past attempts to reign in militia-linked criminals triggered raids on police stations, with the buildings overrun and the arrested militia members freed.
The post-Saddam/post-Qaddafi parellels run so close that Libya has even seen priceless archaeological artifacts stolen in the chaos. When the Iraqi Museum was raided, it led to no end of outrage and White House resignations. There are published books on the incident with titles that have words like “rape and “cultural cleansing.” The din in response to NATO’s hasty and underplanned intervention into Libya has been somewhat more muted, for some reason.
I'm amused with the ostensible chagrin of conservative journalists as they observe the blatant partisan hypocrisy of their Leftist counterparts. It's been clear for some time now that the only consistent ideology of the Left is wealth redistribution, everything else simply supports that goal. n nIt's sad to see such narrow minded fanaticism at a time when we should know better, but there it is. In this case it's simple partisanship, Bush was bad and deserved criticism for any reason; Obama is good and usually undeserving of criticism. This regression to tribal type chauvinism, rather than an attempt at objective cultural relativism, is, in part, a consequence of their abandonment of "traditional culture" in which they have taken great pride in their right to throw out the baby with the bath water.
What you see in Libya is essentially what happened in Lebanon over the years and what you will see in Syria, Iraq and Jordan over the next few years. The Nation State imposed by the Western colonials and their despotic followers is breaking up into the tribal traditional structure, where each tribe tries to grab as much of the wealth and power as they can, no holds barred. The only nation state left standing is obviously Israel, the original biblical nation-state. As poverty and chaos deepen their rein the West will under an even greater pressure to accept “refugees” invaders rather, and will have to either shape up, and repulse, or knuckle under, and die under the sheer weight of immigrants/invaders. In choosing the first, the West will have to side with Israel. In choosing the second option it will not matter, there will be no West, and Israel will have to fight those gangs till they give up on Islam.
Blame it on Italy. They were the ones who created "Libya".