Hands off Libya

Uncle Cephas has no great regard for Moammar Qaddafi. He was always a bloody minded dictator, sponsor of terrorism, a first class SOB, and, back in the Cold War days, the Soviet Bloc's SOB. However, the USA would be well-advised to refrain from following France's lead in recognizing the interim rebel government. It would be best to remember John Adams' advice to be well-wisher to liberty everywhere, but champion only of our own.

There seems to be little public information on who the rebels are, who leads them, and the nature of the new Libya they hope to produce. Talk of the "democratic" nature of the recent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt neglect to note how the revolutionary forces were quick to attack Jewish targets in Tunisia and Christian ones in Egypt--very much in character with mass movements in the Islamic world during the past couple of centuries, if not more. A few things already indicate that Islamic supremacism informs Qaddafi's foes in Libya as well (not to say that Qaddafi has much respect for any expressions of non-Islamic belief in Libya), in that they've already burned the dictator in effigy--with a Magen David attached.

Attempts to foster democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan have made things worse for the Christian and Mandaean minorities in the former and have changed nothing for the clandestine religious minorities in the latter. The latter is especially rife with corruption since the ouster of the Taliban, and America's Afghan allies seem little inclined to find and bring in Osama Bin Laden or Mullah Omar. And intervention in Libya would probably uncover an equally unpromising morass. Further, the Islamic world tends to grow more anti-American in direct proportion to American support for regimes or movements in that area.

Let events in Libya play out as the powers in place in that country determine. We do not have a horse in that race.