Beate Zilversmidt, March 18, 2011

I hadn't expected the international community to actually come to the rescue of the Libyan rebels who were already in the process of being defeated. Those people who wanted the same as what their neighbors had succeeded to get - I was frightened, for what would happen to them, but at the same time aware of the legal and political obstacles for other nations to intervene in whatever country on the side of a rebellion.

We had discussed it quite a bit. After the sweeping Egyptian revolution, in the aftermath of the Tunesian one, we easily identified also with the uprising in Libya. But where were the soldiers joining the call that after 40 years of Ghaddafi rule also Libya deserves democracy? Ghaddafi apparently had what Mubarak hadn't: enough soldiers accepting orders to shoot at their own people.

"Obama is doing nothing, because he prefers to get oil from Ghaddafi" some concluded. And, indeed, as can be clearly seen from the U.S.' attitude towards the uprisings in Bahrain and Yemen, its policies are limited  by an agenda of self-interest. But, regarding Libya whatever Obama, and for that matter the United Nations, would do, they would be suspected of having the wrong motives: intervention would easily be condemned as imperialism; non-intervention as "being on the tyrant's side". In our own circles were those who argued that however much one dislikes Ghaddafi, we must oppose intervention by the imperialist west which is per definition the bigger evil. 

With the situation being that complicated it was probably a blessing in disguise that Ghaddafi behaved so utterly disgusting, in deeds, but no less in words. Especially by his display of unscrupledness and his vulgar intimidation he provoked the reluctant international community into overstepping the hurdles and give him just in time an answer in kind.

For the moment this feels as a big relief.