Friday marks the one-year anniversary of the uprising that ousted Libya's longtime leader, Moammar Gadhafi — and ultimately led to his death at the hands of rebel soldiers in October. Today, the new Libya isn't exactly a model of democratic stability. Militias still control huge swaths of the country. Islamist groups recently desecrated war graves in anger over the burning of Korans at a U.S.-run military base in Afghanistan. And this week, tribal leaders and militia commanders in Benghazi declared the country's oil-rich east a semi-autonomous state, a move the national government in Tripoli labeled "dangerous." Is Libya actually worse off than it was under Gadhafi?
Western meddling made Libya's problems worse: "My brilliant Russian grandmother Mashe used to say that things are never so bad they can't get worse," says Michael Ledeen at National Review. When it comes to Libya and Egypt, she was right. Sure, the previous tyrants were bad. But once Muslim fanatics drove or hijacked the rebellions, it left each country worse off than it was before. "Evil people won a struggle for power." That's "worse for our interests, worse for civilization, [and] worse for the people there."
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