If Moammar Kadafi Is Overthrown, Then What?

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

If Moammar Kadafi Is Overthrown, Then What?
(posted with permission from http://sane-ramblings.blogspot.com/2011/03/if-moammar-kadafi-is-overthrown-then.html)

The U.S and its allies have launched a Libyan War. But if Moammar Kadafi is overthrown, then what?

What is the plan among the U.S. and its allies? What will their involvement and resources be and for how long? Who will rule Libya? What voice will the Libyan people have in selecting their leaders? Will there be martial law until an elective process is established? How long will it be before an elective process is set-up? What role will the United Nations have? What voice will Libya's neighbors have in Libyan affairs? Who will control Libya's resources, such as its oil? What happens if Libya collapses into civil war?

Has such a reasoned dialogue even taken place? And if it took place, were Libyans a part of it? The American people were not. I raise these questions because of what has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan since the U.S. invasion and occupation of those nations. The violence is mind-numbing and the governments that exist there are kept in power by the U.S. military, not by the people.

Before the U.S. and its allies started dropping missiles in Libya, it should have been crucial that every other avenue be explored to avoid such a horrific event. In Libya this did not happen. There must also be a carefully conceived plan involving the local people and how and when the U.S. and its allies will withdraw from their nation. Otherwise, like Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no plan, just an American occupation and open ended war, the horrors of which weigh on all of our souls.

[Motown_Johnny]

1. hold elections loosely modeled after what was done in Iraq

I assume

[sabrina 1]

2. We probably already know who the next 'elected'

leader will be. I'm sure we still have some of that purple stuff the Iraqis were given left.

The Iraqis though are not at all happy with their 'democracy' and when they went out to make use of their new-found right to protest, 29 of them were shot down last week.

This is exactly what the Libyan, Egyptian and Tunisian people made clear. They did not want to become another Iraq, 'brutalized, destroyed and abused'.

I'm sure they are not just going to bomb and leave, that much is certain.

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

6. Re: 'brutalized, destroyed and abused'

But that is what war does, and why am against it.

[Modern_Matthew]

3. A puppet will be installed that benefits the Western world over the Libyan people. nt

[mdmc]

8. 1

[sad sally]

13. If puppet number one turns out to be the wrong one, there's always

another chance to get it right. Democracy spread about the world (wasn't that the Bush Doctrine?)

[reorg]

4. here is one prediction:

It is the next stage in Libya – after the fall of Gaddafi – which has the potential to produce a disaster similar to Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases successful war left the US as the predominant power in the country. In Iraq this rapidly turned into an old-fashioned imperial occupation. "The occupation was the mother of all mistakes," as one Iraqi leader is fond of repeating. In Afghanistan the US always called the shots, even if Hamid Karzai headed the government.

The same problem is going to arise in Libya. There will be a lack of a credible local partner. The rebels have shown that they are politically and militarily weak. Indeed, if this had not been so, there would have been no need for a last-minute foreign intervention to save them.

...

Aspirant Libyan leaders who play their cards right over the next few months could put themselves in a position to make a lot of money. An Iraqi civil servant in Baghdad commented cynically before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 that "the exiled Iraqis are an exact replica of those who currently govern us", but the present leadership was almost sated "since they have been robbing us for 30 years" while the new rulers "will be ravenous".

http://counterpunch.com/patrick03212011.html

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

9. "The occupation was the mother of all mistakes"

That's for damn sure!

[The_Casual_Observer]

5. "We could have never anticipated that it would end up like this"

That's what.

They have learned from experience that they don't know what is going to happen, so they don't even think about it. They figure they'll sort it out later after they get some emergency funding and they have a number to charge their time card to.

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

11. You said: "They have learned from experience that they don't know what is going to happen"

I'm just soaking that in.

[Night Crawler]

7. Egypt, Tunisia and now Libya

That giant sucking sound you hear is the power vacuum waiting to be filled by the next strongman to emerge.

Allah, or something, help those people.

[Davis_X_Machina]

17. Watch Egypt spiralling....

....into chaos as we speak.

Or not.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. Gin up another "noble cause" to enrich the MIC.

We never run out of bogeymen or noble causes to justify killing.

[leveymg]

12. Install another military strongman behind the facade of democracy, and start again

Libya isn't the most easily ruled place in the world. Something between Afghanistan and Somalia. The society and politics is based on tribes and bartered alliances. We may end up with another failed state permanently at war with itself, divided into a tiny globalized oligarchy that wants to rip off everything of any value for themselves, and a bunch of heavily-armed clan groups that are deeply suspicious of each other and the outside world.

And round and round it goes . . .

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

18. That's the way it looks to me, as well...

But that's not such a great outcome.

[leveymg]

20. No good choices or easy exit once you're in. Like Afghanistan.

Pottery Barn rules apply.

[neverforget]

14. Who is the rebel leader?

[Davis_X_Machina]

15. It's...

...impossible to have real elections in the midst of such strife and destruction.

Or not.

[dkofos]

16. We will install a new dictator.

[Davis_X_Machina]

19. Such a move...

...is inevitable.

Or not.

[thereismore]

21. ...who will honor BP property and drilling rights. nt

[leveymg]

22. We already have. Old one never left:

[L. Coyote]

23. Ask the Shah of iran

[GeorgeGist]

24. The Odyssey has Dawned.

No one can see the end.

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

25. The author adds...

For public relations purposes, the U.S. created the appearance of elections in Iraq. Although censored in the U.S. the people of Iraq have been protesting the “Iraq government” which is run from the Green Zone and kept in power by the U.S. In response, that government too fired on its own people. Incidentally, the “Iraq government” is incompetent, unable to even deliver basic services to its people, such as electricity, clean water, sewage treatment, etc.