Free Exit the Colonel by Ethan Chorin

Rights Commission on January 20, 2003—three years before its removal from the Terror List. 45 The New York Times called it an “act of such absurdity that it may finally force some serious thinking about reforming the commission.” 46 Even after all of its gestures in service of Libya, the US couldn’t help but object to Libya’s election, admitting in the process that Libya’s human rights record was “horrible.” 47 US ambassador to the commission, Kevin Moley, said, “It is especially sad today when America celebrates the birthday of Martin Luther King, a champion of human rights, that a nation which flaunts human rights abuses, would be elected chair.” 48 It all served to prove to Gaddafi that virtually everyone could be bought and that, in fact, the Western countries were neither united in policy nor paying careful attention to his actions.

PART III
    FITNA (CHAOS)

    Like so many of its utopian counterparts in the 20th century, this was a regime likely to self-destruct.
    LISA ANDERSON 1

PART IV
    RECONCILIATION AND RECONSTRUCTION

CONCLUSION:
    THE WEIGHT OF THE PAST
    Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.
    EDMUND BURKE
REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE
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    I f there is one theme that runs through the story of the Gaddafi regime and the colonel’s exit, it is the role of the past, that is, to what extent countries and individuals are shackled by their previous experiences. If there is hope for Libya—and indeed, Western policy in the Middle East—it is contained in the fact that time and human interactions produce discontinuities, which like genetic mutations, contain opportunities for adaptation. Looked at from a different perspective, Libya is not a near-failed state, but a fresh canvas. As a prominent Libyan businessman said recently, “If we Libyans truly want it, Libya can be fixed in no time. We are just 6 million people—a modest multiple of General Motor’s global workforce. We are wealthy, and we are not extreme by nature.” 1
    Popular discontent with King Idris and the still-fresh memories of the Italian occupation gave a poor, undereducated but singly focused person such as Gaddafi the opportunity to stage an unlikely coup; Gaddafi’s early experience and deprivations conditioned his half-baked worldview, as well as the tools and strategies he used to maintain power and provoke the West. The Lockerbie (and UTA) bombings appear to be manifestations of Gaddafi’s burning desire to right what he saw as past wrongs committed upon him by the outside powers, not only for ordering the raids against him in 1986 but for any number of slights to his person and policies.

    The United States decided to engage with Gaddafi after a separation of over twenty years, for reasons that had far less to do with Libya per se and any of Gaddafi’s idiosyncrasies, but more with a fixation on the recent past: What to do about a horrendously planned and incompetently executed invasion and reconstruction of Iraq, which itself followed from 9/11, which itself can be linked to US support for the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets back in the late 1970s, through the creation of Al Qaeda.
    Due to a collection of historical anomalies, the 2003 deal with Libya—notwithstanding its context—afforded an opportunity for both sides, Libya and the West, to make a break with the past, to refashion the relationship into something more mature and potentially sustainable. That Gaddafi did not rise to the occasion is not a tremendous surprise. By the same token, one would have expected the more stable, advanced, knowledgeable bureaucracies of the West to understand Gaddafi’s game and inoculate themselves against it. They didn’t.
    The fact is that, fundamentally, neither side saw the potential of the deal, understood what it represented to the other, or made particular effort to