Tumult In Tripoli

Some forty five years ago I was secreted into
Libya. No, I was not a CIA operative. And no,
I did not have a license, ala James Bond, to
do anything other than to hold a clandestine
meeting in Tripoli withan unusually prominent
Libyan citizen. By prearrangement, the Libyan
arrived alone an hour before me at a designated
location. Then I arrived, also alone. We
conducted a private meeting in a spartan room.
Then, also by prearrangement, the Libyan left.
After a reasonable time had elapsed, I also left
that location. At my very earliest opportunity,
I hightailed it out of Libya.

But this commentary is not about me. It is
about Libya. Indeed, in the years referred to
above, Libya was the locus of Wheelus Air Force
base. It was situated on a Mediterranean beach
on the outskirts of Tripoli. Wheelus was then
perhaps the largest U.S. Air Force base in the
world. Aircraft from that base used Libya’s
considerable desert as a convenient and
uninhabited bombing range.

In those years, King Idris I ruled Libya.
He was not terribly beloved by his subjects,
but neither was he horribly hated, except
by rabid nationalists and pan-Arabists who
disliked his cozy relationship with England
and the United States. Indeed, it can be argued
that King Idris was quite blindsided when,
in 1969, a twenty-seven year old Libyan army
captain named Muammar Qaddafi ousted him in
a bloodless coup.

From that date until this February, Libya and
Qadaffi, with a few notable exceptions,
seemed -at least on the surface- to have been
almost of one voice. Indeed, virtually from
the outset of his rule, Qaddafi has
repeatedly and viscerally protested that
Libya is an Islamic, socialist government
of the masses (jamahiriya). Theoretically,
Libya has been a direct democracy run by
communal councils which speak with the
voice of the people to the people and
for the people. Clearly, however, theory
and practice are not and have not been
birds of a feather in the Libyan Jamahiriya.

That said, upon assuming power, Col. Qaddafi
pointedly refused to promote himself from
Captain to General. He wittingly also
refrained from naming himself as President,
Ruler or Emir. In fact, it was forty years ago,
in keeping with his espoused egalitarian
ideology, that Qadaffi cast off his early
titles of prime minister and as secretary-general
of The General People’s Congress. As a matter
of and for public consumption by the Libyan
people, Qaddafi was to be no more and no
less than one of the masses.

Qaddafi’s egalitarian protestations notwithstanding,
deep down most Libyans have apparently always
fully understood who unilaterally called all
the shots and made all critical state decisions.
That awareness came into bold relief on 31 August
2006. It was then that Qaddafi - absent a scintilla
of discernible compunction, mental reservation or
emotional disquiet- blatantly urged his supporters
to kill enemies of his revolution and anyone who
sought political change in Libya.

But Qaddafi's violent and brutal propensities
have not been confined to Libya. Arguably,
Qadaffi financed the Black September
Movement which perpetrated the unspeakable
1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes.
Qaddafi was presumably behind the dastardly
1986 Berlin discotheque bombing which killed
three people and wounded hundreds, including
dozens of U.S. servicemen. It is Qadaffi
who purportedly personally authorized the
appalling 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 103
over Lockerbie.

Premises considered, there should be little
cause for surprise that many Libyans are
now following the regime changing model so
recently set by their immediate neighbors
to the west in Tunisia and to the east
in Egypt.

What is surprising is that the West
in general and the United States in
particular seem to be painfully afflicted
with the errant notion that their adamant
verbal demands for safety, sensibility and
sanity in Libya will somehow be heeded by
that Libyan personality derisively known to
President Reagan as “The Mad Dog Of The Mideast.”