From Irak to Lybie..One interesant article to one interesant discussion..

Mateo Mathaus Mateo Mathaus ENGLISH VERSION :This is now the hour of the doomsayers, the dark oracular "realists" who thriumphierenden "We have-it-ja-from start-to-say-tellers. After weeks of NATO's involvement in Libya, Gaddafi has still not been brought to its knees. "Planetshakers" is the NATO geschliddert in a process of "civil war", with obvious consequences, it is now everywhere, the rebels were too weak to carry off on its own victory, also had an unpredictable bunch, interspersed possibly by al-Qaida, it now threatened "another Afghanistan", and so on and so on.

Photo: AFP NATO has taken on nighttime raids on the Libyan capital, Tripoli in the building of dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi used area.

Frame grave of a damaged building in Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli
Photo: Reuters / Reuters As the BBC in the morning, citing government officials and eyewitnesses reported that several buildings were severely damaged.

A Libyan soldier looks at interior damage to a building in Libyan leader Gaddafi's Mummar Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli
Photo: REUTERS Gaddafi is said to have held in the destroyed building complex conferences. It remains unclear where the rulers at the time of the attack was staying.

Photo: AP / DAPD The door of a lobby on the military base was blown up in the attack. The ground was littered with pieces, picture frames fell off.

Photo: AP / DAPD dozens Gaddafi supporters clambered onto the ruins and Gaddafi called for their support.

Photo: AP / DAPD They hoisted the green flag of Libya.

Still taken from video image of you being injured on laid out on a stretcher in Tripoli
Photo: Reuters / Reuters 15 people were seriously injured.

NATO attacks Gaddafi compound
Photo: AP / DPA was in the early morning we search for the missing.

As is well placed to occasionally remember what has brought the NATO air war in Libya already invaluable to success. Prevents was that Gaddafi's troops capture Benghazi, the center of resistance to tyranny, and there commit a cruel massacre could. One wonders how such a disaster to have the "realist" with a winning Gaddafi will arrange. Would have any realistic political opening, not to mention a humanitarian perspective?

Benghazi is a second Srebrenica became the besieged port city Misrata, for all legitimate criticism of the half-heartedness of NATO, but also not. Gaddafi has not succeeded, the city starve and take, instead, he announced the withdrawal of its troops from there - no longer to be a new, clumsy trick of the dictator who wants to round out to the Western public by the nose and uncertainty. From a distance it can bombard the city further. But after all that Gaddafi trick in this way must make, but clearly that for him forward now not go any further.

Too slow and indecisive

Since NATO took over command of the Libyan intervention by French, British and Americans, the military action has been carried too hesitant and indecisive ahead. But now sends Obama drones, which can cause the Gaddafi thugs more effective and more accurate shots than before. The U.S. president thus documenting the way, that the U.S. is the capacity of the West remains "the indispensable nation."
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In addition to Armament verbesserrn steadily from training the rebels. It is true that Qaddafi is not yet defeated, and he can probably even longer time with the utmost brutality cling on to power. NATO can not loose, but reinforces it finally clear the military pressure, is done in the international world of states largely isolated mass murderer in the medium term security.
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* Go forward

Gaddafi survived the NATO attack

But one should also take it beyond the military once the political achievements of note, to intervene with the decision of the West (minus Germany), in Libya, are connected and are now manifest. Who would have thought it two or three years even conceivable that a U.S. politician like John McCain in an Arab city of Benghazi is as smitten with sweeping U.S. flags and shouts of "Thank you, America!" Received triumphant? McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate, was nevertheless one of the most consistent supporters of the Iraq war. Until recently, he held fast to the maxim that the U.S. would have in Iraq "until victory" continue to fight and therefore sharply criticized Obama's withdrawal plan from early Mesopotamia.

(Jumps Given the vehemence with which McCain the rebel side, one could almost forget that he met in 2009 Gaddafi in Tripoli, and called him a "peacemaker in Africa" ​​and an "interesting man," called it. Even many conservatives and neoconservatives had the agile, pretended dictator since his deal with Bush and Blair in 2003 makabererweise as something of an - albeit sinister - the likely hope for a "modernization" of the Arab world was subject ...)

U.S. has reclaimed sympathy

Ironically, by military intervention on the part of Arab liberation movement, the United States in the Arab world again sympathies recaptured, after the deepest conviction of countless "experts" by the "Iraq adventure" had been lost for ever. And so it is quite possible that soon the war in Iraq in the light of new circumstances that are created by the Arab riots, will be evaluated historically quite new. Yes, the U.S. intervention in Iraq was full of horrible failure and fatal miscalculation, the fall of Saddam Hussein was followed by terrible years of the bloody chaos of sectarian violence and murderous terror.

As early as 1986 U.S. bombing Gaddafi's residence

Already one quarter of a century, the U.S. Air Force bombing raids on Libya Gaddafi - but without a UN mandate. For the U.S. media ...

... was then clear that this Muammar al-Gaddafi should be killed.

The dictator survived the bombing of his residence in the night of 15 April 1986. His 15-month-old adopted daughter ...

... but was killed. Gaddafi's wife and other children were injured. The UN General Assembly condemned the U.S. attacks in November 1986 as "violating the UN Charter and international law."

The approximately half-hour attack was in retaliation for the terrorist attack on U.S. soldiers at the popular nightclub "La Belle" ten days earlier in West Berlin. Here were three people killed and some 200 injured.

For U.S. President Ronald Reagan was clear that Gaddafi had ordered the terrorist attack.

In their attacks on targets in Tripoli and Benghazi were given the US-British support aircraft. The USA, according to the Pentagon's 18 swing-wing F-111 bombers and 15 fighter-bomber of the type A-6E (Intruder) a.

Targets were troops accommodations, port facilities and the military part of the airport of Tripoli. In Benghazi barracks and a military airfield were bombed.

According to one western media reports 60-100 people were killed. In Tripoli, several homes were severely damaged and hit the embassies of France, Switzerland and other countries.

Source: dpa

But seemed there was and remained the same but tremendous example of the overthrow of one of those Arab despots, whose tyranny made to last. Among the prophecies of doom horrified European "real" and "stability policy", which was facing a "destabilizing the entire region," shaking like a leaf, with the fall of one of the worst desert criminal rulers finally taken seriously, and notwithstanding the bloody mess, that this mighty historical rupture was growing, in Iraq the first time in an Arab country approached democratic institutions and freedoms - imperfect and fragile, but until today, but still existent.

Even today, Iraq and its rudimentary democracy have long been out of the woods (the persecution of Christians here is one of the worst chapter), but the return to a dictatorship, as in the dark years 2005-2007 many oh-so disillusioned analysts had been predicted, it has not just given.

Iraq was certainly not the "model" for the democratization of the Arab world as the neo-conservative thinkers had imagined. But he was something like the Big Bang of the democratic uprising in the region, who brought the rotten despotic order slip out of balance and stability subliminally spread its effects to the release of the now self-generated Arab rebellions.

The al-Qaida had set in the way Jahen of chaos in Iraq, but has not prevailed thanks to a massive counter-dam. And in Libya? Yes, there are actually their fighters in the ranks of the rebels. Their combat experience is, according to the cognitions of the BND, used by the anti-Gaddafi-front, their religious propaganda, but not yet adopted, in part, the rebels have publicly distanced themselves from it.

In Internet forum, the al-Qaida self-criticism, the FAS reports of 24.4: "Why we are not attractive," Well, they are not, because the majority of anti-Gaddafi hopes its forces to the west is. The radical Islamists warn BND President Uhrlau would, but "try to adjust and set out" that the prolonged civil war, improve recruitment opportunities. "

Yes, al Qaeda and other Islamist extremists are a real danger in Libya. How great would this only if the West yielded to the "realistic" prophecies of callers and the rebels now in the lurch?

More articles by Richard Herzinger, see his blog "Free World".