Gaddafi is Gone or so it Seems

It seems that the people who bet at intrade were justified in believing that the armed insurrection against Muammar Gaddafi's government would succeed with Western support.  This seemed almost inevitable.  Once several wealthy, democratically elected governments got involved it seemed almost certain that they would devote enough resources to the struggle to ensure his removal.  Anything less would look too much like losing a war, which is something that is almost always punished by removal from office in the next election.

This is good news in that it has allayed my concerns that the struggle might have been a protracted one leading to a higher rate of casualties.  However, perhaps I speak too soon.  At this stage during the struggle in Iraq, Saddam Hussein's government had already been overthrown.  The hard part of the struggle is not destroying a regime, but building a democratic government to replace it.

Three questions remain.  First, once the rebels successfully oust the incumbent regime, will they be able to unite behind a government to replace it?  Second, will the new government be better at protecting the people's rights?  Third, when the dust settles will this have been the most humane way of accomplishing regime change?

The third question will be the most difficult to answer.  We will never know what other steps might have been successful in accomplishing the same ends.  Even though armed insurrection successfully replaces the government with a better one, this tells us nothing about whether similar results could have been obtained at a lower cost in terms of human life.

We need to be concerned that Gaddafi's opponents may not agree on much other than a quite justified hatred of his regime.  Opposition to Gaddafi cannot provide a consensus on how Libya should actually be ruled.  It is only an agreement that it should not be ruled by him.

On the whole armed insurrections have not generally replaced existing governments with ones that were more democratic.  We have heard good things from the opposition in this regard, but it remains to be seen whether these words will be backed up by action.

In general, I would not support armed insurrection against a government.  This is an approach that is certain to lead to the loss of innocent life, is likely to fail and even more likely to result in a less democratic government than the one replaced.  I would support nonviolent protest instead.

Now it is true that nonviolent protest doesn't always work, but neither does armed insurrection.  In order to change the government nonviolent protest requires widespread popular support among the population at large and in the military.  However, that is what you would need in order to make the country more democratic through an armed insurrection in any case.

Since regime change is almost a fait accompli at this point, it would seem that we should give the people of Libya whatever assistence they want in order to help them set up a democratic form of government.  The people of Libya have no reason to expect that we should take sides should the fighting devolve into armed struggle between various factions of the opposition.  Nor should we get involved in such a struggle.  I hope it doesn't come to that, but we cannot base policy on overly optimistic assumptions.  We must prepair for unpleasant outcomes.