A great victory

Things are looking a little ticklish for Muammar Gaddafi. It would seem that the maniacal and disorganised coalition of rebels, which occasionally breaks off from fighting the tyrant to murder its own leaders, is poised for a famous victory. A consequence, one supposes, of the heavy ordinance expended by the various western allies. Had ol’ Muammar been able to hold out for a while longer the resolve of the west would have collapsed altogether; already the French were whining about their involvement and were thinking about running away again. I assume that once Gaddafi has been chucked out the western military presence will be shuffled a few hundred miles along the Med towards Syria in order to help their Islamists overthrow their own despotic (if somewhat less radged)  leader.

I am not convinced we will be terribly happy with what the Libyans replace Muammar with. The dispiriting truth is that ghastly though almost all Middle Eastern governments might be, the indigenous people in each country wish to replace them with something much, much less liberal and compassionate. This is most obviously true with Saudi Arabia. It does not matter how much the foreign TV crews focus on the nice westernised middle class people involved in the various uprisings; they will not be the ones to prevail.