Liberal Democrat

Liberal Democrat
Individual Freedom For Everyone

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Russia Today: Pepe Escobar- 'Bye-Bye Gaddafi, welcome Al-Qaeda?'

Source:Russia Today- welcome to Libya.

"RT (formerly Russia Today) is a state-controlled international television network funded by the federal tax budget of the Russian government.[5][6] It operates pay television channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Russian.

RT operates as a multilingual service with conventional channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (since 2010),[7] RT UK (since 2014) and other regional channels also offer some locally based content." 

From Wikipedia 

"While Tripoli is celebrating the end of a dictatorship, analysts are skeptical democracy is next in line for Libya. Journalist Pepe Escobar told RT, Al-Qaeda is already effectively in power in the capital. 
RT on:Twitter. RT on:Facebook."  


Knocking the Gaddafi Regime out-of-power in Libya is great, but Libya still needs a national government. as well as provincial and local government's to govern this very large country, as well as defend it from foreign invaders and Gaddafi fighters. 

Stabilizing Libya will be the main issue that the Libyan Transitional National Council, essentially Libya's interim national government will have to manage as they work to form a long term government both from an interim basis and then once the Libyan people writes a national constitution and forms its own form of government. Hopefully a democratic, responsible, constitutional government to govern the country thats respectful of human rights. 

But of course the TNC is only made up of, I don't maybe 50K people and a lot of their members are the Libyan rebels themselves that successfully fought to knock Moammar Gaddafi and his regime out-of- power. The Gaddafi military was 100K people that the new Libyan Government is going to have to rebuild and have a military that size or bigger. 

The entire Gaddafi Regime was maybe 500K people, so the TNC has a lot of work ahead of it without the manpower to do it on their own. And to be able to govern the country in the short-term and then later long- term, they are going to need international help to accomplish this. 

Where the Arab League especially Egypt can play a big role, with security and then later forming a long- term government in Libya. And this is where NATO and the European Union, United Nations, perhaps even the African Union and to a smaller extent the United States can step in and play a positive role. 

The number one thing that Libya needs and this of course is coming from a Western outsider, is security and stability. One of the biggest mistakes that happened in Iraq during the Iraq War, was that they moved to national elections and forming the new government and constitution before security and stability were established in this big country of 25M people at the time. 

The United States didn't have enough forces to secure Iraq and they moved to eliminate the Hussein Regime and its armed forces and security forces, without having anything to replace it. Which left Iraq wide-open for attacks both domestic and foreign and became a country that didn't have any Al-Qaeda members pre-2003 Iraq War, to a country with perhaps the largest Al-Qaeda membership during that Iraq War. 

Iraq has all of the different ethnic and tribal groups as well as religious groups that hated the Hussein Regime, that wanted their revenge against them. So what Libya is going to need is security as well as respect for human rights and to move past the Gaddafi Regime and stability as they work to write a national constitution and form a more lasting national government that can govern and secure Libya in a responsible way that the Libyan people and international community can respect.