Libya descends into civil war

What happened

Libya was engulfed in full-fledged civil war this week as forces loyal to Muammar al-Qaddafi battled rebels for control of cities and oil facilities. The U.S. moved warships toward the Libyan coast in an attempt to warn Qaddafi—who may have stocks of chemical weapons—against any large-scale massacre of his own people. But the Libyan dictator appeared unfazed, vowing to fight “to the last man” and deploying troops, tanks, and helicopters against rebel forces, whom he labeled “terrorists.” Some of the fiercest fighting was just 30 miles west of Tripoli, in Zawiya, where rebel forces repelled government troops using tanks, Kalashnikovs, and anti-aircraft guns, capturing or killing dozens of Qaddafi loyalists.

Other uprisings continued to flare throughout the Mideast. In Yemen, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Seventeen people died in “days of rage” in Iraq; in Oman, protests turned violent and several people were killed. In Bahrain, hundreds of people blockaded the parliament, while in Iran police cracked down on protesters following the arrest of opposition leaders. In Tunisia, where the uprisings first began, the interim prime minister and three ministers resigned after five protesters were killed amid ongoing dissatisfaction at the pace of change.

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What the editorials said

The U.S. and the international community should come down forcefully on the side of the Libyan rebels, said The Washington Post. By instituting a no-fly zone to keep Libyan fighter jets on the ground, and supplying opposition forces with whatever they need, the U.N. will send a clear message to other teetering Middle Eastern autocrats that “the use of force will similarly boomerang.”

“We understand and share the impulse to stanch the killing,” said National Review Online. But intervening in Libya by imposing a no-fly zone will only make rebels look like foreign puppets. The Middle East revolutions so far have been powerful precisely because “they are the handiwork of the populations themselves.” When Qaddafi does fall, said the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he will leave behind “a failed state sitting atop immense stockpiles of weaponry and large deposits of oil.” Those are ingredients for continuing civil war and even anarchy. Other nations must start planning now, to “avert an even worse bloodbath later.”

What the columnists said

“Is Islam compatible with democracy?” That’s the question being asked by many of my fellow conservatives, said Michael Gerson in The Washington Post. It’s an arrogant question; let’s not forget how the U.S. created its own democracy—through an eight-year-long war of independence, followed by a Civil War in which more than 600,000 died. The Arab world’s transition to democracy may be messy, but we should welcome these democracy movements, not fear them.

That’s a very naïve view of history, said Niall Ferguson in TheDailyBeast.com. The Russian and Chinese revolutions also began with lofty goals, and wound up going rancid and consuming millions of innocent lives. Today’s Arab world is dominated by angry, poorly educated young men—“40 million of them”—and these revolutions are likely to produce “large-scale and protracted violence.” Cheer not the revolution, for “we have absolutely no idea who is going to fill today’s vacuums of power.”

I’ve been to Bahrain and Egypt in recent weeks, said Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times, and I’ve seen with my own eyes “lionhearted men and women” defying dictators, thugs, bullets, and tear gas. “How can we say these people are unready for a democracy that they are prepared to die for?” Even if the outcome is uncertain, we have only one moral option, which is to side with people rising up against tyranny. Saudi Arabia may well be next, said Jackson Diehl in The Washington Post. King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz is so worried he’s handing out $2,000 to every Saudi, but 60 percent of the population is under 18 and unemployment is rampant. Don’t be surprised if the next country to see a revolution is “the United States’ most important remaining Arab ally”—the one with “one fifth of the world’s oil reserves.”