The spark of revolution

A massive world-wide sigh of relief was breathed when Hosni Mubarak threw in the towel, realising this was one battle he wasn’t going to win. But you know, he could have, had he been willing, as Gaddafi is, to slaughter his people; and had his army been willing, as Gaddafi’s is, to cooperate. Is that the difference between a “good” dictator and a “bad” one?

Personally, I don’t believe Mubarak was any less malignant than Gaddafi, though he’s always been less flamboyant. But his army consisted of Egyptians unwilling to massacre their brothers, while Gaddafi’s consists largely of African foreign mercenaries who don’t give a damn about the locals. I suspect the only reason Mubarak finally gave in, mere hours after defiantly declaring that he wouldn’t, was that his army chiefs (or perhaps the Americans) whispered in his ear that he had the choice of exiting office vertically or horizontally, and he wisely opted for the former.

After all, he’s 82, and with billions of Egyptian taxpayers’ dollars squirreled away in offshore accounts, the rest of his life shouldn’t be too much of a hardship. It may even be a relief not to have to deal with Egypt’s continuing economic problems.

As for that Tunisia’s Ben Ali, he didn’t even bother to argue – just packed his cash in a suitcase, no doubt, and headed for the hills.

Gaddafi is a whole other matter. With a past history of being crazy as a fox, these days he’s looking just plain crazy.

His speeches are increasingly weird, his actions even more so; and his wardrobe apparently now consists solely of old blankets. (BTW, has anyone noticed how these North African octogenarian dictators all have jet black hair? Sales of Grecian Formula must be high in the region.)

But crazy or not, Gaddafi continues to cling to power, while Mubarak and Ben Ali did not. If that is the definition of success, Gaddafi may well end up being the winner. He has no hesitation when it comes to dispatching his enemies, and you only need to kill so many citizens before the rest give up and slink back home.

Do the western countries really want to find themselves embroiled in another Arab war? That’s unlikely – they haven’t done so well in the last two. And by all accounts, the Libyan people do NOT want foreign intervention – who can blame them?

Libya is less dependent on the west than many other dictatorships in the region, so Gaddafi could conceivably shrug off sanctions and just hang tough.

In any case, most UN-imposed sanctions end up hurting the populace far more than the leaders. And despite the fact that Libya produces only about two percent of the world’s oil, the current crisis has already sent oil prices rocketing, affecting consumer prices across the globe. As things stand, in other words, Gaddafi has the rest of the world over a barrel, and he knows it. Maybe not so crazy after all. Which does not bode well for the Libyan people.

The greatest irony of all these uprisings is that the west has once again come face to face with its own mistakes.

It’s not the first time, of course: remember who armed and supported the Taliban during their fight against the Russians. In recent years, Hosni Mubarak was everyone’s darling because of his acceptance of Israel; no-one seemed disturbed by his brutal suppression of all opposition in Egypt, and his well-known record for torturing prisoners, including those rendered to him by America.

So it was a bittersweet moment to hear Hilary Clinton et al suddenly proclaiming the sacred rights of “the Egyptian people” to freedom and democracy: rights that no-one had worried about until the totally unexpected overthrow of the nearby Tunisian dictator.

Similarly, after decades of being considered the “mad dog of the Arab world” world, Muammar Gaddafi suddenly became “rehabilitated” during this millenium, ending up on quite cordial terms with the west — as evidenced by visits from Tony Blair, Nicolas Sarkozy and Condoleeza Rice — once Libya had ’fessed up to being responsible for the infamous Lockerbie bombing, and ponied up some compensation money.

Doesn’t take much to get the west on your side, does it? The fact that he was well known for his ruthlessness at home, “quite willing”, as I heard one radio commentator say, “to kill his own people when necessary”, didn’t seem to matter much. Until now – when, clearly, his people have gotten tired of being killed, necessarily or not.